VideoReDo TVSuite & Professional - General Discussion Thread

[Marayong]

I'm not getting the pop-up, either when I open VRD directly or dragging and dropping a video onto a VRD link in explorer. I'm running the latest VRD6 non pro on W11.

In settings I have the following under "Automatic version checks"
* Check for new versions - set to 'disable'
* check daily for new builds etc - unticked
* Request permission to access internet - ticked

Note that there are three settings you need to adjust to block internet access.

On a different note ... as we all know VRD fully supports H264 and provides some support for H265. Time marches on and H266 is now on the market and H267 is now under development.

[Bridgy]

H265 has a lot more support in VRD than some might think, and the only problem that i now have with H265 (HEVC) in VRD is when i need to add titles to my 4k/60p files, it just doesn't work properly, and this is what Dan Rosen was working on at the time of his passing, but i have developed my own method of creating titles so that problem is now fixed.

I thought the lag that i was getting in the timeline and the video preview screen with my 4k/60p HEVC files was also due to issues with 4k HEVC, but it turned out to be my Metabox laptop just not having the grunt to handle it, my new Dell Pro Max SFF PC with the Ultra 7 265 CPU has sped that process up quite a lot now.

Video formats can be very confusing, H266 is supposed to be competing with AV1 but AV1 is already well advanced so i personally think AV1 is really competing with H265 (HEVC) and not H266 as expected, but AV1 is still not that well implemented into consumer hardware/cameras yet.

The so called H266 will most likely be competing with AV2 and not H267 as it was meant to be doing, but anything beyond AV1 and H265 i think are simply too far away, and i doubt we will ever see H266, H267, and AV2 in any consumer grade cameras, least not for a very long time, and i think that AV1 and AV2 might prevail over H266 or H267 because of the free royalty thing, which is one of it's main features.

Personally i don't see any point in moving from 4k and HEVC in phones and consumer video cameras, and i certainly won't be moving from it any time soon, so VRD will always be ok for me for the next 5 years at least.

[Bridgy]

Been pretty quiet in here lately, anyway, got the following news to share.

In reference to my original VRD Pro that was activated on my Metabox laptop (Win 10 pro) back in 2019, and was updated to the last Beta build just before Dan passed away.

I have finally worked out a way to install it and activate it on my Dell Pro Max desktop PC using the original license, it is no longer locked to the Windows 10 Metabox laptop, but it now won't work any more on that laptop.

This was an impossible thing to do with the Pro version since Dan passed away because of the way in which Dan set up the activation server, anyone who wanted it installed on a new computer had to ask Dan for a new activation code so it would be deactivated on the previous machine first, so what i have done seems to mimic what Dan used to do, only using the same serial key.

The Machine ID code had to be changed from my Metabox laptop to my Dell PC, which took a long time to work out how to do.

If this crashes out on my Dell PC then i will most likely lose my VRD activation all together.

[mocarob]

I have a HEVC file that VRD 6 Pro shuts down as soon as it gets to the first cut. I adjusted the TS mux rate but it didn't help.
It doesn't matter where I put the cut, I still have the same issue. I even ran it thru TS Doctor - no errors.. I was able to cut the file in half but any time I try to cut a commercial it has this problem. Any advice? Do the cuts have to be on key frames? If so, I see B's & P's showing on screen when looking at single frames. What do they signify? TIA

[Bridgy]

I don't use VRD for TV broadcast stuff so i can't help you, my use for VRD for the past 15 years has been for working with video recorded on a camera, so my usage is very different.

Be aware that the HEVC format was still being developed at the time of Dan Rosen passing away, and obviously VRD has never been continued with development, but the only issues i have had with VRD and HEVC is on my 4k recorded files, doing my cuts was or is a very slow process as the seeking in the timeline is laggy, if i work with 1080p HEVC files it is ok.

VRD is frame accurate with cut points, no need to cut on keyframes that i am aware of.

