Does anyone knnow the uk launch date for LE 6.0? I was told Shipping from October but I haven't seen it yet?
Anyone???
.............Neil
Goodness only knows. They only ever mention the bloody US dates on the Pinnacle forums. I remember this happening exactly like this last September when I upgraded to 5.5 (from Edition to Liquid Edition).
LE 6 and 6 Pro is launched and shipping very soon.
Stock should be with dealers at the beginning of November.
Richard..what about the PRO version? On the Pinnacle forums, as Torrent says, Europe is ignored. Is there a DISCOUNTED upgrade path from old pro version???
We have got prices for LE upgrade to Pro but nothing from old Pro to new Pro. This might well mean there will not be this option.
I do know that you should be able to use the Pro board with the LE 6 software only upgrade.
You will not be able to use the new LE 6 Pro unit with the old Pro Graphics Card.
Obviously more will become clear as we start getting the products.
There is an option - for those in the US! Why wouldn't there be an option for Europe? Are the customers here worth less than those in the US?
This kind of market discrimination has got to stop. I hope this is reflected in any reviews the British media do of LE 6.
Interesting reply from Richard..but it is unconfirmed, of course.
Have you checked the Pinnacle Forums, Richard..there are lots of posts about the pricing structure..and no-one from Pinnacle comments about Europe with any degree of confirmation! It is ALL USA.
To be honest and frank we found out about the release from 'The Video Guys' in the States even though we have been badgering Pinnacle for weeks.
We are finding it more than a little difficult to get any detailed information from either Pinnacle or the UK distributor. It is a rather ridiculous state of affairs.
This is probably due to significant restructuring in Pinnacle over the last few months.
Hopefully Pinnacle will implement the same offers over here as in the USA, my personal opinion is that it's more is down to lack of organisation than anything malicious.
I'll comment as soon as I know something concrete. :confused:
Can you reveal what the price from LE5.5 to LE6 pro will be?
Richard,
Thank you for your update
I think we should all keep some things in perspective...it doesn`t really matter when it is released..v5.5 is perfectly fine for most things anyway...BUT...the disregard by the Americans for anything beyond their shores is staggering (but not suprising, considering their political standpoint in the world).
Pinnacle`s treatment of its European customers is in line with the way we get treated by immigration when we visit their country (especially since visa controls were tightened this month). Support - what support????
If we post questions on the Pinnacle forum, they often go unanswered. No-one from anywhere in Europe who is a Pinnacle employee ever comments on that forum.
I have several American friends, and am not anti-American, but some things they do are just plain rude and arrogant. I also am a regular visitor over there, so have plenty of experience to call on! (good and bad!)
Hi guys
The RRP Prices are below, delivery should be from 1st of Nov was confirmed to me today.
prices
Liquid Edition (full version) £299.99
Liquid Edition PRO (full version) £599.99
Upgrades
Edition upgrade to LE6 £ 99.99
Studio upgrade to LE6 £149.99
Edition PRO upgrade (hardware) £399.99
I will find if the PRO upgrade is PRO to PRO or from the Liquid Edition software as i have only one price
all prices include vat
Robbie
Hope this helps
Hi,
I'm sticking with DV editing in the meantime and I'm using LE 5.5 and it's great in my opinion, then why would I need to be in a hurry to upgrade to LE 6?
Jim Bird
Jim,
In my view LE6 really fills in the gaps that 5.5 was very weak on, because as you say 5.5 is a brilliant editing product as it stands. However adding features Like Bezier curves in all the editors, a totally improvement in audio across the board and multi-cam were needed
LE5.5 was limited to DV (PAL/NTSC) only however now you can add mpeg2 (DVD compliant files) straight to your mixed timeline rather that having them re-encode to DV as the old system did before you could edit them. Edius has had this feature for a long time and is great. It just speeds up your editing time
The HDV format is great to have for your future security. I also will still edit in DV only but just the multi-cam feature would have saved me loads of money and time last year. LE6 just gives you the option of using and outputting to different formats rather than just DV (PAL/NTSC).
From Monday there will some web movies on my site to show the new features in LE6 and how they work if you’re interested to see the difference.
