Xena is the way to go, I have that and a QuadroFX 3450 in the studio.

While on the subject, I also have a Dell Latitude D630 notebook with Dual-core T7500 and 340MB integrated Intel graphics GPU. It supports overlay to an external monitor at HD resolution, and I can edit four-layers of 1080i cineform HD without a hiccup. Not too shabby, (I can now edit in the hotel room). However, it's not a game machine. Which makes a point that in video editing, overlay is the most important feature and you don't need a high end card to get it.

I would echo that. I have a sub-$80US, passive-heatsink 7600GS that works just fine with CS3 and AspectHD5 .... driving a 22" monitor by DVI plus an LCD HDTV via its component output.

Peter, we're building a new quad workstation for AE editing, and thinking of yanking the Parhelia APVe from another quad workstation and using it, since the preview with the dual monitors is good enough.

My question to you is: why would a Xena LHe be better for us than say...two graphics cards, one for the dual DVI support, and the other for just HD out to a HD LCD/plasma/projector?

Two graphics cards should work fine with this Intel D975XBX2 mb, as it has 3 PCIe slots (electrical: x16, x8, x4) and was designed for Multi-GPU.

I would think that it would be much cheaper, and since we do everything as CF HD and captures are either direct via the HDMI to a custom portable unit, or from the VI tapes via firewire, what would be the benefit?

For the life of me, I can't see any advantage unless we go to SDI at some point (and given the current cost/benefit of a EX1 to the V1, that is unlikely).

Think I am answering my own question! Matrox has a new series of very low power, fan-less cards. Among them is a P690 LP PCIe x1 that is not only fairly inexpensive, but can be "joined" with a Parhelia for using up to 3 DVI's and a HD panel. Looks very viable to me and a good solution for inexpensively viewing on multi panels, plus HD out:

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/co...690lppcie1.php

1. Cineform/prospect was built with xena cards in the test systems.
2. You avoid the lag time when using overlay to a PC monitor via the PC's GPU. The Xena will be a dedicated pipe.
3. You can free up the second monitor to increase desktop space for bins, timelines, etc.
4. You'll look cool, get more chicks, and be a hero to your friends.

Ha, I don't mind being a hero, but an old buzzard like me couldn't look cool even if I DID have hair! Plus, I like my wife...rather, I love my wife. No chicks needed.

Okay, so what's the big deal with #1? In other words, so what?

#2 doesn't seem like a huge reason either...

As to #3, what would be the advantage over what I suggested below (using two cards - new Matrox P690 LP PCIe x1 with a Parhelia APVe) With that setup, I could use 3 DVI monitors and look REALLY COOL, plus output to a HD panel or DVI panel or analog or whatever!

And I can think of a MAJOR advantage of doing it with the two cards: it's MUCH cheaper, as in well over a thousand bucks!

You gotta come up with something better than that.

Hi Peter, does ATI do an equivalent card in PCI-Express?

Do you use this function? Does it work well and do you get 5.1 (or 7.1) sound?

Xena is also the only way to get 10bit previews, the only way to layback to tape via SDI, and the primary way of capturing from SDI. On the other hand, the Xena output sometimes has sync issues with regular sound cards. No big deal with the LHe since you can use the analog audio outs from the card, but the older HS cards were AES audio only, which led to the neeed for convertors to use regular speakers. Just something to think about. We have Xena cards in all of our Cineform systems. Way easier to deal with if you have the professional hardware to hook them to. I don't have one in my system at home, since I have nothing to attach to it, but it (and the peripherals) are on my wish list.

Mike, I guess the bottom line on this is "if you need or do SDI". Since that is the main function of that card and the main advantage.

Cameras like the Sony V1, Z1, and many other others at this "prosumer" level, only have HDMI/component out (and 8bit), so to me, it's hard to see any real world advantage to the Xena, unless a person goes to SDI. For sure it would fit like a glove in a SDI workflow, but for anyone else, how could you justify that $1800 cost? It's like using a Corvette to haul bricks! Two different tools for two different purposes.

I still have yet to hear any reasons for or against the use of two cards as I suggested. It seems like a LOT more bang for the bucks to me! Especially if a person is using a quad with a good workstation level mb and has a decent RAID.

