Playback Mystery
 

Ever since I got back my system back from the Vendor from Hell (they finally replaced the defective Tyan 2460 motherboard with a compatible 2466), the video has played back with dropped frames and frequent lockups. It's a dual Athlon, Matrox Digisuite LX MAX, Adobe Premiere 6.0. I've moved the boards, removed the boards and done about everything to try and make it work (I did find that two of my fans had not been reconnected by the vendor). Clips play back fine in Windows Media, Quicktime, etc. Projects and clips in Premiere skip, stop, no effects (showing unrendered). No system error messages are displayed i.e. conflicted IRQs. But mysteriously, sometimes Digisuite says that the LX and MAX cards are "not accessible" and Premiere sends alerts on the dropped frames (sometimes) but adjustments don't seem to work. Thanks for any help! Everybody here is great!

Hi Ken,

You might want to try the Matrox support forums, or contact matrox directly.

Was the machine re-installed from scratch?
What operating system are you using?

You might want to try increasing your paging files to 3 times the amount of physical RAM.

What sort of hardrives are you using, I presume SCSI? where are you capturing to?

To see if your drives are fast enough you can run a speed check through Matrox configuration program. Control Panel> Matrox configuration (colour bars) then select the LX tab and then disk. Select your media drive and then click on start test. then post the results.

I've never been a fan of the Tyan/ AMD setup.

Hope this helps a little.

I've got the paging file at 1548 (3 times my RAM) and everything else checks OK. The drives are standard EIDE, two partitioned (apps and storage) and two striped (video and DVD/video). I thought it might be an IRQ conflict (there are up to four devices on two IRQs) but the Device Manager says there are no conflicts. Could it be a bad cable? The new motherboard? BIOS?
I've tried the Matrox people. They suggest the same things. This computer has a history of problems that began with poor design and a defective motherboard. There's got to be a simple solution. Thanks Ed.

Hi Ken,

The Matrox cards tend to share IRQs with certain components, thats usual.

It'll be worth updating the Bios as well as anything else you can think of.

I don't know what format you are editing with, but generally Matrox recommened using SCSI/ SATA disks with the digisuite range. And its normally the disks that cause problems like you are seeing. I'm not saying buy some new disks, as that could be costly, but maybe give it some thought. What resuslts were you getting from the Matrox disk speed check?

Can you please explain again how your disks are configured. i.e. are you using a separate drive for the system/ application files and a separate disk for media. Or is it 1 disk with 2 partitions?

Cheers,

Update
 

Matrox is interested in my problem again. It appears to be a problem with the LX card, probably fried during one of my three power supply meltdowns.
While DVLine appears to be out of business, my nightmare with them continues. They were a reputable company. It just goes to show how many things can go wrong with these complicated machines. Thanks for your help, Ed!