Performance issue?
 

I currently am editing on:

Core2 Quad q6700
4GB DDR2 RAM
72 GB WD Raptor system drive
4x500 GB RAID 0 Video drive
ATI Radeon x1950 Pro 512MB video card
Vista Ultimate 64 bit SP1
Adobe Premiere CS4
Matrox MX02 mini
Neoscene 1.4.0

I have slight stuttering performance with Canon 7D files on the timeline without any effects applied. With converted Cineform avi's, I don't see any performance improvement and often have Premiere hang when scrubbing the timeline or letting the system try to play through the stuttering for more than 5 or so seconds.

Am I just underpowered, or do I have something wrong? I seem to be above the minimum system requirements for Neoscene.

You will notice that the AVI plays fine in everything else perfectly. This is all CS4. It will play better if you select draft mode playback (which plays at 960x540.)

Thank you for your reply. I will give that a try. As far as Neoscene integrating with the MXO2 Mini, it seems that the Mini adds to the instability. Am I correct in assuming that Premiere should be installed first, then updated to 4.2, then install the Matrox 2.0 drivers/utilities, then install 1.4.0 of Neoscene?

I then would select a Matrox 1080p30 project for the 7D footage, correct? I called Matrox for support today and at first the technician tried to tell me that the only way to have AVCHD is to capture via HDMI through the Mini's breakout, that using Neoscene's codec would not work. After I showed him the Matrox press release about integration with Cineform, he decided to do more research and will get back to me tomorrow.

In the end, is my q6700 system not adequate for reliable editing without rendering all the time? Do I need to bite the bullet and go i7?

The MXO2 Mini and NeoScene are a good fit -- your install order is good. Sorry you had that weird support from Matrox, we have that all the time -- third party support (Adobe, Matrox, etc.) often miss the value we add to their own product line, doing their customers a disservice.

i7 is better, although core2 quad should be plenty fast enough if only CS4 would get out of the way. CS4 got in our way for a year, slowly working around that.

Good to know I am in the right ballpark with configuring this stuff. Do you happen to have any other tips/tricks that might help optimize CS4 for Neoscene? I'm trying to eek out enough performance to get a few edits done before upgrading to the i7.

As far as Matrox goes, the guy did win me back a bit by informing me that he would pull components and try to replicate a system like mine to test Neoscene on with the MXO2 Mini. Nice to see that extra effort.

I'd like to get this squared away, as I have another video editor that is wanting me to build him a system and we were hoping to center around the Mini and Neo HD. He was just waiting for Win7 drivers (which are out now) and to see how I fared with this config.

FYI to others that might have this issue:

I had reformatted and reinstalled a couple times using Vista Ultimate 64 bit, to no avail. I got fed up and installed XP Pro 32 bit and everything works fine now. Not sure if it was a driver or what, but I'm at a point where I can edit again.