I fully understand. There does seem to be a lot of whining in posts on the Matrox forums.

One can get crusty about this stuff. Particularly when there have been several similar recent posts. I, myself, suffer from COFS (chronic old fart syndrome) which makes me particularly prone to curmudgeonly responses and requires editing before hitting the send button..

On the other had, I've found myself frustrated and in the middle of a project where I can't think of the right questions to ask to get myself around a problem. Sometimes, just throwing things out helps one get focused or, at least, aimed in the right direction.

I'm hoping we've now got Ron moving in that direction.

Even worse for me. I'm known for really knowing my stuff ... so people sometimes come to me for solutions. And when I get stuck? ... oops. :-D

Really good that the Adobe guy has joined dvinfo.

I must say though, I can't rave on enough about how many times the Matrox drivers have saved me (and my butt) from "codec hell". Just about anything that uses the Video For Windows subsystem can be played out to the video display ... and recorded in to a tape deck. Re-capture from the new recording and the world is once again a wonderful place.

Yeah, I really like my Matrox gear.

Andrew

OK, I updated the drivers and lost my Matrox presets. How do I get the presets back? It went from working poorly to not working at all.

Intel Xeon 2.33 Ghz x2 processors
12 gb ram
64 bit OS
Windows 7

Is that the presets that come with the drivers, or your own personal custom presets?

Andrew

The ones that come with Matrox. The ones that you can not use the monitor without.

Updated from what to what?

If you lost the presets, it sounds like something got seriously messed up in the software. My inclination would be to completely uninstall the hardware and software and start over with later drivers and utilities.

If you are trying to use the just released Matrox Utilities version 5, have you read the Release Notes (under "documentation" in the support --> downloads page.) I just got through skimming them and there is so much info that I'm going to wait a few days to finish some projects before I try updating.

Also, have you called or e-mailed Matrox support? (This is a question, not a criticism.)

I bought this new system three months ago it was built from the ground up to be a CS5 + Matrox mxo2 min system. It has never worked right. It would let you monitor the video on the HDMI connected monitor. But it would crash every time you use it.

The solution was to load new driver. The new driver did not load the Matrox Sequence Presets in CS5. So now it will not work at all. My builder says I need to uninstall everything and reload CS5 and Matrox all over again.

Is this the solution? Is this what has to happen every time there is an update to Cs5 or Matrox? Reload CS5 update CS5 load aftermarket plugins reinstall Matrox.

I am starting to think there has to be a better way to monitor my video on a third monitor. Anyone have a better solution?

Specifics would likely get more useful information unless you are throwing out the MXO2 Mini.

Again, what new driver did you download? A version number would be helpful in getting aid to trying to sort this out. Did you go to the Matrox download site and download the new version 5 software? Or did you find driver software somewhere else on the Matrox site?

What does Matrox say about the issue?

As far as uninstalling and reloading the software, that might be what you wind up having to do. It sounds like something got corrupted somewhere. There's a lot to the Adobe software which means that things can get corrupted. Last May, it took several tries for me to get all of the entire CS5 modules download and installed.

Here's another trick I've used occasionally when prior versions of PPro and Encore got hinky. Create a second admin user account, uninsitall the Matrox hardwre and software and then reinstall it. That worked for me when I had trouble running the Mini with CS4.

When I got my Mini about 13 months ago, the drivers were FAR from working correctly. I researched my problems and came to the conclusion that Matrox makes products for Mac first and PC's are an afterthought.

Furthermore, Matrox's claims about the Mini's 'Professional Color Correction" capabilities is just flat out ridiculous.

I am taking my PC back to the builder Monday to see if he can get it to work. If this fails I will be selling my matrox mxo2 mini with max. It is a shame because I really need to monitor my video on a third monitor. What else is out there for a PC to monitor with?

I pressume you have tried the Matrox forum and tried to get some technical support from Matrox?

I use an internal RTX2 card, which requires a large computer case, this has worked well for me, although now I have a Cuda enabled nVidia card it is somewhat redundant. However, it does still drive a High definition LCD TV screen and as a bonus you can fine tune the colours and contrast using industry standard SMPTE colour bars - most LCD screens do not offer sufficient control to make accurate adjustments. Matrox supplies a Calibration application which allows you to view the screen with a Blue overlay and then you can adjust the contrast, Chroma etc. The output matches my JVC studio monitor (CRT), which I now rarely use.

I've now run into the kinds of problems that Ron has discussed. Some of it may be Matrox related but most of it seems to be kinks in the newly released PPro CS5.0.3.

I'll be starting a separate thread on this. To summarize:

Point number 1, is not to use the latest Matrox software if you have updated PPro to CS 5.0.3.

Point number 2 is that there seem to be some muti-cam bugs in PPro CS 5.0.3.

Point number 3 is that, on my system, there seems to be a basic incompatibility between CS 5.0.3 and Matrox (and maybe Cineform) the Windows 7 Critical Updates of December 17. By rolling back that Dec. 17 update, I was able to restore system stability, subject to some multi-cam annoyances.

My stablity issues have gone away. I'm running under a new WIn 7 user account. I've rolled back the Windows updates of December 16 and 17. I've rolled Cineform back to NeoHD build 281 (one back from the latest) and have not upgraded from Matrox Mini ver 3.01 to version 5 (although the system has downloaded the most current drivers.) I have not been able to roll back from CS5.03 but the other actions seems to have solved the stability issues for the time being. The trade-off is that I'm getting delays when I click the timeline's play button in a multi-cam project and also when adding titles.

Ok I got my computer back from the shop and everything appears to be working fine on the latest updates and drivers. It seems that you do indeed have to get a clean start and reload your software in the right order.

So does this mean that Matrox is forgiven?

(grin)

Andrew