Robbie
Robbie,
Many thanks for your info.
Shame we have to rely on information from non-Pinnacle sources. The Pinnacle web site still doesn't show it and neither has any Pinnacle staff on their forums commented on the UK pricing model and time scales for shipping.
Appreciate you keeping us up to date.
I'll be popping over to view your movies next week.
Robbie,
Thanks for that. I too will visit Monday to view.
top man..............
..........Neil
Robbie,
Thanks for that. I too will visit Monday to view.
top man..............
..........Neil
Hi Robbie,
Thanks a lot for getting us up to speed
looks like another worth while upgrade to this
great editing system.
Cheers
Jim Bird.
Im a but shocked by the £400 upgrade price from LE5.5 to LE6 pro though!! (as mentioned in this months CVE)
So if you buy Studio at £39.99 (Amazon price) and then Studio upgrade to LE6 £149.99 you spend £189.98 on a full LE6 product rather than the list price of Liquid Edition (full version) £299.99
Or am I missing something here?
Looking at it, that would be correct!!
Originally posted by DV_Ed:
Im a but shocked by the £400 upgrade price from LE5.5 to LE6 pro though!! (as mentioned in this months CVE)
Don't forget the LE 6 Pro does have component capture into uncompressed, dv or Mpeg as well as SPDIF, so it is more like Avid's £1300+VAT Mojo than the old Pro.
To me any product with those features at that price is amazing.
Hi All,
I now have the final prices in and the upgrades was wrong that i quoted earlier
prices
Liquid Edition (full version) £299.99
Liquid Edition PRO (full version) £599.99
Upgrades
Edition upgrade to LE6 "£ 129.99"
Studio upgrade to LE6 "£179.99"
Edition PRO upgrade (hardware) £399.99
Sorry for given you the wrong Info
Robbie
BTW Richard's right about the Pro, once i get my hands on one i'll let you know what it's really like.
It should do 6 streams in real-time (so i'm told) compared to the MOJO 5 as the AVID is based on firewire (400) and the Pro is on USB2 (480)
I think I'm going to start saving now. I miss the breakout box with the DV500 card! I just hope its product cycle is longer than the LE5.5 pro video card and breakout box! Also does anyone know if you can get realtime preview out of this hardware from GPU effects?
Still makes the Studio 9 plus LE6 upgrade the cheaper route to ownership by about 80 quid!
Or maybe Robbie, I'm still missing something?
Originally posted by DV_Ed:
Also does anyone know if you can get realtime preview out of this hardware from GPU effects?
Yes GPU Effects out through Break Out Box
(With the right graphics card)
Hi All,
I have been asked privately some questions "like will it work with the old Pro board" so here are an explanation on how it works hope it helps explain it
The software only upgrade will work on the "Standard edition" and the old Edition Pro" so i'm told so it does not make the old pro board obsolete
however it may the cheapest upgrade path but may not the best upgrade for most users this including software only and Pro user. As the new box will be able to do MPEG2 or YUV based encoding straight to your hard disks (this will give you dvd compliant files to work with straight away in real-time, a massive saving in time) which is available with the new Pro box only.
As the new Break out box works by pushing an real-time pre rendered video done inside your PC across the PCI bus and straight out the USB2 port to the new break out Box. This gives you 6 layers of video with YUV/YC/Composite output. It also means that you can upgrade your graphic card from a 64 MB ( normally with the Pro) to a higher spec to gain more real-time GPU FX's that is also added to the output stream to the box.
This is exactly the same as the MOJO by AVID as this works the same way but uses Firewire @ 400 MB/s so not as quick (only 5 streams) as the Pro Box. However the AVID solution is on top of the Software cost of £1200 plus VAT so the MOJO is extra £1200 plus VAT on top of that. The only difference is that the MOJO has a DV hardware chip inside it that will allow to output straight to DV as the Edition pro box is only Analogue out not "DV out" .
