Afraid to install Vt3 now....

[vanguard]

We've been using NewTek products in a professional environment since V1.0 on a Amiga 2000.

We've had render farms, 4000Ts, Flyers the whole lot.

We've had to do all the workarounds in the world:

Y/C plus cards to get the Flyer bandwidth to be acceptable...

SCSI Zip/Jaz drives in the Flyers and "Sneakernet" to interface with the PC world...

Had to get all the OZ-ware to make the Flyer audio behave, and to do layering even marginally....

Now we have a hot-damn VT2 system.

We are doing all the workarounds for the CG, we are doing the awful backup process (Oh please make it like the Flyer again!)


And we have purchased, recieved, opened and put on the shelf our VT3 upgrade.

I will not install it ever unless NewTek issues a patch for the backward compatability of VT2 projects.

We have completed over 50 projects ranging form 30sec. TV spots, to 3 hour training modules.

If I have to spend hours "fixing" my projects to make them work with VT3, then its no upgrade to me.

I would be happy with the VT2 CG if its bugs would have been addressed. It saves, it makes clean graphics, and I know better than to not save often because of the crashing.

We did 650 spots for Echo, Inc. on the CG, thats 650 different CG pages, 650 different slates, spread over 8 CG projects, and it worked. So if I can't save in the new CG, or open my old CG projects, what do I tell Echo when they call next Spring?

"Oh, we need to re-enter all that data because we -upgraded- our software."?!?!?

Not very likley.

NewTek, if you issue a patch within the next month or two that directly addresses backward compatability, and that corrects the CG, I will install VT3 and see what happens.

I feel like that's even rolling the dice.

If you do not, I will return my VT3 upgrade to my dealer, and I will wait until VT4 or VT5 or VT6732 where these things are fixed..

NewTek has my money, I have nothing but a nice book (finally a nice book!) and like 6 pretty coasters.

I cannot afford to put my business in jepoardy.

PLEASE fix it NewTek.

[Pete Draves]

I agree with you whole heartedly
When I left the flyer I found the digisuite and speed razor.
I like the video capture part of the toaster but...
Audio need extreme help
That may be why I use razor 5.5 with a lynx card

FYI the slow mo in toaster at 11 fps is a little jerkey
but in razor with the effect rendered is is real smooth.

Realtime is not always better

Pete

[mgrusin]

If you want to return VT3 for a refund that's your call, but as another option I have both VT2 and VT3 installed in separate partitions (you select the partition you want to boot into at startup). It takes HD real estate and it's not exactly straightforward to set up (thank you MS), but I could post some broad instructions if you like.

I did this mainly because I was betatesting VT3 while still working on paying VT2 projects. However I've kept it around because of a few (and there's only a few) incompatibilities between the systems. Most VT2 projects do load into VT3 with no problems. But I have a few that won't transfer cleanly (shot in PAL which has a different frame size). For those, and for the occasional bug in VT3, I just reboot into 2 and get my work done.

I will say that there are things that VT3 can do with one click that would take hours / or be impossible / or not look good on the VT2. And for me the ability to render MPEGs from the VT-Edit.project file, without having to render out another 120GB of data, is simply fantastic.

Yes, it's still maturing. And yes, it's a bit of a gamble as to whether it will work well on a particular system (though you can hedge your bets by sticking to the hardware advice). And yes, the feature that you absolutely need may not exist or work yet and may not be there for a while. But I'm pleased enough with NT's development model (expensive upgrade then ~2 years of free updates), compared to the alternative (no Video Toaster! :( ).

Just my $0.02. -MG

[Danner]

You are right to be afraid, your old projects might not load properly. But VT3 is really sweet, so I second the idea of doing a dual windows instalation, might be the right time to give XP a try.
I dunno if the newtek team is working on a project conversion utility or compatibility patch or something, but I wouln´t hold my breath there are lots of other things in VT3 that need attention. In a perfect world upgrades should be painless.. but just ask any Mac guy why so many of them still use OS9..

