> "Gary Bettan" <video***@videoguys.com> wrote...
>
>>Matrox today announced new lower pricing on the
>>RTX100 ExtremeCollection (RTX100XPNC)...
>
> <*snip*>
>
> Both myself and an acquaintance of mine were early-adopters of the Matrox
> RT2000.  The RT2000 had tons of real time transitions but personal
> experience makes me suspect that those features were over-developed at the
> expense of providing stability to the core product.  Despite numerous bugs
> and software problems associated with the RT2000, I stuck with the system
> through all of the various upgrades.   Matrox Video Tools version:
> 3.1.0.2127b is still installed on my computer as part of Premiere 6.5, even
> though I've since upgraded to using Premiere Pro 1.5 without the RT2000.
> The acquaintance that I mentioned became too frustrated and never stuck with
> his RT2000 system as long as I did.  Unfortunately, even though Matrox tried
> to improve the RT2000 product with free upgrades and had an active support
> forum, the experience of having things never work like they should was so
> bad that it took the fun out of video editing (it's only a hobby for me) and
> I pretty much gave up doing any of it until Premiere Pro came out and opened
> up the possibility of doing editing without using my RT2000 hardware or
> software.  Editing is once again fun.  With only a couple of small
> exceptions, things now work pretty much as they should and program crashes
> and freezes are 90% less than when I was using the RT2000.  Since I'm
> Canadian, I would like to use Matrox products (a Quebec company) but I've
> been 'scared off' by the RT2000 experience.  The OP is selling Matrox, so
> I'm not sure that he is the best person to ask if the current line of Matrox
> products is more reliable than the RT2000 but if the OP has comments I'd
> certainly like to hear them.  I'd also be interested in hearing from
> early-adopters of the RT2000 who have hands-on experience with the more
> recent Matrox products.  Is it more likely that the current products would
> provide a more reliable experience than I encountered with the RT2000?

"Mardon" <mgb72***@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:apmdnXgZsONLleffRVn-1Q@rogers.com...
> "Gary Bettan" <video***@videoguys.com> wrote...
>> Matrox today announced new lower pricing on the
>> RTX100 ExtremeCollection (RTX100XPNC)...
> <*snip*>
>
> Both myself and an acquaintance of mine were early-adopters of the Matrox
> RT2000.  The RT2000 had tons of real time transitions but personal
> experience makes me suspect that those features were over-developed at the
> expense of providing stability to the core product.  Despite numerous bugs
> and software problems associated with the RT2000, I stuck with the system
> through all of the various upgrades.   Matrox Video Tools version:
> 3.1.0.2127b is still installed on my computer as part of Premiere 6.5,
> even though I've since upgraded to using Premiere Pro 1.5 without the
> RT2000. The acquaintance that I mentioned became too frustrated and never
> stuck with his RT2000 system as long as I did.  Unfortunately, even though
> Matrox tried to improve the RT2000 product with free upgrades and had an
> active support forum, the experience of having things never work like they
> should was so bad that it took the fun out of video editing (it's only a
> hobby for me) and I pretty much gave up doing any of it until Premiere Pro
> came out and opened up the possibility of doing editing without using my
> RT2000 hardware or software.  Editing is once again fun.  With only a
> couple of small exceptions, things now work pretty much as they should and
> program crashes and freezes are 90% less than when I was using the RT2000.
> Since I'm Canadian, I would like to use Matrox products (a Quebec company)
> but I've been 'scared off' by the RT2000 experience.  The OP is selling
> Matrox, so I'm not sure that he is the best person to ask if the current
> line of Matrox products is more reliable than the RT2000 but if the OP has
> comments I'd certainly like to hear them.  I'd also be interested in
> hearing from early-adopters of the RT2000 who have hands-on experience
> with the more recent Matrox products.  Is it more likely that the current
> products would provide a more reliable experience than I encountered with
> the RT2000?
>
>

