I'm considering purchasing a Mojo for an academic program where we have workstations as listed below. Does anybody have any links to figures / testing / your own best guestimates about how much improvement in rendering time? Any quantitative ballpark figures would be much appreciated.

 

I doubt that mojo will make any improvement to your rendering times. Its main purpose is to ingest and spit out different flavours of video (other than firewire).

Really? I read that it also :   "key role is as a hardware video accelerator. It takes the burden off the host computer for rendering effects and coping with mixed-resolution video formats on a timeline, thereby saving considerable rendering time."

Does that just mean that it does effects in real time rather than "spending time" rendering them, or does it indeed add processing power as I understand the Adrenaline/Nitris things do?

I recently "upgraded" to MC and a Core 2 Duo workstation from a single core p4 3.0Ghz and XPress Pro and I'm getting a net slowdown in rendering.

Very unhappy with everything Avid right now.

 

Here's the product page..... I'm not seeing much of anything on acceleration.

http://www.avid.com/products/dna/mojo/index.asp 

 Yes, because it does not. Wait for next month, when you get better usage of your computer and OS with MC 3.0 and some new PCI-X cards from Avid

Thanks for the replies. My Avid rep sold me multiple licenses of MC based on the fact that it would make use of multithreading, and it does not, this is why I am, uh, preturbed.

Anyone know if MC 3.0 upgrade is going to cost and if so how much?

 

 

Contentin:

Thanks for the replies. My Avid rep sold me multiple licenses of MC based on the fact that it would make use of multithreading, and it does not, this is why I am, uh, preturbed.

Anyone know if MC 3.0 upgrade is going to cost and if so how much?

 MC will use multithreading on the next upgrade.... I'm sure that's what they were talking about.

...and if you bought your copy recently MC 3.0 will be a free upgrade.

Thanks jwrl that's the first encouraging thing I've heard in a while.

Not to drag out this thread but does the Adrenaline unit do the kind of hardware acceleration of rendering that I queried about with regard to the Mojo, and what is the price of that thing (Avid's site keeps the suspense going) and can it be networked to let's say 6 workstations?

I know this is an open-ended thing, but if I'm working with a bunch of worstations as listed below, what would be the upgrade in hardware that would give me a major improvement in rendering time? For example, if I drop a Fluid Film pulldown effect on a 20 minute piece, it's going to take me all day the way things stand.

 The upgrade you want to look at is to Media Composer Nitris DX. Goodbye firewire, hello PCI - E host exchange. Go from 400 to 500 mbps transfer to 10 gbps transfer - 20 times faster than firewire. Finally, a pipeline wide enough for multiple streams of realtime uncompressed HD playback. And an architecture that will use all the core processing power you possess. The higher the core, the faster the application runs. This is the performance level we've been waiting on for a long time.

This information is based on a presentation to the Avid Washington area User's Group last Wednesday night.

Contentin:

My Avid rep sold me multiple licenses of MC based on the fact that it would make use of multithreading, and it does not, this is why I am, uh, preturbed.

 ....Of course you are. Never, never EVER trust salesman's talk ! The temptation is just too high on their part to tell you anything you want to hear to get you out the door with your cash in their till and their boxes under your arm ! We were also sold a bill of goods and led down the garden path by our authorized Avid reseller, and I completely understand your frustration. Tell me, does the salesperson who sold you the stuff return your phone calls anymore ?

We have the Avid regular Mojo, and I can confirm it made absolutely no difference rendering on the timeline with it or without it. We really like our Mojo because it allows us to output to a standard analogue CRT monitor for CC and get all our BetaCam SP, 3/4 ", S-VHS, and 16 MM telecine in and out of the Avid editor. This is why I'm furious the new MOJO DX is a big step forward and one step back ! I think the only redeeming factor for low end wannabee use in the new Mojo DX is the HDMI socket. This will at least get you out to a large, flat screen TV monitor, but then again, us low rent wannabees can't afford that level of equipment. Actually, we can't even afford the new Mojo at it's rumoured price (Don't want to speculate price here). We are praying for Avid to give us a new fall back cheaper Mojo with analogue HD component output  .

 Again, based on what we were told at the User's Group meeting, the Media Composer Nitris DX system will be priced at $14,995.00. The Media Composer Mojo DX at $9,995.00.

Larry Rubin:

 Again, based on what we were told at the User's Group meeting, the Media Composer Nitris DX system will be priced at $14,995.00.

 ....This price is much cheaper than the Adrenaline was

 

 Yes that's right, the Media Composer Adrenaline system was $25,000. While Adrenaline will no longer be marketed, new software upgrades will continue to be developed and support for Adrenaline will continue for at least the next 5 years. So Adrenaline users still have a very viable product.

Larry Rubin:

While Adrenaline will no longer be marketed, new software upgrades will continue to be developed and support for Adrenaline will continue for at least the next 5 years.

 

...I'm hoping we can pick up a used Adrenaline on Ebay or something. We don't require uncompressed HD anyway, so hurray for FireWire !