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Filed under: *VIDEO* •CS4 •Editing •Hardware •Post Production •Software •Tips •

Breaking The First Rule Of Non-Linear Editing, Part Two

After I installed the ATI card, I mounted the shroud in it’s place and gingerly pushed down on it. 

No way was the shroud going to latch in place without twisting the video card.  I stared at this for a long time, and thought about cutting the pressure fingers off the shroud, but when I considered the size of the heat pipes that seemed unlikely to be a 100% solution.

Another function of the shroud is to push on a metal lever that keeps the expansion cards in place.  Without the shroud, what would happen to the (pretty expensive) cards?  Could they vibrate out of their slots?

I considered cutting a block of wood to hold the lever down, but in the end decided to use a simpler solution:  Popsicle sticks.

Cut to the right length, these white-birch wonder tools both hold the lever in place and maintain airflow through the case.  While it is likely that the shroud is a large part of the overall cooling scheme on the Z800, I have been monitoring the temperatures on both the video card and the RT.X2, and both have been holding well within specs.

Finally, the time had come to install some software!  I updated Windows, installed the latest video card drivers and then my copy of Adobe Creative Studio CS4.  I later downloaded and installed a set of beta Windows 7 Matrox drivers that knit the RT.X2 and Premiere Pro into a much more capable editor (as well as adding real-time video output to After Effects and Photoshop.)  Compared to the hardware install, the software went relatively easily.  This is my first experience with Windows 7 as well, and it seems pretty usable to me (of course, if it can’t run happily on a dual-Xeon with 12Gb of RAM, that would be a big problem.)  it hasn’t been perfect - there is a little bit of flickering in the Premiere timeline when I edit, and after saving in Premiere Pro the computer just wants to rest for about ten seconds - but on the whole the machine is fast, smooth and incredibly functional.

Of course, there has to be a postscript.  Like many of us, I don’t shoot on tape as a primary medium anymore - I use the Focus Enhancements Firestore FS-5 and FS-H200 devices as my primary recorders with tape as a backup.  Another thing I cheaped out on was a factory-installed multi-function card reader. Of course, the FS-H200 records to Compact Flash, so I needed a transfer slot. I purchased a multi-card reader at Best Buy, thinking it would happily slide into an external drive slot.

Ooops, it’s a mini-card reader!  No problem, right?  I took a Dremel to one of the blank space-fillers and cut a hole in it to accommodate the cardreader faceplate.

A little double-stick foam tape on the inside will secure it easily.  All fixed, right?

The cable on the card reader is about 6”.

The internal USB header on the motherboard is about 18” away.

A quick Google search found several places to get internal USB header extension cables.  One store offered a 2’ cable for $5.40US, with free shipping.  Sounds great, right?

I ordered the cable, and received an email the next day:

“Your order was shipped by Malaysian Post. Normal shipping time is 1-2 weeks.”

Live and learn, I guess.

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