Edition including the new software V6 (£599 inc VAT, upgrade even cheaper and is only the quarter of the cost of the avid solution. All DV output is via the firewire on the PC , this still has to be back ground "rendered" for output
in my personal opinion, as a mainly software user as well, the upgrade to the new PRO is a massive jump in usability and speed by giving you 6 streams for real-time output (based on PC spec)that a normally had just in the PC monitor. as for Output to DV I would either be rendered it out to go out the firewire and If I need real time I can push it through via analogue input my DSR25 or use a Canopus advc110 on the back end of the box.
Lastly John it looks like, you are not missing something, however I don’t know if you get any written manuals with the upgrades. I’ll let you know if just available in PDF format
Hope this helps
Robbie
The new Video overviews should be available to see from tonight via www.in-deep.co.uk as promised
Robbie, thank you for the clarification. So, if I want to upgrade LE 5.5 (not Pro) to LE 6 Pro, is this also £399?
Thanks
Correct, i see it likre this..
Basically you can upgrade as software only for both the Edition and Edition pro and use them as you do now with the same configuration but with the new software features
based on this minimum spec's below
For DV and MPEG-2 IBP SD Editing
Intel Pentium® 4 Processor 1.8 GHz (3.0 GHz or dual 2.2 GHz recommended) or AMD® equivalent
Microsoft Windows® XP Professional
512 MB RAM, 1GB recommended
Hard drive (AV-rated, minimum data transfer rate 10 MB/s)
AGP 4x Graphics card with 64MB graphics RAM for real-time effects (128 MB recommended)
Microsoft DirectX 9
Sound card
OHCI-compatible IEEE1394 interface
or you can go from these to the new Pro BOB, which works fater and different to the old Pro as described above.
Robbie
Thanks for the comments Robbie - but an inrteresting observation here - so there is no discount for existing Pro users to upgrade to new PRO..they pay the same as any other Edition user? Equally, anyone from the Purple or Silver background (with a now defunct In-time board) loses out too?
Ok, maybe profit should already have been made from these items..except that ths USA is giving a discount for existing PRO users..why are the Europeans not getting it? Any ideas..what have Pinnacle said?
Yes the PRO BOB looks good but are't the minimum specs quite a bit higher than the standard Edition 6 and are there compatibility issues with the USB port and MB?
Ok more info
If you install then £129 plus VAT upgrade on your normal Liquid Edition or Liquid Edition Pro installation. It will upgrade both and you will still have all there usability you always had.
I have physically tested this quickly and can confirm it works. So anyone with an existing system can upgrade to the new software features simply by a software upgrade based on the new minimum spec on my site www.in-deep.co.uk or the Pinnacle site
Going to the new Pro Box however is a really a new and “different†upgrade all together and is available to “all†users because your getting more real-time and features, And is a much better solution for the professional user that want real-time previews for their clients to output YUV monitor and real-time MPEG2 stream to your hard disk for quicker turn round in making DVDs or program stream for multimedia use.
Must admit my view is the new box is the way to go because it’s slicker and quicker. However there are a lot of people who use edition that this is a time consuming but very enjoyable pastime and not money making venture so at least they have the option to keep on using existing hardware and just upgrade the software
As for spec’s and configurations , We all now know a computer is a bag of different components working together and yes there will be some configuration problems.
Pinnacle will do as all suppliers like Matrox, Canopus do by showing tested MB and components on the Web site and as normal with all of these with a new product these will take some time to come. I have asked for this info already as soon as I have it I will publish it.
Chris,
As for the upgrade prices. All prices I put on this thread (RRP) are correct and no Pro – Pro upgrade is available in UK.
Hope this help
Robbie
I have published three overviews videos on my site and should add the rest by Monday for those who want to see the new features (Windows Media 9 and ADSL is needed.)
Ive just heard that Pinnacle are going to do an aggressive crossgrade so anyone with Adobe Premiere can get LE6 Pro for £399 Inc. VAT
Same offer to Upgrade Studio to LE6 Pro.
Richard,
I have Studio 8.x, So where can I buy LE6 PRO now for £399?
..........Neil
Call me on 01273 707200
Or Robbie on 0870 3502450
Robbie,
Does the new version of Edition still produce n+1 (where n is a large number) of files for each clip, none of which have a file name which gives any direct indication of which clip they refer to?