Unless I am missing something here?

If you don't have any SDI gear, the Xena will be totally useless. Getting a single piece of the puzzle is useless without the rest of the tools to go with it. The Xena is the primary way of getting 10bit HD content onto and off of a Cineform edit system, but you need an SDI deck/camera and an SDI display device to take advantage of it.

I know someone who ended up with acquiring $15K Bluefish Fury card, that they were all excited about. I refered to it as a paperweight, because they had no way to use it at all. It has been in their system for years now, totally unused. They do HDV in, desktop edit and color, to DVDs usually, no SDI involved.

I soon be able to prove my theory, as we just ordered a Matrox P690 LP PCIe x1 ($210) to test in a system together with a Parhelia APVe.

If things work as planned, we'll use one DVI out + HD on the Parhelia, and the two DVI out's on the P690.

Or, we might just use the Parhelia for HD preview, and the two DVI's on the P690 for our workspace stuff. Since Matrox designed these cards to work together, they could make a nice combo for using 3 monitors+HD preview under XP.

Will not get that card for several weeks, as it's being hand carried down to us (Brazil), so will be a while before I have something to report.

My, aren't we gettting greedy for space? ;)

I am greedy for space too, but I take a different approach. Dual view desktop have many 'issues' with different software solutions, so I try to minimize the number of displays. The reason I want a Xena, is so I can get the SDI-out to a DVI convertor to my 24" LCD, but I only plan to have one monitor on my GPU, my 30" LCD, which is great by the way. Having a single display usually increases interface performance. Nvidia span is the only exception to that that I am aware of, but that puts all your dialog boxes right at the screen split point. I have been converting most of the edit stations where I work from dualview 24" LCDs to a single GPU driven LCD, and an SDI converted one from Matrox SDI, XenaSDI, or MultibridgeSDI, depending on the system. Fewer crashes and problems, faster performance, but requires more expensive hardware,so I haven't done it to my home workstation yet.

Yeah, that's the way I'd do it if we were in the US now, but I'm in Brazil and good enough big LCD's are expensive and hard to find. So, we spread things around and surround ourselves with monitors.

If looks were important, we'd do things differently too, but we do our own productions and in the warm season, I work in shorts, thongs and teeshirts! Ha! I love it...

As to performance with the two, I'll let you know in a bit. Couldn't be much worse than a Parhelia anyway. They may be stable, but they are certainly not powerhouses. But, it does have good cost/benefit...

By the way, we just got a hot new Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6 mb with a quad brain. When prices fall on the Penryn 3.x quad's the end of 2008, we'll bump that Q6600 up to something that flys a little higher and faster and add some (by then) more cheap DDR3 (what was that you were saying about modern mb's...?..ha! I told you I've been a bleeding edger for over 20 yrs).

It's definitely not a "workstation board", but good enough for AE to fly on! Then again, what really makes a "workstation board" anymore? It's sort of a nebulous term these days. These boards would blow anything out of the water from just a very few years back! Wow! 100% copper heat pipes, ferrite core chokes, solid state capacitors, and a backup BIOS chip, 2 full x16 PCIE 2.0 slots. Can't wait for the 45nm chips to power it.

(Now, as to REALLY bleeding edge...that new 4-quads Gigabyte board sure looks nice...imagine 16 cores for rendering...with 64bit processing to feed that 128 GB of memory...ahhh...)

Never heard of it, and no mention on their site. It has ridiculously expensive written all over it. Boxx has a 16core solution as well. The 7000 series Xeon processors are needed for more than two sockets, and they are more than a thousand dollars a piece, on the lowest end. You also have to use Windows Server2003 or Linux because XP and Vista limit you to two sockets, which causes all sorts of other issues, but AE should still work, and fast.

I was actually joking Mike, but did confuse Gigabyte (was ordering one at the time) with this one:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/m...7300/X7QC3.cfm

or this one:

http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/moth...55/H8QM3-2.cfm

A friend was building one and suggested it when I complained about not enough power for editing!

True breakthru power though, is yet to come:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35171/118/