I recently upgraded my Avid Xpress PO HD to Avid Media Composer 4.5.0 and at first Media Composer did not like my old Ati All In Wonder Pro 1800XL video card. Media Composer was okay creating 3D effects and other special affects and even allowed me to play them back without rendering the effects although the play back was slow. But when I tried to render the effects when I still was using my old Ati All In Wonder Pro 1800XL video card Avid Media Composer would freeze up.

So I upgraded to an Asus Radeon 4890 video card since it was four times the video card compared to my old Ati All In Wonder Pro 1800XL and it was even better in the performance specs then the NVIDIA 560 Avid lists as the minimum required video card for Media Composer. So after I installed the Asus Radeon 4890 video card I got messages from Avid Media Composer that the software did not like the video card every time I would play back a video in Media Composer and this was without any special affects.

So I over clocked the memory and CPU on the Asus Radeon 4890 video card and upgraded the Catalyst driver for my new Asus Radeon 4890 video card and this got rid of the message that Media Composer does not like the video card but now when I try to play back some video clips without special affects in Media Composer I get an error message and if I click continue the problem will only happen again but if I click debug instead Media Composer shuts down and I get a windows software error message.

My system according to Avid's web page system requirements is more then adequate. My system configuration is Asus motherboard with a 4.2 dual core 64 bit AMD process with 2 GB of DDR ram. My computer also has over a terabit of hard drive space and a high end sound blaster card. I also use Windows XP Pro. Can anyone out there help me solve this problem?

Hi Bill,

As you've discovered, Media Composer doesn't work well with ATI cards.  Your best bet is to get an Nvidia Quadro FX card like the system requirements call for. 

ciao,
Carl

Carl is right. There are very specific system requirements for Media Composer that are different from those of Express Pro. The only difference between MC 4 and MC5 for requirements is that Windows 7 is quailified for MC 5 ONLY.

I would think the slowness is coming from your ram and disk speed and not from the card.

Your PC is slow and adding XP 32 bit to it, it goes even slower.

I know my computer is on the old side and mabe my ram is not as fast as todays standers. But my ram if I remember right is also DDR2 and All 4 of my hard drives are 2700 speed. I have a low bugget that's why I had to put this upgrade off for almost 4 years. I just want to get my system to work for one more year so I can get a MAC Pro next year.

I don't know of any drive being 2700 Bill.

But the card isn't to blame.

My RAM is DDR2 but it's 8G on as 64bit system.

This gives an approx boost of 800% for MC.

My laptop has 3G and a T8100 and a 8600GS.

The memory and the drive's speed is the problem.

weird. i have this old computer of mine, now i just type on it basically, and it runs media composer 4 really nice. its a SINGLE CORE Athlon 3200+ with 2gb o memory and a ati radeon 4670. i find it suprising that your BETTER radeon wouldnt work with avid, while mine worked flawlessly, all bcc effects were working, renders worked, and 3d was wroking

johnlucas88:

weird. i have this old computer of mine, now i just type on it basically, and it runs media composer 4 really nice. its a SINGLE CORE Athlon 3200+ with 2gb o memory and a ati radeon 4670. i find it suprising that your BETTER radeon wouldnt work with avid, while mine worked flawlessly, all bcc effects were working, renders worked, and 3d was wroking

This is precisely why there are specific system requirements for Media Composer, because of the completely illogical and unpredictable behaviors that unqualified systems exhibit. Going non supported is a gamble. Maybe you'll get lucky and maybe you won't. And even if you get lucky initially, there's no guarantee that a serious problem may crop up down the road, stopping you in your tracks.

Don't get me wrong, if you're one of lucky ones, more power to you. But if you're not, it can be one hell of a frustrating experience.

On all of my unsupported systems everything runs fine.

Bill says that everything is on par with the system requirements EXCEPT from his card.

I insist though that the slowness isn't because of the card.

It's not only about system requirements but what are you going to do with your system.

He doesn't seem to know the speed of his disks OR there are 2700 disks.

However even for the slowest disks and system DV SD will work fine for some streams.

The problem is going bigger when you want to work with HDV and up.

There is no MC 4.5.0... I guess this is 4.0.5.

Thanks for the advice.

So far it seems to be related to the Catalyst driver because Media Composer would not work at all until I upgraded the Catalyst driver and my old All In Wonder 1800XL uses an older Catalyst drive and it worked fine except for the fact the CPU on my old All In Wonder 1800XL could handle the load and Media Composer would freeze up. But my old All In Wonder 1800XL could handle the affects part of Media Composer just not the rendering. When I can I might just go ahead and purchase an NVIDIA video card and hope this fixes the problem.

sverkalo:

2700 disks....There is no MC 4.5.0

Obviously a couple of typos George, forget and forgive...

luca.mg:

sverkalo:

2700 disks....There is no MC 4.5.0

Obviously a couple of typos George, forget and forgive...

Luca beat me to it George!

Let me spell it out even clearer, "7200 and MC 4.0.5" is what was really being referred to.
I often get the keystrokes muddled up to........

Sometimes it takes a little fantasy to see what was really meant.

Regards,
Douglas

Some times you should be reading beneath the lines.

drbgaijin:

Sometimes it takes a little fantasy to see what was really meant.