Also, does it include an image stabiliser? If not, will the 2d3 SteadyMove plug in for Adobe Premiere work with Edition? I suppose what I am asking here is "Is the new version of Edition better at accepting Premiere plug ins than the old?"
Good questions Alan, I would like to know about that! Also, with the extensive audio in and outs on the breakout box can it work as a PC soundcard as well? Or do I need to still use a seperate one as normal?
Alan
On the file structure side it has not changed and still makes multiple files based on the timecode in and out. Must admit I can’t see why that would ever change. This is there so that in more network environments you don’t have any problem with replicating clips across the network. And really it only becomes a problem outside of Edition, which you would never do as the search and media management inside edition is very powerful. If you need to use it in an outside program, I just fuse the piece I need to the name you want it to be from the timeline so it’s to the frame and the exact size as well (as Avi)
I don’t know if they have opened it to more premiere plug-ins, however they have opened it up to some After FX plug-ins but I have yet to play with this. Does the plug-in you want to use work in AFX . I’ll look into it and come back to you.
Ed,
I had my first real play with the new Pro box today and for what I can see it outputs via both simultaneously box and soundcard but I was not looking at that in particular. Must admit it’s good and seems to do what I expect it should, I got to 5 layers plus three colour corrections before the system started to reduce the frame rate. I have below average graphics card in that machine so properly could have done more
Test machine P4 3.4 HT, 7200rpm IDE drives (not sata) and 1 GB of Ram, the graphics card was a ATI 128mb but I have a 256mb Nvidia to test later over the weekend.
We are also shipping out orders today as stock is now in the country so we even beat the 1st November I promised earlier in this thread
Hope this helps
Robbie
Thanks Robbie. What I really want to know however is can the pro breakout box be used in a similar fashion to a normal sound card? For example if I were to use the outputs into my audio amp, would I need to switch over to soundcard outputs for normal pc operation?
Finally got all the info on configurations i needed from Pinnacle
you can pull down the document from Here
www.in-deep.co.uk/downloads/liquid_pro.pdf
This will be availble in a better format later on the web site but does give approved usb2 controllers and graphics card that can be used with the new pro box the card i'm presently testing to use is the Nvidia Le5700 with 256 ram. Is on the list.
Robbie
Robbie - how are tests with the new graphics cards working out?
How "buggy" is the new software?
Chris
Anyone able to recommend a particular make or model of PCI USB 2.0 card they KNOW works with LE 6 Pro?
The compatibility list that Pinnacle currently provides lists lots of motherboard USB 2.0 chipsets but includes only ONE PCI card, an Adaptec, and I can't even find this model (AUA-3100B) on Adaptec's site, never mind at an on-line retailer.
TIA
Bob C
If the LE 6 PRO BOB is fully USB2 compliant, then it should work ok with any USB2 (compliant)card.
I do know of problems with the leads, even those marked 'hi-speed' because they do not stay with the standard. This goes back to when suppliers realised they could make cheaper leads (non-compliant), which still worked (with usb1 at the time). These leads do not work for usb2. All usb2 leads are also shielded, but this is not in itself a sign they will work.
I think the only method of finding out is try.
Try the Adaptec website, ordered mine on thursday and was on the doorstep first thing friday morning, cost £40 though.
Having said all of that I can't get LE6 to output properly on a P4 2.8 pentium with 1gb Ram and XP sp2. The program runs fine but it seems as though the USB is not compatible. Its an Asus P4800 Deluxe board with the Intel 82801EB Enhanced controller. Just get an intermittent output. I put a Geforce FX 5700 256mb Ram card in this machine and have to say that LE6 is brilliant with this set up. I've also got it working on a sony GRT8916 Vaio laptop with a 64Mb graphics card though, and good o/p through the breakout box, although only a couple of layers of realtime because of the graphics card.
The adaptec card has not solved the problem with the P4, I'll be trying to get it working again over this weekend and will post any results.
