Normally I wouldn't worry too much about upgrading and not being officially supported but something in the readme has concerned me:

"Supported Systems Message A new message has been added to this release that detects if you are installing on an unsupported system: “Your system does not support this version of Media Composer | Software. Please consult the Specifications information on Avid.com for supported configurations. Media Composer | Software instal lation will be aborted.”

Does this mean that because my Z400 is not officially supported, when I try to install MC 8.4 I will receive this message and be unable to proceed with the installation? I can't believe this would be the case as that would be insane.  Can someone please clarify what this means. Andi

I have installed 8.4 on an AMD 8 core FX processor. No message. Operation appears normal at this juncture.

On CPUs circa 2009 and earlier, they lacked the SSE 4.1 instruction set that MC requires as of 8.3 - I may have the dates and specific instruction set wrong here - the point is, this has nothing to do with Avid supported systems in the historic sense (where it was up to the user to test a GeForce card to see if it worked 'well-enough') - The statement you quoted appear when MC detects that you do not have the necessary instruction set to execute the code in the first place. There is also a similar message if you have less than 8 GB of RAM, I believe.

Hopefully someone else with a Z400 will chime in - pretty sure that is compatible with MC 8.4.

I think that quote can be found in the 8.3.1 documentation as well - have a look - I may be wrong.

I believe the message may also be generated for a Less than 6 core processor...

Well, I guess there's only one way to find out.  I wonder if 6 cores will include hyperthreading...

Wish me luck, I'll report back.

Andi

I installerd MC 8.4.0 on Q9550 (4core) wtih no problem.

Deleted, noted second system.

TVJohn:

I believe the message may also be generated for a Less than 6 core processor...

Don't think so (if you mean physical cores).

I think Avid has done themselves a bit of a disservice by listing supported systems and confusing that with the minimum system requirements (which are not the same, it would seem).

Take a look at the minimum system requirements...

Have just installed 8.4 on a very standard z400 with the W3550 Xeon and 12GB RAM.. no problems.

Cheers, Stu.

I do not know how many flavours the Z400 shipped, here is a sampling:

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01709671&sp4ts.oid=3718668

I see the first listed was a dual core. Rather than attempt to filter all the permutations, Avid decided to not

officially list the entire family. As they run 4~5 years old not an unexpected move.

Updated Application Manager, installed new codec pack, installed MC 8.4.  A few hangs on restarts whilst installation was taking place but other than that all is working, my Symphony option is recognised as active and the Alexa footage I was working on this morning now feels snappier to respond.  Could just be me but so far all is good on my quad core z400 - no error messages to speak of.

Andi

I tried installing and am getting this error:

"Unable to initialize audio effect and mixing system. Continue with limited audio capability?"

can't seem to find the cause and suspected this might be due to lack of Z400 support for his version but i see others running this.

I do have this connected to a Mojo DX

anyone experiencing this?

EDIT:

Update.  I re did the Avid Editor optimizations with Ed Prep and that seems to have resolved this.  Will keep a close eye on it though.

Still curious about this error as i have never seen it.

 

 

BarkinMadd:

On CPUs circa 2009 and earlier, they lacked the SSE 4.1 instruction set that MC requires as of 8.3

SSE 4.1 CPU instruction set

• Media Composer | Software (v8.3 and later) requires a microarchitecture that supports the SSE 4.1 CPU instruction set.  If your CPU does not support this functionality, it will fail to install these versions of Media Composer software.

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/compatibility/Media-Composer-System-Requirements

SSE 4.1 support begins with 45nm Xeon CPUs. 65nm & earlier Xeons do lack SSE 4.1 support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors

I looked up my CPU with a freeware program called Speccy. Probably found it at SourceForge.net. More detailed system info available with DUC favored utility Sandra.

Hope this helps.