[Jim_C]

Yes, I third the notion of the dual boot. Worked great for me also during beta runs. Although I have since gone back to one partition XP for T3 and one partition XP for Unreal Tournament.
Gotta have my frag time!! :P

[ACross]

All,

In response to some of the issues that have been brought up on this thread. First of all, I do not know of any bugs that would stop VT[2] projects to be read into VT[3]. If you have any projects of any kind that simply are not read, please send them to me and I will ensure that there is a fix in the next build.

All that said, there are a number of features in VT[2] projects that are NOT imported 100% identically into VT[3] projects. These are :

1) Gamma control in the color corrector is not imported.

2) The "Pan" controls in positioning are not imported. (Those the position and size controls are).

( 3) I think there might also be a slight audio level difference between VT[3] and VT[2] ... but this is actually a bug that was fixed between 2 and 3 )

Everything else should be imported without problem. The same hsould go for all other modules ... and if you send me any files that don't wory we'll fix 'em.

All the above said ... this is probably what a lot of people would like ...

I wrote a quick guide that describes how to install VT[2] on a VT[3] machine, allowing you to run both products at will. I've put a pdf online at :

www.3dgraphics.com/~deadline/HowToInstallVT2onVT3Machine.pdf

Email me if you have any problems.

Andrew

ACROSS at NEWTEK dot COM

[technorev]

I have to add my 2 cents as well. What extreme expectation I had for VT3. When the discussions emerged about having to pay for this upgrade, I gave my voice to support the paid upgrade side. So, when I received my VT3 I was ready to do all the things promised about VT3.

To prepare for my VT3, I called Newtek to make sure that I had the approved components. I purchased a new computer, motherboard, cards, memory the whole nine... I was ready for the VT3. I got it, installed it and stalled... (Please note that the VT2 worked on the new machine.) It seems, I was told, that some VT cards were not working well with the new software. I sent my card in, received it back in a timely manner and reinstalled it and... stalled again. Where stalled means that I can't get three layers of video to play in Toaster edit without stuttering.

At first I thought the problem was the Jumbacks, but I made sure that I imported the jumbacks via Aura. I deleted the Jump backs from the timeline and just used native video on those layers. Same problem. I've been talking to Tech Service who are always patient and engaging, but the net effect is my new and improved Video Toaster is not working like my VT2 had been.

So I had to instruct my tech to uninstall the VT3 and go back to the VT2 as I don't have time to experiment. I have two weekly shows that must get done. I sure hope someone has a solution. As it seems to be a shame to have new capability that is unusable. Any thoughts to help a real supporter?

[mgrusin]

Wow, thanks very much for those instructions, Dr. Cross! Your procedure will be much easier to deal with than creating a whole second Windows partition (I speak from experience ;) ).

-MG.

[Pete Draves]

Just what I need to use.
I really needed the switcher and proc amp onthe desktop for my uses. T3 does not have this capability.
It was way cumbersome to run toaster and razor at the same time. In all due respect the Toaster Edit lacks in a lot of ways for time line compositing and time line cg work.
Yes toaster is realtime. so anything that requires rendering must be done outside the editor.
Thanks for the Fix
Pete

[wvp]

Originally posted by technorev
... Where stalled means that I can't get three layers of video to play in Toaster edit without stuttering. ...
I doubt I can offer more than tech support can, but I would make sure the PCI bus speed is set high enough, the CPU settings are correct and that you do not have an issue with a bad hard drive or hard drive cable (check the settings reported in the auto-c onfig). You also can run a test on the hard drives, see my reply in the hardware forum about testing drives.

[ACross]

If you are having problems playing multi-layer projects, verify that your CPU settings are correct, your drive and PCI bus settings are correct.

Also, be warned that VT performance is not as good on an Athlon as a P4.

All that said, on a P4 machine, I expect VT[3] performance to exceed that of VT[2]. As a benchmark, on my work machine (dual P4 2.2GHz) I can get 8 layers of stills with 3D positioning, with a DV clip in the background all to play back without BG rendering. Note that rendering overlays with DV clips takes more CPU time due to the added disk reading and decompression of the data ... but you should see similar levels of performance on a similar machine.