[Bridgy]

In the following link below, some person keeps going on about this so called "Smart Media Cutter" tool and how superior it is to any other cutting tool out there, including VRD, and suggesting that SMC will out do VRD, well they fail to remember that VRD is not just a cutting tool, it also converts to other video formats too, something that SMC and even LosslessCut cannot do, the issue with VRD is that it is no longer being developed, if it was, then imagine just how far it would have advanced during the past 3.5 years since Dan Rosen passed away, these other Tool developers would not even stand a chance.

I tested one of my 4k/60p HEVC files in VRD, LosslessCut, and SMC to show how each one handles playback of the file (let alone try to seek to cut points) and the results speak for themselves.

SMC was by far the worst of the 3 as far as playback and the shit quality of the video file in the preview screen.

VRD was better, still a bit laggy, but the preview screen is better than SMC.

LosslessCut is hands down and by far the best tool for handling these 4k/60p HEVC files, no lag in preview mode or in the timeline seeking, and the quality of the video in the preview screen is stunning compared to the others.

I still don't get why these developers cannot create or mimic the cutting tool setup the same as it is in VRD, some seem to claim that it does, but that is crap, it may look a bit like it, but it certainly doesn't work the same.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/415875-Smart-Media-Cutter/page2#post2793873

[Alwyn]

@Bridgy, I suggest you take your foul-mouthed language and toxic attitude somewhere else. You're an embarrassment to Australia. There are other civil ways of getting your point across without carrying on like a complete knob.

[Bridgy]

@Bridgy, I suggest you take your foul-mouthed language and toxic attitude somewhere else. You're an embarrassment to Australia. There are other civil ways of getting your point across without carrying on like a complete knob.

You know what you can do with your stupid comments, you always had a beef with me so you need to stay away from my business and just keep your own fingers off your keyboard.

I have no idea what you mean by my Foul Mouth Language, but if people in forums want to make stupid claims about something, then they need to accept that some might come back and have a go at them.

SMC has issues, i am not the only one saying it, maybe those users are just too dam scared to say it like it really is.

You have made about 6 posts in this thread and not contributed anything in those, so i recommend that if you don't like what i say, then go find another hole to bury your head in, and stay out of my business, or post content about the topic of the thread, not poke insults.

[Marayong]

bridgy .. good news the licence transfer worked. I trust you fully documented everything so you know what to do when you next upgrade the PC running VRD. I presume you are imaging the drive so if the drive carks it, you can pop in a replacement and still have VRD working .. assuming the the VRD Pro licencing transfers via cloning/imaging (as long as the Machine ID doesn't change.

mocarob ... whilst I do use VRD to cut out adverts, my hardware records as H264 (and I don't have VRD pro), so I can't replicate your issue. Maybe try turning hardware acceleration & encoding off for VRD. There have also been a few reports of people having issues with VRD & HEVC files because VRD does not support the latest codecs. There have also been reports of o/s updates breaking VRD for some videos, especially those with new codecs. The only solution I can think of would be to run the unedited files through handbrake (or similar) and convert them to an older codec or even H264 and then seeing if they will edit with VRD. BTW, I assume you have a licenced install of VRD and not a trial version - since VRD is payware, any trial version is of course going to be crippled.

As for smart media cutter .. I also had a look at it a while back and agree, compared to VRD it is rubbish. Mind you, it does work as an editor, but the results are subpar and its capabilities inferior to other pay-to-use and even free software. Maybe it will improve with time. It'd be great if there was a decent single replacement for VRD.

[Bridgy]

Yes, but SMC needs to add the Export to other formats feature to make it even remotely close to VRD, and this has always been my issue when people out there make these stupid claims that XXX software is going to be better than VRD, when it is absolutely impossible unless they add every feature to their software that VRD has had since it was created.

Give us a better smart cutting tool, and an option to export to other formats, and do both better than VRD.

As for cloning my current Dell Pro Max drive with VRD, yes i always run my Hasleo Disk Clone Pro every sunday night to my spare Crucial T500 drive so i can toss it into the PC if my current X-Lite drive fail.

I have tested the VRD license activation on another laptop yesterday by running a clone from my Dell Pro Mac PC onto the NVMe drive from that laptop, and when it booted up, windows ran it's usual driver updates for the Dell laptop, and glad to report that even though the Dell laptop has a different hardware ID code than the Dell PC, my VRD stayed active as we hoped it would.

