EdiusNX Express Questions

[Mike Truly]

I am considering upgrading from my EdiusNX for HDV + Expansion cards to EdiusNX Express and am wondering the functional differences.

When considering something like a 1280x720 project:

1. Is the EdiusNX Express faster to work with than the regular NX? Are more layers able to be played back in realtime than with the regular NX?

2. It says 2 PCI-e x1 slots are required for the 2 card setup of the NX Express. When using the cards in slots that are say x4, x8 or x16, is the functionality faster?

3. Is is anticipated that there will be drivers to run the NX Express in XP x64 at some point?

Thanks!

[STORMDAVE]

1. Is the EdiusNX Express faster to work with than the regular NX? Are more layers able to be played back in realtime than with the regular NX?

There is no performance difference between these NX cards...the NXExpress' daughter card now includes FireCoder, a realtime SD MPEG2/MPEG4 encoder, so I don't think it's worth upgrading to the NXExpress unless you are in dire need of SD MPEG4/MPEG2 encodes.

2. It says 2 PCI-e x1 slots are required for the 2 card setup of the NX Express. When using the cards in slots that are say x4, x8 or x16, is the functionality faster?

All PCIe slots throttle down their speeds to the specific cards in the slot...so if you put in a 1x card like the NX main board in a 4x slot, your bus will be at 1x because the card is 1x. 1x is still really fast, check the PCIe specs on Wikipedia.

3. Is is anticipated that there will be drivers to run the NX Express in XP x64 at some point?

GV employees have stated a few times that this is a possibility....x64 is not really mainstream yet, but I do hope x64 is considered in the near future, but not right now.

[Mike Truly]

STORMDAVE,

Thanks very much for the info! I think I'll stick with my NX for the moment.

Thanks again.

[STORMDAVE]

Welcome :)

Since you have a Dual Xeon 3.6 system, I'm guessing you have the PCIx+PCI version of the NX w/ Expansion (the very first version)...is this correct?

If you ever want to upgrade lets say to a Dual Xeon Woodcrest setup or a Dual Clovertown (Quad Core) you will still be in good shape because even the newer server/workstation motherboards support PCIx, so no need to plunk down another $1,500 for the NXExpress.

[Mike Truly]

STORMDAVE,

Yes, that's correct. Which brings up more questions.

I have a newer system (Dual Quad-Core, 8GB, Dual QuadroFX 3450s, SAS 15K SCSI drives). This is the system I run x64 on... that's why I asked about that. There are some slots that are blocked because of a graphics riser (to support the display cards) but 2 PCI-X slots and a PCI-e slot are still available.

What I'm wondering about are 3 things.

1. This system is obviously faster, but how would that manifest itself in using Edius... simply faster rendering?

2. The 15K SAS SCSI drives, are they as fast as my U320 15 SCSI drives in my Edius system?

3. My old NX + exp, will the expansion card work in a PCI-X? Currently, its just in a PCI slot.

Thanks again.

[GrassValley_BH]

1. The question is how much of the speed increase is due to x64 vs x86. In most cases I'd say very little. It's the general increase in technology efficiency level that gives the speed.

2. I believe they should be, but I haven't touched SCSI for a while.

3. Yes, the expansion board will work in a PCI-X slot. PCI-X slots are backward-compatible to (conventional) PCI, except for 5v-only PCI cards.

[STORMDAVE]

1. This system is obviously faster, but how would that manifest itself in using Edius... simply faster rendering?

You will get more realtime layers...Edius won't use all 8 cores, but Speed Encoder (or ProCoder3) for example will use all the cores that are available. Also if you use apps such as After Effects CS3, you will be able to use all cores and with your 8GB of RAM you can give CS3 1GB per core and have each core do 1 frame....the end result: amazing render speeds. For Edius or other NLE's, they won't use all cores, like I said, but Edius will be much faster than your current Dual Xeon system. You could always dual boot with XP Pro SP2 (32bit) and use the NX on that system.

2. The 15K SAS SCSI drives, are they as fast as my U320 15 SCSI drives in my Edius system?

I have no clue. Have you ran any speed testing applications to see which one is faster? They both should be really fast, so you shouldn't have problems at all with Canopus HQ files at online quality. I'm sure you could do uncompressed (SD) on both as well.

3. My old NX + exp, will the expansion card work in a PCI-X? Currently, its just in a PCI slot.

Yes, since you have 2 free PCIx slots, just put the main PCIx card in one of the slots, then put the PCI daughtercard in the second PCIx slot. It should work fine. That is if the "riser" won't give you trouble.

[Mike Truly]

Thanks for the info all!

I haven't run speed tests on the drives but am guessing that since SAS seems to be newer that it would be as fast or faster than U320 but am not sure.

I was considering having 2 NX systems. There is a special right now on the NX Express for $1100 (that's why I was asking about that). I notice that my old version of the NX doesn't seem to be offered anymore.

Currently, PC3 only uses the other cores on specifically making MPEG2s (that can't be made with Mastering) as far as I understand. Maybe that will change in the future. Some other apps DO benefit from multiprocessing. It's definitely been a great system so far.

Thanks again.

[STORMDAVE]

But your new Quad Core system doesn't have enough PCIe slots, am I correct? You're still better off getting a PCIx version of the NX, if it's still available.

As far as PC3, you can use Mastering, but it is for CBR only (not 2pass or 1pass VBR)....for 2pass etc., it will probably use upto 2 cores. Can't say.

[Mike Truly]

STORMDAVE,

Your correct about the PCI-e slots. There's only one un-obstructed (I thought maybe you could not use the MPEG encoder card?). You're right, the PCI-X version would work out better at the moment (unless I ditch one of the display cards... which I really don't want to do).

By the way, I mis-quoted the NX Express special... it's $1200.

For PC3, I only create CBR most of the time anyway so that's not a problem. I have PC3, so I'll have to look into this further but I'm pretty sure I saw a comment in the grid-encoding preset (or somewhere) that said it wasn't for 'Mastering' only 'Preview' encodes.

Thanks!