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Spent the evening last night at Big Al's ranch. He has a monster video-editing system (which I built for him, back in May, 2004). It's configured to dual-boot (Windows XP Pro), with one boot dedicated to running nothing but Avid Xpress Pro (Avid is the most respected name in the world of video-editing software). This particular copy of Windows is isolated from the Internet. Its network adapter is disabled. Avid recommends disabling automatic updates to the operating system, which can sometimes conflict with its editing software. Last week, we installed his new Avid Mojo, a hardware accelerator for digital video. That was cool. Last night we upgraded his copy of Avid Xpress Pro to v4.6 (form 4.3, which was over a year old). This giant 250-MB upgrade is similar in size & scope to that of Windows service packs. ••• continued ••• So first, we backed-up everything, by making a Ghost image. Then we upgraded both his copy of Windows to SP2 *and* Avid Xpress Pro to v4.6. Each a major upgrade. The digital gods must have been smiling cuz everything went beautifully. He was even able to continue editing the projects started with v4.3. I was concerned about this cuz the v4.6 installer had us first uninstall the older version. I wasn't sure if it would uninstall his current projects, too. (That woulda been ugly.) The last thing we had to do was re-install drivers for the Mojo, which subsequently updated its firmware (by itself) from files contained (apparently) in the new version of Xpress Pro. It was beautiful. I'm not going to attempt any more digital gymnastics for a week, cuz I've probably used up my allotment of luck for at least that long. Al's system has 3 monitors: two 17-inch flat panels and a 19-inch TV on which to view the final product. It has 4 hard drives, including a nasty SCSI boot/system drive to run/service both the operating system and the Avid editing program itself. One hard drive is dedicated for video files, another for audio, yet another is external (USB), so he can grab files and go. Tons of memory (RAM). All easily upgradable if need be. Beautiful system. A work of art, if I do say so myself. With the Avid software, Big Al also received a "dongle" (key) that plugs into a USB port which allows him to use/run the program. This is the only software program I know of that uses a dongle for copy protection. Maybe Maya. Afterwards we had barbeque ribs (pork), grilled veggies, corn on the cob, steamed asparagus .. out on the deck .. under the stars .. with a full moon .. hearing the waves crash .. listening to streaming jazz (from SKY.fm). Oregon honey beer never tasted so sweet. =) For more info, here is a Google search pre-configured for the query: avid xpress pro video-editing software One final comment .. on a moe pugilistic note: tonight, HBO will be re-broadcasting the boxing match between Bernard (The Executioner) Hopkins & Jermain (Bad Intentions) Taylor .. for the (undisputed) middleweight title. You could only see it on Pay-Per-View last week. Ding-ding .. "Lay-dees & gentlemen .. and in this corner ... weighing in at..." |
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