Previously without my mod, if i cloned my original windows 10 drive from my metabox laptop onto the drive from another PC or laptop, the original VRD would not be activated any more, now we have overcome this issue with the mod that we created, so i can now install it on any machine and apply the original activation key given to me by Dan Rosen, and it will over ride the hardware ID and register.

Would be nice if certain members of this forum would mind their business and stay away from this thread if they are not able or capable of adding something relating to the topic instead of throwing mud all the time.

[Marayong]

Absolutely. My hardware records in the ts format, a format that is not particularly noted for widespread hardware playability. But it is a good recording format since there is little processing done as it is recorded, which means less demand on the computer and less chances of glitches in the recording. For me, an editor being able to save as a different format, be it mp4 or mkv, is absolutely essential. If the editor/cutter does not do that, then for my uses it is rubbish. After all, converting from one format to another is not exactly a complicated process ... there are plenty of freeware/open source software that does just that which the producers of any editing software could incorporate. So any editor that does not also offer that ability is, as I said, rubbish.

Looks like your modification (or that of your tech mate, more to the point) has done the job and made a licenced VRD pro install transferable to another computer just as was already possible with the non-pro version.

[Bridgy]

Yeah, it's ok for some to use a stand alone cutting tool, if it is absolutely frame accurate and not rely on working properly on cuts made on Key frames only, then use another stand alone video converter, but as i have already found out with cutting my files with LosslessCut, when i import the file into VRD then i have issues with the final exported file, and more so if i also try to add my own custom titles made using a different tool.

I have not bothered to try cutting out a 4k/60p HEVC file with SMC because the file is almost unplayable in the preview window and on the timeline below it, so getting cuts done is impossible, so i probably won't know if VRD will play nicely with those files anyway, but i could try testing with a 4k/60p AVC file from my camera and see what happens.

At least SMC does support cutting and playback of 4k/60p AVC files.

EDIT: i wonder if the SMC paid for version will support my 4k/60p HEVC files without any of the issues i have with the free version, and i wonder what do we get in the paid version that is not supported in the free version ???

At least LosslessCut not only supports 4k/60p HEVC, it also supports 8k video as well, if only the developer would sort out the frame accurate cutting, i would use it in a heart beat.

[Marayong]

It's all about horses for courses ... SMC may be suitable for some users .. many even ... but not everyone has the same needs and any piece of software may meet the needs of one person and not another. For me, every time you manipulate a file, you run the risk of introducing glitches or degrading the quality, so I [refer to do everything at once, which VRD does. For degrading quality ... think old school with making a copy of a copy of a copy of a cassette tape. Or photocopying a photocopy. Each time you process it, you lose quality. Sure, that's analogue media and VRD etc edits digital files, but the principle remains.

For the time being, I'm only recording as H264, so no need to look beyond VRD as long as it continues to work. The only worry I have is if a future windows upgrade breaks VRD .. and if that happens, I'll just run VRD in a VRD-compatable Windows VM, whether I buy a Win11 licence for the VM or use a Win7 licence I have lying around.

[Bridgy]

yep, i agree, we all have different needs, especially me, because i only ever edit or convert video files from a camera, i don't do TV broadcast stuff.

I might as well go back to recording video in 4k/60p AVC given there is no visible image quality difference between that and HEVC (except for lower file size) and then do my editing in VRD, then export to HEVC in 4k or 1080p as required.

when my mum passed away last month i recorded her memorial service and cremation, it decided to record it in 4k/60p AVC @ 71.0Mbps (for editing purposes) and it was 40 minutes long after editing, the file size was 20gb, i did the titles and credit, then converted it to 4k/60p HEVC in VRD and it came down to 13.8gb, i then exported the finished 4k/60p AVC file to 1080p hevc and it ended up at 3gb in size, and this is the file that i used to share the video privately in Youtube, and to send a download link to those who wanted a copy of the video.

Imagine sending people a link to download a 20.0gb video file ?

[Marayong]

Makes sense.