Don't like the plasticy new interface, prefer the classic but there are so many new goodies, like MPeg2 capture amongst others that make this a must have. Just completed a 28 minute long 4 camera wedding service edit with the multicam feature, did it in real time wheras before it would have taken a couple of hours to do.
Network ingest, now ther's a nice feature, work on captured footage on one PC whilst it's still being captured on another, not much has been made of this but it's a real time saver.
Hats of to Siren Technology for their prompt delivery of my LE6 also to Dabs for next day on the graphics card and Adaptec's delivery was superb. I think that the quick and fuss free delivery i've experienced this week is worthy of praise.
Bomber H
Found that the required Adaptec card (AUA-3100LP)is also sold by Novatech for about £32, inc VAT.
As for cj's comment that LE should work with compliant cards if it, too, is USB2-compliant, well, yes, that's the theory, but what Pinnacle is doing here is pretty unusual, and quite what compliant means in this unusual context, I'm really not sure.
What does seem to be the case, though, is that Pinnacle has tended to test systems that have motherboard USB 2 (logical enough, if you assume that LE really does need/deserve some top kit to work with), but that's of little help to people who want to use the same PC for LE 6 Pro as they have been using for V5, assuming there's no built in USB 2.
Clearly, lots of room for interesting discoveries here!
:-(
Bob C
Hi Guys,
Just to let you know that the Pro to Pro upgrade that was only available via the Pinnacle web shop, will now be availble from the UK dealers as with americain offer the BOB (breakout box of the old Pro) has to be given in as proof of ownership
I'm a waiting final pricing but will be the same as the pinnacle web site
"Robbie - how are tests with the new graphics cards working out?"
i tested the FX 5700LE (256) and worked very well, @ a price of £85 plus vat so it's cheap as well
How "buggy" is the new software?
seems good so far however I never have the time to test it to the maximum as always. With any major software release there will be some problems.
Bob, I have tested the Belkin USB2 PCI card and it performs the same as my onboard NEC chipset. i have order the adaptec 3100 to see if this give better performance the the two above. however the power of the PC does really make a massive difference as well to the output.
Robbie
Just set LE6 up and started using it in ernest.
I LIKE IT!
Did have to upgrade my graphics card unfortunately as the FX 5200 (256mb) wouldn't work with the PRO box. I put a Radeon 9600 Pro in with 256mb. (Richard did fore warn me). I haven't found any of the bugs yet but I'm sure I will. I wonder how long before the first patch comes out?
.........Neil
Robbie,
Turns out that the problem we were having (actually Peter Wells was having) was down to the graphics card, not USB.
Put in a new card more compliant with DX9c and all seems to be well.
I think that the card he pulled out was an FX5200
Bob C
Does anyone know if the Nvidia 5200 will work with the software only upgrade to 6?
I`m eagerly awaiting mine but as usual have 3 projects in various stages & can`t afford e problem.
Hi Barry
A 5200 is fine for software only. It's only the Pro Box thats so picky.
Thanks Richard! I expect when VM eventually gives up we will get a second system wich will be pro.
Not this year though 
On a similar subject, I'm in the market for a new Laptop. Had my eyes on a Rockdirect QuadraTi for a while, but they've just announced their latest which may be even better.
Any idea whether there are likely to be benefits or problems with running LE6 on the PCI Express 256Mb ATI Mobility Radeon X800?
I wonder if my problem is graphics card related then? I can't get good output through the pro box on a P4 2.8Ghz with 1Gb ram windows XP SP2 and a clean install. The card is a new GF FX5700LE 256MB AGP DVI-I VO. The motherboard is an ASUS p4800VM S478 Intel 865G MATX A V L.
Everything is fine until I plug in the BOB and then I get sticking playback and no scrubbing etc.
The USB driver is Intel 802801EB. Also I have the NEC version installed for the Adaptec card. I have tried this now on two P4800 systems with the same results but do have it working on a sony vaio laptop so it's not a BOB fault, it's either USB bandwidth of graphics card related.
Any help would be gratefully received..
Cheers
Bomber H
Bomber,
I got a graphic card "tested" list from Richard at DVC when I bought LE6 from them. I seem to remember the 5700LE was on there. Sorry I can't be more specific as I'm not near the list at the moment but when I get back tonight I'm have a look and let you know.