> Though there were problems with stability of the RT2000 Matrox diligently
> supported the product. By the time the RT2500 came along stability was
> hardly an issue, given the user stayed within compatibility guidelines. As
> with any hardware editing card wavering from compatibility guidelines is a
> sure way to becoming overwhelmed with stability issues.
>
> The RT.X100 is the most stable of all these cards to date, and works equally
> well within Premiere 6.5 or Pro when using the appropriate Matrox Xtools
> version respectively. In regard to compatibility I can say this. Recently a
> customer of mine came forward with a mainboard having an ATI chipset - one I
> was not at all familiar with.
>
> After discussing the lack of support knowledge for this mainboard the
> customer agreed, if the RT.X100 did not work on the board, he would not
> attempt to force the issue in favor of purchasing a Matrox tested one.
> Surprisingly, the RT.X100 worked on the mainboard and the customer is a
> happy camper. This in itself is a testament to the RT.X100 as apposed to the
> earlier 2000 & 2500 where compatibility very much depended on staying within
> certain mainboard chipset guidelines.
>
> I have also heard stories of people (not customers of mine) who purchased
> off-the-shelf systems at Best Buy, Circuit City and others where the X100
> integrated flawlessly.
>

"Bill Fright" <billfri***@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:5hCee.41035$h6.4542@tornado.texas.rr.com...
>
> Ick,
>
> Great sales pitch until the "happy camper". You and the "see what this
> puppy can do" fellows got to read a paper and get updated. You sound like
> television is a revolutionary idea that might not quite work!!!
>
> Back to the subject at hand...
>
> I'm using matrox RTmac (Y/C) and have added timecode/RS422 support via
> stealth. It has been my overall experience that captures of over 20
> minutes have serious audio artifact problems. It has never been a set up
> issue, simply enough, the card malfunctions. It's like it gets loaded up
> with converting and the audio signal is the first to tell you.
>
> I'm going with another system soon and won't tell you guys about it until
> it's properly tested. Best part? Proc amp at input and balanced audio in.
> Wtf has taken so long?
>
> Until then...
>
> Bill
>
> Instead of swerving I should have been reloading!
>

>Though there were problems with stability of the RT2000 Matrox diligently
>supported the product. By the time the RT2500 came along stability was
>hardly an issue, given the user stayed within compatibility guidelines. As
>with any hardware editing card wavering from compatibility guidelines is a
>sure way to becoming overwhelmed with stability issues.
>
>The RT.X100 is the most stable of all these cards to date, and works equally
>well within Premiere 6.5 or Pro when using the appropriate Matrox Xtools
>version respectively. In regard to compatibility I can say this. Recently a
>customer of mine came forward with a mainboard having an ATI chipset - one I
>was not at all familiar with.
>
>After discussing the lack of support knowledge for this mainboard the
>customer agreed, if the RT.X100 did not work on the board, he would not
>attempt to force the issue in favor of purchasing a Matrox tested one.
>Surprisingly, the RT.X100 worked on the mainboard and the customer is a
>happy camper. This in itself is a testament to the RT.X100 as apposed to the
>earlier 2000 & 2500 where compatibility very much depended on staying within
>certain mainboard chipset guidelines.
>
>I have also heard stories of people (not customers of mine) who purchased
>off-the-shelf systems at Best Buy, Circuit City and others where the X100
>integrated flawlessly.