For many .. and possibly everyone .. video technology (both software & hardware) has improved to the point where further improvements are not visible to the naked eye. I know that point has been reached and then surpassed quite a bit with still photography. With a 200MP camera you may be able to zoom in and read the writing on the proverbial pin head or take a full-frame photo of a pimple .. but do you really need to do that? Rhetorical question please!

For video technology, recent improvements are less in terms of quality as they are in video compression, so you get the same video quality for a smaller file. But given that storage these days is quite cheap, whether hard drives or cloud, reducing the file size is really only needed for quicker file transfer. If I ever need to transfer a large H264 recording, I can always then use freeware/open source software to convert it to a modern codec with a much smaller file file, but that's a rare occurrence.

As for a 20G video file .. with high speed internet that's not that long a download .. a couple movies from your favourite streaming service would come close. The issue would be less in downloading such a file as the creator finding somewhere on the internet they could temporarily store such a file whilst allowing others to have access. Dropbox free only offers users 2G.

[Bridgy]

As for a 20G video file .. with high speed internet that's not that long a download .. a couple movies from your favourite streaming service would come close. The issue would be less in downloading such a file as the creator finding somewhere on the internet they could temporarily store such a file whilst allowing others to have access. Dropbox free only offers users 2G.

In my family circle 20gb is huge, and most of them only have a low speed NBN plan, and i only have 1 brother who would even contemplate downloading a 20gb file and store it.

For me, recording in 4k/60p HEVC or AVC then editing, then downscale to 1080p to get a 3gb file is the easiest thing for me to do, and the only device they will play these videos on will be their laptops or in a couple of cases a desktop PC and none of those require the files in 4k, the 1080p quality from the 4k file is absolutely fine, if they play the files on a 4k tv then the tv will upscale it, and the quality will still be perfectly fine.

Obviously the better the quality of the 4k file the better the 1080p version will be, and that is why i hate recording video using mobile phones.

[Marayong]

Been there with slow internet. Up until a few years we were on FTTN which means we were largely stuck on the legacy copper network. 5-10MBPS on a good day, no matter what the plan's speed was supposed to be. Then the copper lines carked it shortly after they finally rolled out FTTP, so we jumped on that. Mind you, FTTP was only made available after the ALP won the election and the local MP who lives a few minutes walk away just happened to be appointed a cabinet minster .. amazing (not) how quickly something was done about the crappy NBN on offer with a cabinet minister pushing for some action.

And to be fair .. most people don't have the mega storage capability that either of us do. A laptop or even tablet and maybe a few USB sticks/drives is the limit for most people .. then again, anyone posting in this forum is unlikely to be in that "most people" category.

And all quite true about 4k -> 1080p videos ... you might notice a difference on a really big screen and if you have good vision. On a smaller screen like a pc the only real noticeable difference would be clearer high speed motion, but that's due to a higher bitrate and compression/decompression, not screen resolution.

[Bridgy]

Yeah, just avoid 75" or bigger TV if upscaling, but to be honest i have a Samsung 75" on my loungeroom wall, and my 1080/60p HEVC files (downscaled from 4k) look great as long as you sit 3 metres or more away, when it comes to TV shows well you need to be at least 5 metres away, and even then the picture can still look like crap in some cases.

As for storage, nobody i know has any other storage devices other than the storage that is inside their laptop or PC, or inside their phones, because nobody does backups of their precious files, they all think that just having it all sitting on the one device will be fine, UNTIL that device stuffs up, or is lost or stolen.

I do a lot of laptop and mobile phone work for most of my family and friends, even people who live here in our townhouse complex, i am the one who they come to when they need help, or need a new phone or laptop, and i can tell you not one of those 20+ people back up any of their stuff stored on them, and so far at least 5 of them have had their phone stolen or lost, a few have died or become faulty, and 3 or 4 laptops have died, and i got the call for help from all of them, the phones i couldn't do anything about, the laptops i removed the drives and ran my recovery tool over them, 3 i managed to get their files and 2 drives were dead, the files i did get back were either broken or they were reconstructed and ended up being in a very low resolution that made them unusable.