..............Neil
Thanks, I've since seen it on the Pinnacle website as compatible, I read earlier on the user webboard about turning 'off' the onboard USB in the BIOS to force the adaptec USB to work fully so I'll try that when I get home later. It seems from the Pinnacle boards that I'm not the only one with this problem!
Cheers
Bomber H
These card problems do make me question whether it is a good thing to upgrade my system from LE 5.5 Pro to LE 6 yet?
Well, disabling the onboard Usb controller did not make the adaptec card work any better...hmmm.
Also updated the m/board bios so now I've tried everything that's been suggested and am now stumped.....
It's like looking through a candy store window at the moment, everything in LE6 is great except for o/p through the BOB. If you can make use of the extra features in LE6 then I'd go for the upgrade, certainly the software only version..
I'm sure that shortly there will be a fix for my problem...I may even get a new m/board and try that, just swopping out the CPU etc from the P4800VM...Ho Hum....
Bomber H
What a bummer Bomber .
Silly question probably but have you tried the Adaptec card in different PCI slot positions? Just a thought - it might just make a difference.
Also I notice above you quote your Intel driver as 802801EB, whereas the 'compatible' driver (from the pdf file on Robbie's site) is given as 82801DB/DBM. Anything worth investigating there?
Best of luck, NL
SUCCESS! Yippee....
Would you believe that it all now works fine except for the adaptec card.. I did a fresh windows install again from scratch and the onboard usb now works fine... The only thing that I did differently was to install edition with the BOB connected this time whereas last time I forgot to connect it during install. However it was detected before and automatically installed in windows.
Anyhow, it may just have been a bad windows install..So the P4800VM works with the usb controller described earlier.
So yours truly sat up till 3am playing in the LE6 candy store, I am particulary interested in DVD compliant mpeg capture through the BOB and left it capturing from a freeview box till 9.30am this morning and ended up with a 6hour clip from BBC news24. I was then able to put a two hour clip on the timeline and export to DVD with no re-encoding necessary and the whole DVD making process from start to finish including burning took 1hour which is much quicker than software conversion previously in version 5.5.
Then encoding quality at 5mbs looked fine and is acceptable for what I need, you can of course encode at much higher rates through the BOB.
I like the fact that my six hour capture occupied just 12gb of hard drive space also.
Thanks for your help with this, I can now say 100% that I over the moon with LE6 at this point.
Bomber H
Bomber_H,
Interested to read what you said about direct encoding to MPEG so gave it a whirl and had dire lip-sync problems (out by many seconds after a couple of mins of recording).
This was via composite video in and on a newly built PC based on an Athlon 64 3200+ and with TWO gigs of RAM!
Did you have to do anything to ensure good lip synch?
Bob C
Bob, I did have aproblem the first time I captured but that was capturing about five hours of video from a freeview box via composite. it went out of sync after about 1 hr, although I noticed that the out of sync audio could be adjusted on the timeline to be in sync and remained so thereafter, so in other words the audio had 'jumped' out of sync once but did not get progressively worse.
I also got some out of sync audio from a capture from a canon XM2 with an LP dv recording.
Yesterday I captured a wedding from DVCAM at 6mbps, altogether about five hours of content and it is all in sync, I'm still trying to decide if this is the way I want to go as I normally capture DV via firewire with TC and the Mpeg has no tape based TC so if I have to recapture I'm stuck.
I had the abort capture on dropped frames option switched 'on' to hopefully prevent any sync problems.
Additionally, I think that the Mpeg playback through the BOB is slightly inferior to that which makes it's way onto DVD so I'm happy about that. I was worried by the compression artefacts at 6Mbps through the BOB but on the burn't disc they are not as obvious.
Seeing as almost all of my wedding customers now want DVD and I never have space to encode above 6Mbps on their final DVD's it seems a good idea to encode to Mpeg direct. I made a test disc yesterday and a 90min DVD with Mpeg timeline and a motion menu took 1hr to make from start to finish.
