One of the big questions that anyone considering moving from Liquid to Media Composer is "Will it work on my system?" Media Composer has a rigid set of guidelines for supported systems. If you're running MC Software only then it's possible to run on an unsupported system (with the caveat that it is, UNSUPPORTED). Unfortunately, most Liquid users will fall into this category. The minimum requirements for a supported system are:

Processors:

• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz

System Memory:

• 2GB of RAM
  • Note 1: If working with complex sequences, (multiple effects/streams) or compressed HD resolutions 4 GB of RAM is recommended.
  • Note 2: Vista requires 4 GB of RAM

Graphics Card:

• NVidia Quadro FX 560 or higher
  • Note 1: Only Nvidia cards are supported
  • Note 2: Full Screen play feature requires a minimum of 128MB of graphics memory

Internal Hard Drive:

• 40GB minimum hard disk drive
  • Note 1: Any media drives need to be 7200RPM or greater

Optical Drive:

• DVD capable drive required for product installation

For Liquid we've been recommending ATI cards, and even those users with NVidia cards haven't been using the Quadro. Whether or not a particular ATI card will work is currently unknown.

Note that if you plan on using a MOJO SDI, then you have a very strict guideline on motherboard requirements. Please see the Avid website for details on this.

GUIDELINES FOR POSTING REPLIES TO THIS THREAD

If you have a system with MC Soft on it (and I expect this to be a growing list of the next few months), please post your system spec's here. This will help to build up a list which, while unsupported, will be helpful to others as they also consider moving over.

I'd like to keep discussions to a minimum here so as to make it easier for people to search through the list. If you have specific questions about a configuration that's fine. If you want to discuss the merits of this configuration over that configuration, please start a separate thread.

Note that I WILL be removing posts that I feel are cluttering this thread (so you can't say you weren't warned! ) The other moderators may do so as well.

AMD64 4600+ Dual Core, 1GB memory, AGP ATI XT800XT 256Mb

This configuration DOES NOT WORK (and that's probably no real surprise).

MC Soft installs and runs, and clips can be imported, but neither the source nor master viewer is capable of playing back video. In either case you get an exception "Too Many Preloads" along with an assertion failure (debugging code). You can scrub the video, add edits, etc. but not play back.

Other parameters of note:

QT 7.4
Driver ATI 8.391.0.0

EDIT 21-May-2008: After a reboot, the system is now working. I don't know why; this is about the 3rd reboot I've done. Testing is now underway on this configuration.

Dual Xeon 2.2Ghz, 2Gb, AGP ATI 9600Pro 256Mb

This configuration DOES work.

Note that I uninstalled Liquid before installing MC as I needed the drive space. On launching MC, it returned several errors complaining about file "vafxu.dll is missing". This is a Quicktime error and is due to some files being left over in the QT Component directory that aren't properly uninstalled. If you get this message, open the component directory (C:\Program Files\QuickTime\ QTComponents) and delete all the files of the form Fast*.qtx. Leave the Avid ones, as well as everything else.

This system is below the minimum spec. for MC, but it does run and edit SD. I already know it won't edit HD, if only due to the video card installed.

Now this is a thread which I was considering to start. You beat me to it Dave. Well done.

My concern is that AVID specify only HP XW6800 or 6400. Now HP are hard to get here. Can we have some supported Dell Systems?

Will a Single Core2 Duo be sufficient? or we need a Dual Quad core to rum MC at least as we are used with Liquid? SInce I am upgrading my System I really want to know what to get. not just min requirement as this is most of the time insufficient anyhow. A reasonable working System, not an over kill either.

Dave if you feel my post is out of place please feel free to kill it or move it to a new thread.

mscic:

Dave if you feel my post is out of place please feel free to kill it or move it to a new thread.

I'm going to leave it here as the questions are relevant to the topic at hand.

First and foremost, if you're considering going to MC and are in the video production business, then I highly recommend getting a completely supported system! I know that this is a major expense, but for business concerns I think it's a necessary one. If you're planning on using Mojo, then you require a supported configuration.

For those who aren't in the production business, or who aren't depending on the system for their income, then you should strive to meet the minimum requirements that I copied into the first post. I suspect that most Liquid users with dual-core systems and PCI-e based cards will find that their systems work. However, there's no guarantee of performance. The major difference in an NVidia GeForce card and an Nvidia Quadro card is OpenGL performance. This is actually provided by the drivers. It used to be possible to softmod a GeForce card into a Quadro, but NVidia blocked that starting with the version 7xxx cards. Otherwise there really isn't a difference in the hardware at all (and the same is true of the ATI Radeon and FireGL cards).

MC Soft is dependent on OpenGL, therefor the Quadro cards are where you want to be. There are differences in OpenGL support between ATI and NVidia, so you might find problems down the road even if a configuration with an ATI card seems to work fine at the beginning.

We know that the supported configurations for MC Soft work. The point of this thread is to document configurations that aren't supported but appear to work, as well as problems that may arise and solutions (if any). 

I run both, Liquid Chrome Xe and MC on the same system without any problem. Initially I had installed the nvidia FX 3400. For some other reason (the FX 3400 does not support Blue Ray Disc files playing), I replaced the FX 3400 by a Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro, and both editing programs still run without any problem. The X1950 Pro has, hoever, a much lower Open GL performance, which I recognise when I use AJA's application "Machina". Video inlay is not smoth while recording. With the FX 3400 it was totally smooth video in the inlay while the program recorded uncompressed video.