Andrew

[technorev]

Thank all of your for your info. Please note that I do have a dual P4 system. I will check the PCI speed and CPU settings. I very much want to use the new system to it's full capacity.

Technorev.

[ACross]

Originally posted by technorev
Thank all of your for your info. Please note that I do have a dual P4 system. I will check the PCI speed and CPU settings. I very much want to use the new system to it's full capacity.

Technorev.

Technorev,

One thing I forgot ... check that the VT cache drive is set for a video array.

If you cannot find the source of the problems, drop me an email (a screenshot of your preferences would be very helpful.) What you are experiencing is certainly not normal.

Andrew

[deejay]

In regards to VT3 playing less layers .....
I was having problems with this but the machine is doing much better these days. First I'm thinking that the picvideo codec I used in T2 was the culprit (and may still be to some extent) but the real problem I figured out was when I auto-config it said VT-Edit cache PCI bandwith = 70 (I changed it to 100) AND
Vt-Edit cache CPU limit = 6.55 (?) This one threw me as I have a dual PIV 2.4ghz machine and I thought auto-config gave me a wrong number so I changed it down to something around 4. Well after messing with the prefs and messing with the prefs I gave up and thought 'what the hey' I'll just go with auto-config and see what happens ..... lo and behold! it began playing almost as good as it did with T2.

[ACross]

Actually, the GM build of VT[3] had some problems with the PicVideo codec. Basically it does not get on with us very well ... In any case, we are close to having a patch out that fixes this and a lot of other issues. If you are having problems and would like to try the beta version of the AVI fix, just drop me an email and I can send it you.

Andrew

ACROSS at NEWTEK dot COM

[deejay]

Thanks Doc.....
Already got it from my vendor (thanks to you) ... It also cured my green clip problems I had.

[PIZAZZ]

as another answer to the original question....

Buy another hard drive and 2 ICY Dock Hard Drive carriers. Change your system hard drive out when needed. Quick and Easy. Actually much easier than dual partitioning a system drive for the nontechnically inclined.

Setup one hard drive with VT3 and leave your other one as VT2. This is of course assuming all your projects are on the Video Array.

We did this ourselves when beta testing VT3 and have actually setup a couple of clients the same way so if there is something major wrong with either VT2 or 3 you can go the other direction.

I believe that you will find yourself leaving the VT3 drive in for quite a while.

We build nearly all our systems for clients with this backup system and it was worked great.

another tidbit to think about.

[technorev]

Greetings to all. I just wanted to report that I've found the problem I was having with stuttering layers. As you recall, my discomfort was that no matter how I adjusted my preferences, I couldn't get three layers of jump back/video to play no matter how long I let VT3 run.

Well, today Gill at NewTek worked with me and asked the one question, my staff failed to advise me of, namely where was the video? It seems that my staff, interested in saving space, put the jumpbacks on a system drive and not a video drive. As soon as we put the jumbacks on the video drive, we had layers and layers and layers of success - smile. Now, I will add that we did adjust the settings in Preferences, so I'm sure that both tweaks were cumulatively beneficial. Thanks to all for helping me with this problem.

Now, I'm off to edit.

TechnoRev

[edmellnik]

On a recent post I read that some one had to send in an
older board for a modification to work with VT3.

ANy one have any info on that. My board is very old but works
fine with VT2. I am getting ready to install VT3.

ed

[Paul Lara]

If it's working with Video Toaster [2], there will be no need to mod it for VT[3].

[vanguard]

Well I'll try the dual install.

I appreciate the fast response, and I'll chime in to let you know how it goes.

I'm sorry it took me a while to respond, I was out of town picking up an old RCA film-chain over the holidays....

Any word on a fix for VT3s CG saving problems?

Thanks in advance


PS Next Friday I'm off to Jersey to pick up an old quad VTR.... Ought to start a museum...

[Scott Bates]

Someone somewhere (Paul L., I think) said the CG save problem has finally been nailed to the wall, cured, and will be in the upcoming patch.