I think LE6 maybe a bit buggy at the moment, it doesn't feel 100%, its not crashing or anything like that, more that I just need to do some serious work on it to gain confidence that it won't let me down, I've noticed the background rendering is a bit intermittent but this may be my lack of understanding of what needs rendering to go through the BOB, also I need more Ram in the system.
As I get more user experiences I'll post them..
Cheers
Bomber_H
Bomber
re the comment on 6mps encoding. I`ve sometimes found that a DVD encoded at above that rate will not play on some DVD Players, they don`t seem capable of accepting that rate but are OK at lesser rates. I now encode at a max of 5.5mps. have you found similar situations?
Hi Barry
Can't say I have! I have had no complaints re DVD's from Edition since the player compatability issue earlier in the year that was fixed by a patch. I send out many DVD's with content lasting just over an hour and just use Editions' ability to fit the content onto the disc, sometimes resulting in data rates quite a bit above 6mbps.
I've had no complaints either from discs sent out with content encoded at 4mbps, most people don't notice the drop in quality at lower bit rates, maybe because they're used to seeing artefacts these days on their digital freeview and Sky programs...it's amazing what people will accept...I prefer not to 'bring it to their attention' if you know what I mean!
Bomber_H,
Thanks for the comments. I've just gone back to basics, using one of the VBR templates (rather than CBR), and carried out a capture of about 55mins with no dropped frames.
Also, I'm recording to a different hard disk, because I had some doubts about the stability of the drive I had been using to capture.
I'll try the same settings with a 3hr capture and will report back here on how I get on.
As I recall, I tweaked the template's data rates in line with what Barry said in response to your comments (thanks Barry - you reminded me to tweak the settings and try VBR) - with the average set to 4.5mbit/s and the max set to 5.5Mbit/sec (as I recall) - will confirm this later whether or not I am successful.
Cheers
Bob
Bomber_H,
Could you please let me have details of you last successful long capture to MPEG-2, in terms of data rates and whether it was CBR or VBR, cos I'm still struggling here.
Also, be keen to know what you have done if anything to optimise the system, and the size/data speed/type of the hard disk you are capturing to.
Cheers
Bob C
Hi Bob
In answer to your question, I've done nothing special... Doesn't help but it's a good reference point that it works on a 'standard' system.
Here is a more detailed description though.
The Motherboard is an ASUS p4800VM with S478 Intel 865G chipset. 2x512MB 184DIMM PC3200 NP CL3 Kingston Ram. 40Gb Maxtor Diamond Max ATA133 Boot Drive. GF FX5700LE 256MB AGP DVI-I VO Graphics card with latest drivers installed. 2xDiamondMax Plus9 200GB SATA150 Drives.
Nec2500 DVD writer.
The boot drive is alone on IDE channel 1 with the writer on IDE channel 2 Both as masters.
The two SATA drives are not partitioned, just formatted as whole drives.
I did a standard install of windows XP pro and then SP2. The firewall is switched off as are auto updates etc. There is no antivirus software installed as I have a firewall running on a mac server. I installed Directx9c before Edition.
The USB is Intel 802801EB enhanced controller.
The BOB was connected during standard Edition install and it has worked since then.
In relation to Barry's suggestions I changed my settings for Mpeg capture to VBR 4.5mbps min to 5.5 mbps max. This setting was used yesterday to capture approx 4 hrs of footage yesterday with no dropped frames or sync problems. I set the option to abort capture on dropped frames so I could leave the system alone and return to see if it had captured without dropping frames.
I was initially capturing to the SATA drives but needed to capture to a removable drive to try the footage on another system, so I plugged in a fairly old Fujitsu ATA133 Ide drive as slave on Channel 1 and captured happily for a further two hours with no problems. As a further test I captured to the C drive also with no problems, although it was only a 25 min capture.
I cranked up the data rate to 10-12mbps and did have problems with dropped frames on all drives
As you know my first install did not work, but I think it was because I'd done the build on a similiar but not identical M/Board and then moved the drive across to the P4800VM board.
