Setup of AJA Xena LHe

[Stuart Brontman]

Well, I successfully sold my Xena LH and now have a Xena LHe...

When setting up a Xena LHe with Cineform for the first time, do you need to install the Xena drivers - especially if you're not going to use them? I only plan on using the Xena for capture and playback monitoring of Cineform Prospect HD files.

Thanks.

[David Newman]

No, you should not install the AJA retail drivers, we include the drivers you need in Prospect HD. They are located C:\Program Files\CineForm\AJAIO, just point to this directory when installing the cards drivers.

[Stuart Brontman]

Thanks David. That's what I needed to know.

[Thomas Smet]

David what if you wanted to use the LHE board in After Effects, Combustion or Photoshop? Wouldn't you need the AJA drivers then? As a visual effects artist having live HDTV preview from my compositing programs is very important.

What would be the best method to setup the AJA drivers for those programs and your drivers for Premiere?

Also do the same rules apply for Cineform Neo?

[David Newman]

Prospect comes with AJA drivers for After Effects (which seems faster than AJA's own, last time we tested.) We don't have AJA drivers for Combustion and Photoshop, yet the retail plugins may run with the OEM drivers. AJA has OEM (for companies like CineForm) and retail drivers that are only partly compatible with each other, annoying yet their have there business reasons for doing it.

CineForm NEO also required the OEM AJA drivers we ship if you are using the AJA card for capture, otherwise you can use the retail drivers.

[Stuart Brontman]

Has anyone here been able to run a Xena LHe card on a quad core Windows XP Pro system? My system has an MSI P35 Platinum mobo, one PCI-e 16x (for an nVidia 8800GTS video card) and one PCI-e 4x (for the Xena LHe), and all SATA hard drives. The system is over-clocked from 2.4 up to 3.4 gHz. Everything had been fine until I installed the Xena LHe card. The system would not boot after that. I took the card out and everything worked again after a second re-boot...

Any ideas? I'm already considering the over-clocking as a problem, but don't know why it would cause the system to crash with the Xena added. Are there any known issues with the 8800 and the LHe? AJA's website does not document any issues that I can see.

[Thomas Smet]

I would very interested to know how well the Xena works on that motherboard. AJA only supports workstation class systems for their boards. They also insist that the system must have 2 physical cpus andn ot just dual core or quad core. Personally I thought this was kind of rubbish but you never know. I'm sure the card may work in some consumer class motherboards but maybe that one is a problem.

Is the PCI Express x4 slot a true x4 slot or is it a second slot usually used for crossfire video cards. I think sometimes those extra slots are looking for a video card only though I may be wrong about this. I don't know a single person who has ever used a AJA board on a consumer motherboard.

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by David Newman

Prospect comes with AJA drivers for After Effects (which seems faster than AJA's own, last time we tested.) We don't have AJA drivers for Combustion and Photoshop, yet the retail plugins may run with the OEM drivers. AJA has OEM (for companies like CineForm) and retail drivers that are only partly compatible with each other, annoying yet their have there business reasons for doing it.

CineForm NEO also required the OEM AJA drivers we ship if you are using the AJA card for capture, otherwise you can use the retail drivers.

So if I want to use Cineform to capture material and use Cineform with Premiere for editing but I also composite with Combustion then I don't have any options? Sorry if I didn't understand you.

What if I have a VFX station that only has Combustion and Photoshop but want a AJA card in that station to capture Cineform files to composite with?

[Christopher Barry]

Would the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 be considered a consumer or workstation class mobo?

David N, can you advise if this is suitable mobo for my CineForm OEM AJA Xena LHe card?

Stuart, my admin guy told me not to consider OC the new system I am about to build, not that I wanted to do that. I hope you solve your system problem.

[Stuart Brontman]

I think the MSI P35 mobo would be considered a high-end consumer board. MSI might disagree with me, but the number of slots tells me it's consumer and gaming-oriented. AJA admits their boards may work on a lot of different, non-tested machines, but it's hit or miss. I still think a quad core chip is not the problem.

In retrospect, I did not do my homework very well. The computer is VERY fast, but not laid out well for professional work. It has taken me a long time (and a lot of extra money) to figure out how to get all my peripherals to work. Lesson: don't order a computer when you're too busy to carefully spec. it out. I was way too busy with projects and just ordered a fast machine without checking into its handling of peripherals.

This latest episode is another example. The PCI-E X4 slot shares channels with the two PCI-E X1 slots. I have no clue what that means. When the Xena LHe card is installed, the system board LED lights show it's there, but Windows will not come up. As a last resort, I'll try returning to default settings on the clock speed and see if that helps... Fortunately I'm working on SD stuff right now, but it's frustrating to know my system is not fully capable of what I need it to do.

[David Newman]

If you going for a new motherboard, find one that supports a 1333 MHz FSB. It is not needed for AJA, but it benefits all round system performance.

[Stuart Brontman]

This motherboard supports 1333 MHz FSB... I'm still waiting for some feedback from the builder. I think my problem is related to the PCI-E 4x slot sharing with the PCI-E 1x slots. Maybe this is related to gaming video cards (?). If I can turn the sharing off, my guess is it would help... Who knows, maybe putting the Xena in a 1X slot will work. Since it's only being used as a monitoring solution for Cineform Premiere editing, perhaps the 1X slot is fast enough...

[Thomas Smet]

No the cpu wouldn't cause your problem at all. That would only cause performance issues but I think it should be fine. I think that "2 physical cpu" rule came when dual core was first around and it didn't have enough beef to handle the card. Now core 2 duo chips can blow away older single core based 2 cpu XEON systems.

I do feel as though that x4 slot may be the problem. Like I said before consumer class boards sometimes have funny ways of using their x4 slots. Some share them with other slots while others will only as x4 when two video cards are used.

When I say consumer board I mean a regular board compared to a workstation class motherboard for XEON systems. I'm sure some x4 slots on consumer boards would work but the trick is to find one that works on it's own without any sharing of resources with the other PCI E slots.

Are there any settings in the bios to force the PCI E slots to work a certain way? Maybe you can force the x4 slot open and turn off all the other x1 slots or something like that. That is all I can think of other then returning the MB and trying some other ones to see if they work.

[David Newman]

The Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 is 1066MHz max (Chris's post), yes the MSI P35 supports 1333MHz.

[Christopher Barry]

Thank you, David, however, the Gigabyte website says the P35 DS4: Supports 1333/1066/800 MHz FSB, when looking deeper at the specs.

Curious if anyone is using this mobo or can report known conflicts with this mobo, or Gigabyte in general, when used with the LHe, a 8800GTX and SATA drive array. Thanks.