"Dave" <dju@nospam.net.com> wrote in message
news:u12m71ld2lakncphhduurulk9k3h1kido3@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 05 May 2005 15:17:01 GMT, "Digital Video Solutions"
> <vi***@digitalvideosolutions.com> wrote:
>
>>Though there were problems with stability of the RT2000 Matrox diligently
>>supported the product. By the time the RT2500 came along stability was
>>hardly an issue, given the user stayed within compatibility guidelines. As
>>with any hardware editing card wavering from compatibility guidelines is a
>>sure way to becoming overwhelmed with stability issues.
>>
>>The RT.X100 is the most stable of all these cards to date, and works
>>equally
>>well within Premiere 6.5 or Pro when using the appropriate Matrox Xtools
>>version respectively. In regard to compatibility I can say this. Recently
>>a
>>customer of mine came forward with a mainboard having an ATI chipset - one
>>I
>>was not at all familiar with.
>>
>>After discussing the lack of support knowledge for this mainboard the
>>customer agreed, if the RT.X100 did not work on the board, he would not
>>attempt to force the issue in favor of purchasing a Matrox tested one.
>>Surprisingly, the RT.X100 worked on the mainboard and the customer is a
>>happy camper. This in itself is a testament to the RT.X100 as apposed to
>>the
>>earlier 2000 & 2500 where compatibility very much depended on staying
>>within
>>certain mainboard chipset guidelines.
>>
>>I have also heard stories of people (not customers of mine) who purchased
>>off-the-shelf systems at Best Buy, Circuit City and others where the X100
>>integrated flawlessly.
>
> It's not a very reliable system on my computer. I'm having a
> serious driver level crashing and lockup problems often
> while using the RTX. I'm a software developer in the video
> Directshow area. My video capture app which is not very
> fancy reveals a ton of internal error messages that
> correspond to the lockups. It usually happens if I run a
> very long capture of several hours. If I'm running my app
> when the lockup occurs, I can see tons of error messages
> streaming out of the debugger that indicate the problem is
> related to the matrox software. There's text in there that
> has names like MTX_...? this and that. Don't have them
> written down, though. I can see some sort of internal
> "turmoil" based on the barrage of debug error messages come
> out when the RTX driver dies.
>
> I've been using the RTX-100 with XTools 6122. I spoke with
> Matrox support (about 1 year ago) and the response was to
> check the volume locations and make sure the audio and video
> cap paths were correct. (They were correct already). Also
> they suggested that I reinstall everything related to the
> matrox card. That made no difference. That's about all they
> had to suggest and made me feel like I didn't know what I
> was doing.
>
> I built my system (about 2 1/2 years ago) around the RTX100
> card. I bought my motherboard by selecting one of the models
> that Matrox listed in their HCL pages. The motherboard is
> the Supermicro P4DC6+ dual Xeon 2.8GHZ. I really think
> (based on over two years of using the hardware setup that I
> am using) that the problem is related to using the driver at
> a time when there's possibly some other software activity. I
> see an increase in crashes and lockups when I am compressing
> Matrox-DV AVI files to MPEG while using other software at
> the same time. If course when one edits, they usually only
> need to use the editor. But when I compress to MPEG, I like
> to use my email, surf a little, maybe, whatever while the
> long compression is taking place. BIG MISTAKE. It's
> intermittent, of course, but I have had more compressions
> crash when I'm doing something else than when I leave the
> computer alone for hours. And the crashes are always the
> entire system going down. Only a reset/reboot will restore
> it. That's caused only by a driver or hardware problem. An
> application does not have the capability to crash the entire
> system because Windows NT and later provide a "padded cell"
> protective environment where one app can't bring down the
> entire system.....of course, unless exposing a bug in the OS
> itself by using the services of the OS.
>

> I wish I could say that I'm as happy as the other people who
> use this Matrox RTX-100 system, but I'm stuck with it until
> I find something else. I do like the realtime editing
> performance, though and I can edit for hours sometimes. It
> seems to crash more often when I'm keeping the RTX driver
> busy while something else is going on.
>
> My list of theories: (not scientific, just gut level)
>
> - I suspect that the driver was not adequately designed to
> handle a multiprocessor hardware environment in cases where
> both processors are busy at the same time.
>
> - The driver could be having a problem with restoring the
> CPU environment after completing it's low level interrupt
> handling. I.e., not restoring the CPU registers and state
> properly after the interrupt handler exits, causing the
> interrupted code to crash upon return from interrupt.
>
> - I could be the victim of chance and just got stuck with a
> bad board.
>
> - It could be that the chipset on my motherboard was not
> screened adequately by Matrox and the board I bought
> shouldn't have been in the HCL.
>
> Who knows...
>
> That's my honest opinion as a 2 year customer. Go ahead and
> flame me if you don't like my message....but I am being 100%
> sincere and have no grudges against Matrox at all.
>
> Dave