I plugged a Lacie D2 Usb2 drive into the usb port and the BOB didn't like sharing the bandwidth so I've only got the BOB on USB nothing else. Because this is working I've not done any more with the adaptec card I bought last week.
Hope this helps a bit.
Cheers
Bomber_H
Bomber_H,
Thanks VERY much indeed for the detailed posting.
Hopefully, this will give me some variables to mess with.
Cheers
Bob
This evening I put in a SATA 200GByte drive, which has read/write speeds of about 50MByte/sec, and the problem was the same there, even after 10 minutes of capture - and this was using VERY low MPEG-2 rates.
On the fly conversion to DV, from composite analogue, seems okay, though, and there didn't seem to be any problem with Uncompressed 2YUB or with DVCPro/25 AVI.
I put TaskManager up to see if there were any obvious big differences in CPU usage between these Codecs and MPEG-2, and between MPEG-2 at different settings and speeds, but there was nothing screamingly obvious revealed.
So I'm kind of stuck.
I had a meeting with Pinnacle last week and had asked them to come back to me with some tips on optimisation, but have had no reply, so it looks like our review of LE6 is going to be considerably less glowing than it might otherwise have been.
Of course, if others are having the same problems as me, then that is only appropriate.
Also worth reiterating that this is a well-spec'd PC. It was custom-built for me by a man whom many regard as one of the very best video-editing system builders in the UK - Paul Dutton, the technobod for the DVdoctor organisation and also a key man at the UK's top technical site Hexus.
Bob C
Bomber_H,
Have you got video pass-through turned on or off from within the video/audio options box accessible in the Logging Tool window?
I ask because I only realised a minute ago that having pass-through turned on made the lip-sync much worse.
TIA
Bob C
A couple of further comments about the tests I conducted this evening.
Both, I suspect will be screamingly obvious to Pinnacle's technobods.
First, if you leave a tape running, the synch problem is visible even while NOT capturing ie if you've captured, say, as I just did, an hour's footage, go back out into the main interface and come back into the logging window, the footage you see playing on screen prior to doing anything else is out of synch with the sound you hear.
I don't want to jump to any false conclusions about this, but presumably, the encoding starts as soon as the logging window is opened, and doesn't stop even after it is closed.
Seems a strange way of doing things to me, but that's what I've come to believe is happening.
The other point is that the general problem is there irrespective of whether I use the old GUI layout or the new - I had only tried the new until tonight, but experimented with both tonight and saw that this was the case.
Bob C
I need to make one major correction to my comments so far - I get this lip-synch problem with other types of analogue capture, too!
Tried a couple of longish captures to DV tonight, and they were out of synch.
:-(
Bob C
Hi Bob
sorry for the delay in the reply, I've been out of action for a few days.
When I last captured a long Mpeg I had vido passthrough set to on so I could see the image on my monitor connected to the composite o/p of the breakout box, I didn't bother to switch it off. I have succesfully captured many hours of mpeg now and interestingly occasionally have dropped frames on 'playback' rather than capture which results in out of sync audio, if I switch off the BOB O/p and just view on the computer screen with audio out through the souncard sync is fine.
Even though I get some playback anomolies through the BOB because of system performance I guess I do not get audio sync problems when fusing sequences or exporting to DVD etc.
I have found though that if the timeline properties are set to Mpeg for render/fuse then I get a failed message up at transition points when I export to DVD, it appears that the mpeg render codec produces a file at 80mbps which is very wierd, there seems no way of setting the bit rate for the render codec in mpeg.
I have been experimenting with mpeg capture through editing and exporting to DVD and seem to get the best and fastest results if capture is VBR 6-8mbps and these settings are maintained through fusing and export to DVD. I have had some strange effects at transition points in the timeline with the image freezing at these points on DVD or becoming very blocky at scene changes.
Some more investigation is needed I think.
Audio though is generally ok since the first 5 hour capture which went out of sync after 1hr, I think I was pushing my luck going for longer though.
PS.. Through analogue I initially had more reliable capture from DVcam than DV, Dvcam having locked audio! just a thought, don't know if this should make a difference through analogue inputs...
Cheers
Bomber_H