The Nvidia 7000M on my laptop doesn't show as OpenGL "qualified" in the BCC test but I can manually enable OpenGL in that test dialog and use OpenGL effects without render problems.  The test method is in the OpenGL PDF I attached in my MC docs thread.

The Nvidia 7600GT on my desktop showed as OpenGL qualified in the BCC test so I did not have to manually enable OpenGL.  Rendering of OpenGL is fine.

With both cards/systems, I have to render the OpenGL effect to play it.  I can scrub without rendering but playback shows black before rendering.  With a Quadro, those effects would probably play RT or play with reduced frame rate, perhaps, instead of showing black.

To test the OpenGL of my ATI X1300 Pro, I'll have to swap cards again.  That may have to wait a few days.  I'll test that at my first chance. 

Here is the dialog when checking the 7000M on my laptop.  Boris' test couldn't say it was OK but manually enabling OpenGL for that card worked fine.

An effect which makes use of the GPU's 3D capabilities is 3D Warp.  I've tested it on the laptop (Nvidia 7000M GPU) and it plays RT without rendering.

The laptop can also play 2 RT streams of 1080i HDV at the lowest-quality preview setting.  This is the same performance I've had with Liquid using the same hardware.  So, MC isn't having any more trouble with multiple streams than Liquid has with the same hardware.  Where I think more difference in performance will be is when using OpenGL effects in MC.  The major improvement, I think, with the Quadro cards is the OpenGL performance.

An update: I softmodded my X800XT to a FireGL X3-256, and I now have full-screen support with the AMD64 system (see the first post). Without the softmod I had to turn on the legacy overlay support (MC Console: LegacyOverlay On). So the AMD is fully up and running with OpenGL on an ATI.

My ATI X1300 Pro didn't fare as well in the OpenGL test in BCC but it seems to render fine anyway with both the BCC filter and with 3D Warp.  I'll be using the Nvidia, though, instead.

MC 3.0 is also running fine so far with both systems - the XP Pro SP3 desktop with an Nvidia 7600GT 256MB and the Vista Home Premium SP1 laptop with a built-in Nvidia 7000M 256MB dedicated/1279MB shared.

MC 3.0 seems to run fine under Vista 64 with an ATI 3850 (Catalyst 8.6) - can even do full screen and OpenGL effects. Surprising because I wasn't expecting this from an ATI card.... you know - nVidia only, etc.

Thanks Steve for that ATI info - good to know as I am running Liquid with an ATI HD 2600 Pro ( 256 mb) and since its evident that Pinnacle will not be releasing the next gen until next year I need to switch to something else soon. I noticed that you use a WD Raptor as main drive - I just picked up two used 74 gb WD 740's and was wondering if it would be best to use them as mirrored RAID 1 Main drives or as striped RAID 0 for my edit / render drives. I also have 3 WD 500 gb and 1x 250 gb SATA's and two Nextstar hard drive docks (esata). Any advice on the best system configuration for Hard drive management on LIquid and/or Media Composer?

Interesting...I installed MC 3 on a Gateway FX system with Vista 64 and an Nvidia 9800GT. I cant get the software to load. It crashes back to the desktop about half way through the loading process.  I just want to put it on a system to run it in a minimal configuration for learning purposes.  Any ideas? 

There is hardly anyone on this forum using MC, so your best bet for getting answers will be either on the Avid MC forum or on my Liquid/MC crossover forum.  You can get to my forum by clicking on my signature.

My first guess at what's going wrong is the crash happens at loading the ACPL effects.  Turning of "threaded optimization" for MC in the Nvidia control panel fixes that for the 8800 cards and might do it for your card.  Other than that, try the Avid forum or my forum.  The MC info was only posted here because of the now-expired upgrade deal for Liquid users.

Also, the "force OpenGL 1.5" trick with RivaTuner is a second fix that has worked for other.

But as Scott said, look at the Avid's forum and make a search about your 9800XT in the Media Composer PC forum.

Me, I softmod my 8600GT to a Quadro FX 1700, but you cannot do that with your card.

 

Mark and I discussed this via email.  He got MC to load.

I prefer not using the OpenGL change so that the OpenGL version remains at its highest.  The OpenGL version could affect some of the effects in MC.

Hey guys.

I'm trying the MC trial version out but am getting some issues. While trying to use what I already have digitized on my system, I'm importing AVI files and they seem to take some time. Also more imortant, when I scrub the timeline it's very jerky, when I hit play I get an error window and does not play. I did install the install3gb.exe thing rebooted and all worked well for a while then back to the error when trying to PB and jerky scrubbing again.

I'm also using a Canopus ADVC300 bob which did work once and now not.

Does this have to do with the ATI 1950 card or something else.

BTW 6gig of ram installed assigned 2700 to the install3gb.exe

What's going on, does my system meet the requirements here?

My AMD 940 with 4 gig on a 770 mobo ATI X4850 worked fine.

Full screen playback with HDV material  ok

Capture of HDV from Canon XH-A1  ok 

IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT INSTALLATION OF THE 2.7 UTILITY THAT ALLOWS FULL MEMORY USAGE FOR 32BIT OS WILL CAUSE THE CAPTURE MONITOR IN LIQUID

AND STUDIO NOT TO WORK.

USING THE NORMAL MEMORY OPTION AT BOOT-UP RESOLVES THE PROBLEM.