Hello all, I've been quiet for a while as I have been buried in work, which is a good thing, but on the bad side, I've been drowning in a titanic battle trying to bail out my Liquid Chrome! And trust me, liquid chrome does not bail easily. (That was supposed to be a pun)
Because there is no real support for Chrome, I had to become my own support so I now have two non-certified Chrome systems, and man has it been a wild ride. But all’s well that ends well. At least thus far. I'm still incredibly bummed that Liquid is going the way of the Titanic. But in the meantime I'm going full steam ahead with my liquids. The first system I have is an MSI motherboard based system that is listed in my profile below. And it’s definitely the better and faster of my two systems.
The second system I purchased because the MSI system was giving me migraines. When it worked, it was screaming machine, but when it didn’t, it sucked. I used to race motocross, and this system reminds me of one of my race bikes. Blazing fast but infuriatingly fickle and very unreliable. I’m pretty sure I pushed my race bikes more than I rode them and that’s been the case with this system. But thank the Lord, I’ve overcome and I think I finally have these babies dialed in and they’re a blast to ride.
My seconded system, is an HP xw8600 that came with a Xeon Quadcore 3.00 GHz processor, 2 gig ram, Nvidia FX 1700 video card, and a 250gig NCQ HD. Pretty bare bones. I replaced the Nvidia with an ATI 1950 and added the Xena and an external array and that’s all. It’s a nice system but I still like my MSI system better and I do believe it is faster and snappier. I don’t know why it would be faster and I have yet to do any conclusive tests, but the MSI system allows me to over-clock as where the HP does not. Also, for the money I can get more bang for the buck with my NewEgg MSI system.
The raid set on the second system screams, it’s a MAXX Digital EVO 8TB and runs and works great with great support. Bob Zelin from Creative Cow is the tech support guru there. But again for the price I can get twice as much for half the cost with my original newegg configuration. Both my raids average about 800 to 900 MB/Sec.
By the way, I currently shoot with the JVC ProHD 200 and source from JVC BR-HD50U via HDMI to a Convergent Designs Nano connect. This converts it to HD-SDI, which I then bring it into the Xena/Liquid in uncompressed HD and edit in uncompressed. It all looks and works great! I’m also now looking at the Convergent Designs Flash XDR, which will give me close to uncompressed throughout.
I say all this to say that I did finally conquer this beast and the Chrome Xe is running great and for a great price. I have gone through the ALL bugs and it’s working splendid. Now I only wish Liquid would keep working splendid. I keep trying other edit systems but for me they all still suck air compared to the Liquid.
Maybe we could stage a sit-in at Avid!
Roland