"Dave" <dju@nospam.net.com> wrote in message
news:hk9q71luqhqf5jop55qg9j2legoc1opj26@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 07 May 2005 15:50:37 GMT, "Digital Video Solutions"
> <vi***@digitalvideosolutions.com> wrote:
>
>>Dedicated hardware editing does not support multi-tasking and doing
>>background operations will always interupt the processes. Matrox has long
>>stated this to be true no matter how fast the system may be.
>
> And, fool, show me where Matrox says that? What would you
> know about how it works? DO you even know what multitasking
> is? Do you even know what the difference is between
> multitasking and multiprocessing? I didn't think so.
>
> Ha ha, I exposed a total lying idiot. Is your name Don
> Bernard? I wonder. I used to know this fool who thought he
> was MR. VIDEO.
>
> Ok Mr. Video. Whatever you say is total crap.

>>It's not a very reliable system on my computer. I'm having a
>>serious driver level crashing and lockup problems often
>>while using the RTX. I'm a software developer in the video
>>Directshow area.
>
>Sorry to here about your issues. The RTX100 is the best performing
>real-time hardware card for Premeire Pro. The Canopus DV Storm was the
>most stable real-time card of all, but they never really got the
>Premeire Pro drivers perfected.
>
>Here are a couple of links to some pages on our website that you may
>find helpful in getting your system to perform better.
>
>http://www.videoguys.com/Top10tech.htm
>
>http://www.videoguys.com/WinXP.html
>
>With dedicated hardware there is always a possibility of conflicts in
>your computer. The RTX100 has been a stellar perfomer for many
>videographers. Unfortunately some folks were not able to get it
>performing as it should. The tech tips above have helped many folks
>all over the world get better performance from their RTX100 systems.
>
>Gary
>Videoguys.com
>The Electronic Mailbox   http://www.videoguys.com
>The Desk Top Video Editing & Production Experts
>800 323-2325 or Free DTV tech advice (516) 759-1615
>
>All DTV purchases include our 30 day customer assurance program
>and FREE tech support

> Like I said. My editing has no performance problems. Just
> has an occasional instability problem. It's usable and I'm
> not so frustrated that I'll go shopping for something else
> yet. The frequency of crashes are pretty widely spaced. I
> can get a lot done and when the problem happens, I just
> reboot and I'm back up and running. I did see earlier
> problems where Premiere could not access the card several
> times in a row and that hasn't happened in a long time.
>
> At some point the thing started locking up. I don't think it
> had a problem when I first installed it. It came later at
> some point. I think it was a driver change that was the
> event where I started seeing problems. When the driver used
> to use separate audio and video files for capture it was
> stable. Then when Matrox introduced the update that
> interleaved the two files together after the capture, I
> started seeing the lockup problems. I'm sure not going to go
> back to that old driver. I'd rather keep the two files (AVI
> WAV) interleaved after a capture.
>
> I might've bought my RTX-100 from you last October or Nov
> 2002. Can't quite remember.

> >It's not a very reliable system on my computer. I'm having a
> >serious driver level crashing and lockup problems often
> >while using the RTX. I'm a software developer in the video
> >Directshow area.
>
> Sorry to here about your issues. The RTX100 is the best performing
> real-time hardware card for Premeire Pro. The Canopus DV Storm was
the
> most stable real-time card of all, but they never really got the
> Premeire Pro drivers perfected.
>
> Here are a couple of links to some pages on our website that you may
> find helpful in getting your system to perform better.

>
> With dedicated hardware there is always a possibility of conflicts in
> your computer. The RTX100 has been a stellar perfomer for many
> videographers. Unfortunately some folks were not able to get it
> performing as it should. The tech tips above have helped many folks
> all over the world get better performance from their RTX100 systems.
>
> Gary
> Videoguys.com
> The Electronic Mailbox   http://www.videoguys.com
> The Desk Top Video Editing & Production Experts
> 800 323-2325 or Free DTV tech advice (516) 759-1615
>
> All DTV purchases include our 30 day customer assurance program
> and FREE tech support