Hi everyone,

This is my first post to Avid Forums (and most likely, one of many for awhile), as I'm now out of college (for the 2nd time) with an Assoc in Audio/Video Prod. AND, I'm extremely happy to have learned Avid MC software. With my home computer now set up with all the bells and whistles Avid requires, the one area I haven't upgraded is my operating system. VISTA HOME is the current one, and hasn't had a prob yet. I do realize it may, and I'm curious about upgrading to WINDOWS 7.

Can anyone tell me if WINDOWS 7 is compatible with MC 4.0, or should I go with something else like VISTA PRO or WINDOWS XP PRO?????????????

Thanks so much,

Chris Ventura, West Chester,Ohio

Lotusong......

Congrats on your graduating and moving to the world of production.  I would bet you'll be posting more frequently than you think of only to get advise and suggestions from the community peeps who have been sharpeing their teeth on MC for a while.  Take advantage of what they have learned.....

As for Windows 7.... not at this time.  Being worked on for approval but not compatible now.  XP and Vista are the OS's or choice on the PC side of the house.

Congrats again and dont be a stranger....always great to get a fresh perspective.

Marianna

After ten years of debugging Windows XP Pro so it is working just fine, is there any reason to jump to Windows 7 and start the frustrating task of debugging it?

The SINGLE biggest reason to migrate to Win7 is if you're making the leap to Win7 64 bit. In 64 bit, the max accessible RAM is 8 GB!!! This is a significant increase in capability.

64-Bit & 8GB's of RAM !!!!

Any 32 bit app in Vista 64 or Win 7 64 can only access 4 GB each no matter how much RAM you have. In a Windows 32 bit OS it is 2GB (a bit more with minor startup modification).

Once the app is truly 64 bit then the limit is 128 GB.

But, with 8GB's then a full 4GB's is available to MC.

Dom,

Has anyone run a test to determine if there is truly any time savings if Windows XP Pro is replaced by Windows 7?

What will be the time saving for each operation if the PC is fitted with 128 GB of memory?

Next question. Based on experience with the previous Microsoft operating systems, there will be substantial amounts of time installing Windows 7, trouble shooting all the programs with the new operating system including MC. Not to mention the time and expense of installing additional memory. Have those costs been factored into the Windows 7 upgrade costs?

May we continue to use Windows XP Pro for the next several years with MC?

Thank you for your thoughts.

Don R.

"... Has anyone run a test to determine if there is truly any time savings if Windows XP Pro is replaced by Windows 7? ..."

The Cost-Benefit analysis is individual to each user.  However, I think there's a point of diminishing returns.  Avid probably won't access 128GB's.  Eventually, we'll hear test results and find out what that number really is.  On our Symphopny systems, we have 8GB's and Vista Biz 64 and noticed an immediate improvement in performance.

The possible time-savings won't come from increased speed, as that's based on processor speed.  More RAM means fewer crashes due to mempry issues, and more complex sequences.  The value of these upgrades will depend on the type of work you're doing and the deadlines.  We do lots of Primetime episodics, supervised with producers in the room.  Anything we can do to keep those systems up and running is usually an expense well spent.  YMMV.

"... Have those costs been factored into the Windows 7 upgrade costs? ..."

You don't necessarily "have to" do RAM upgrades with Vista or 7.  Those costs, if any, are agian on an individual basis.

64 bit benefits people who are involved in large projects, especially HD. You will see less latency with the GUI's responses, opening and closing bins, scrubbing, etc. This is because the system can load much more data in the RAM instead of of being cached on the hard disk.

As Randall have mentioned even going from 2.5 GB limit of Windows XP to 4 GB of Vista have shown performance increase and overall stability.

One of the facts to remember about migration to 64 bit is that the processing power requirements are higher. So, while the argument can be made that 64 bit processors are faster, that's counterbalanced by processes that take more power. In the end, the only real advantage is the increased maximum memory available. If you only have 2 Gb of memory installed, you won't see any benefits at all, because the win 7 64 bit OS takes more RAM to load the OS. Of course, this says nothing about the increased mathematical precision available from 64 bit processing.

So, the next big question will be, "when will MC support 64 bit processing"? But, I think it's too early to start asking that question.

If you have an app written for 64bit then it will run faster than a 32bit app - it can actually do more processing per clock cycle. I have a 3D modelling application written for 64bit as objective evidence of this benefit (as compared to its 32bit version).

Hi Steve...

Generally, I beleive you are correct. There are, however, more complex overhead issues with a 64-bit system, that require more calculations, even tho' it is faster. This is the reason, in my experience, some 64 bit programs run slower than their 32 bit counterparts, or can run faster, as you've experienced, depending on the overhead needed to run that program.

In all truth, I've never read a technical evaluation of whether 64 bit is actually quicker or not. I have seen examples of both, however.

As far as you look for better performance, 64-bit is the way to go for complex or heavy calculations like for 3D and video, thanks for CPU optimizations that never made it in the 32-bits instruction/registers set. But I don't know if MC is really optimized for 64-bit. The single fact that you can get more than 3.2GB of RAM available under Windows should make everybody switch to 64-bits anyway.

I'm currently running MC 4.0.2 software under Windows 7 x64 and I have to find a bug yet (I still didn't tried video capture). The major drawback is that MC still disables Desktop Compositing (3D acceleration & Aero), thus you lose half of what makes Windows 7's interface the first major improvement in Windows since XP. Note that is because of Avid not being compatible with Aero, not Microsoft (Vista's been around for two years now). This is a shame since all Aero's new features in 7 are really awesome.

MC appears as a 32-bit app in Task Manager (but it installed 64-bit drivers).

As for the general performance, I worked a few weeks under Vista x64 and I can say that with Win7 it's like having a new computer (or a fast computer again, if you like to put it that way). I get roughly the same speed than under XP with a whole new features and improvements. It's hard for me to get back at XP when I use other computers :/

Upgrading to Windows 7 took me roughly half a day. Less than 30mn to install Windows 7 (from scratch) - I think, I didn't expect it to be so fast so I went away shortly after running the install -, then installing again all apps (the same I had under Vista x64), copying the User folders, and I was done.

I just installed MC 3.2 on windows 7 64 bit. Seems to run fine. Haven't had enough time to get into it and test it completely. Boris doesn't install right and seems to mess things up though. BTW, I did get an error about turning on Open GL in my graphics card. Do you do that in MC or from the Nvidia control panel? Never had this before.