Building A Shuttle - Please Help

[halvy]

Hello everyone. I posted awhile ago but it's been awhile and, well, i forgot my old username. Anyway I'm building a Shuttle since my buddy whose laptop I've been using is moving away. I have a very limited budget but a number of salvaged parts from past computers. I have-

512mb OCZ PC 3200 Dual Chanel RAM

2 Working HD

A CD/RW Drive

A Sound Blaster Audiocard (audiogy model w/ the front pannel inputs)

I'm thinking that all I need in the Shuttle and a processor to get on my feet with a bare-essential system. I'll upgrade RAM and HD later. Most of my clips are 320x240 and some 640x480, all in indeo. I need to be able to run three clips at a time.

Any input/advice?

Model recomendations? AMD vs. Pentium

Use the soundcard? Will it work w/out the front panel?

Videocards?- Will I need a thirdparty card? I've been using s-video and most newer shuttles don't have them, Do I need a thirdparty card with s-video? If I get a third party card will it disable the vga out (which would go to the monitor) already on the shuttle?

umm... I think thats all. I guess I'm kinda asking alot but I've been researching this and can't seem to find any straight answers.

I've been VJing for about a year now and have done some freelance in San Diego but most of my work is with the instrumental band Patient Zero. Check us out if you'd like @ http://www.admittingpatientzero.com. I use a KORG midipad for triggering with resolume.

P.S. I've been scaring the shit out of kids who aren't used to the visual mayhem I'm bringing them. I LOVE VJing.

Thanks

[SuperficiaL]

Former thread

[DAS BEN]

does somebody have experiences with a shuttlesystem with a raidsystem on board?
i think raid and an extra harddive for the system is to much for a shuttle. so maybe 2 drives, 1 with 10000 speed is maybe better ? i would also like to have 2 graphiccards with sli to do multiple outputs.

[gpvillamil]

Originally posted by DAS BEN
does somebody have experiences with a shuttlesystem with a raidsystem on board?
i think raid and an extra harddive for the system is to much for a shuttle. so maybe 2 drives, 1 with 10000 speed is maybe better ? i would also like to have 2 graphiccards with sli to do multiple outputs.

Yep.

Installing RAID on an AMD based Shuttle can be tricky, in particular a bootable RAID. What a friend of mine did was install 3 drives - the first is a bootable, non-RAID with Windows on it, the other two are in a RAID0. This seems to work OK, if you can live with the increased probability of failure. My advice would be to keep your working files and library somewhere else, and only put your active clips on the RAID0, ie. treat the RAID as a fast but volatile drive.

Another thing: Resolume seems to be mainly single-threaded, so an X2 CPU will not help so much, UNLESS you need to run another app on the same machine at the same time. I happen to run Ableton + Resolume at the same time, so things work better than if I had a single core Athlon. However, if you only want to run Resolume, a high-end single core Athlon will be faster and cheaper.

Since Resolume does not use GPU acceleration, a basic graphics card with good multi-monitor support is enough. I understand that some of the Shuttles with built-in graphics can triple-head or quad-head with an additional card - see the ST20G5 for example.

I'm thinking that a good system for Resolume would be an ST20G5 with a fast single-core Athlon, an additional ATI graphics card (which would give you quad-head output) a 7200 RPM drive for system and data, and a 10000 RPM drive (instead of a floppy) for stream clips. You could put a video capture card in the PCI slot too. (The ST20G5 is interesting in that it has a PCI-Express 16x slot AND a regular PCI slot)

[MtB]

unless you are not using an external raid control card, i do not suggest you to use on board raid stuff on consumer based mainboards. we faced realy bad experiences with those.
if you want to use raid, which is practically good thing btw, buy a good raid control card.
also I strongly suggest, as the others, do not install your os to a raid striped drive

my suggested set would be something like this:

1 x 10000rpm drive formated with ntfs for the os
2 x 10000rpm drive with external raid control card striped
or 1 x 300gb or 400gb 7200rpm for archive and 1 x 10000rpm for the stream
do not forget to defrag you stream and os drive often

maximum amount of the fastest ram you can find
if you have more than 1.5gb of fast ram dont use swap file
2gb is the best

about the os,
make it light as possibe
if you can, just make it dedicate for the vjing purposes
do not install any other applications than your needs
do not install sp2 crap unless you really not need it

soundcard:
you can use the onboard soundcard

gfx card:
gpvillamil wrote quite clear about it

cpu:
amd amd amd

as gpvillamil suggested st20g5 looks pretty good

hope dat helpz
bw
t.

[DAS BEN]

thanks a lot

[continuity-B]

Originally posted by MtB

gfx card:
gpvillamil wrote quite clear about it


t.

We've been told that resolume 3 will utilise the GPU with DX9 shader technologies to *some* extent so it would perhaps be wise to get one now to future proof your res machine. They can be bought for under £100 these days

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products ... _uid=90090