I just don't bother telling people to backup their stuff any more because nobody bothers to do it anyway, the same as i try to get people to turn off, or restart their phones on a regular basis, say once a week or more, but they won't do it, and not to charge the phone past 80% as well, but many people will chrge their phone every day regardless what the battery % is at that time.

[Marayong]

The missus usually hogs the big tv screen, so I usually watch stuff on one of my pc monitors (well technically the big tv is also set up as a monitor). Yah .. TVs are designed to be watched at a certain distance so that the imperfections in the video are not (as) obvious. They all have their Goldilock's distance .. too close and you see all the imperfections, too far away and you start to lose visual resolution. Different screens, different brands, different models all have their own Goldilock's distance. Computers of course have a much closer Goldilock's distance. Our big TV is maybe 3m from the couch ... a distance dictated by the room. But it's 1080p, not 4K.

As for storage ... that's why I specified people here vs. people elsewhere. Everyone here is involved in video editing, which requires storage, so most if not all here (past, present & future) would have additional storage, whether it's your cloud storage, additional internal drives, external docks & drives or a raid/etc box/server. I do know a few people IRL who I've convinced to backup at least their photos, music and data files to an external drive .. usually because they have lost stuff when a previous pc has died on them so they have been burnt before. Others can be burnt multiple times and still don't learn. A community radio station DJ I know lost his entire music library when his laptop died. And he still doesn't back up! He was lucky that a few years earlier he'd given me a copy of his music library, so I was in effect his backup and he just lost the last few years worth .. which wasn't an issue since his speciality is golden oldies. Not my genre of choice, but my wife likes that stuff. Been there, done that for recovery jobs for friends & family.

Admittedly, I don't back up either of my laptops, but I don't use them for storing anything, so if one dies it's just a matter of setting up a new one and transferring the browser profiles etc from the desktop .. and the desktop gets backed up at least once a week, both the boot drive (clones) and the data drives (backup software).

[Bridgy]

sadly most people who use laptops only have 1 drive inside, so all of their files go to that windows drive (mostly photos etc) but never back it up, even if they had a 2nd internal drive with files on that, they still don't bother to back up either, i know this from my 15 years as a dell and HP service tech, and from looking after and maintaining most of my families tech devices.

As you probably know, any internal files drives in my computer or laptop are encrytpted first with Veracrypt before i add my files, and i need to mount said drive in windows explorer to access it, i do this strictly for security purposes, if someone stole the machine from home, or if it was a laptop and i lost it away from home, they cannot get my files, nor can they use recovery software to get files from the drive because of the encryption, they can have the windows drive because there is never any files stored on that.

My Mum never had a user password on her laptop, which was my old 2008 Dell Studio 1735 with Windows 10 pro, i insisted but she insisted on not having one, so everything on that laptop was open for anyone to see, i had a 2nd SSD inside for her files years ago, but that just confused her so i left it with just the single 500gb EVO SSD windows drive.

Same with her phone 3 years ago, she left it in a store while paying for her stuff, that never had a pin or password either, lucky the cashier found the phone and called her to let her know.

I always backed up her contacts and photos on her phone, and her files on the laptop as well, i now have that laptop back as she passed away 6 weeks ago, so i have 1 less device to worry about, her phone was reset and given to my sister in law.

[Marayong]

You're preaching to the choir about backups. Admittedly I don't back up my laptops, but I don't store anything on them that needs backing up and they are much the same in terms of installed software, profiles etc, so if one died I could easily switch to the other, so whilst I don't image/clone the drives in them, I suppose I do have them 'backed up' in a sense. The desktop is another matter with multiple backups of every drive. Really important stuff like photos I even back up to optical media so I've got them stored on different types of media.

As for laptops and internal drives.. most laptop models only have the ability to have one internal drive. Both of mine only have the one drive but a 2nd can be added .. but it's physically not as simple as adding a drive to a desktop.

[Bridgy]

What is "optical media"

I have not even seen one of those UFO's for many many many (recurring) years, would have to be 2012 the last time i even had a laptop that had an optical drive, but i do still have my first ever laptop which is a 2008 17" Dell Studio 1735 that has a Bluray drive, my Mum used this laptop for the past 5 years until she passed away last month.

Laptops are easy to replace or add another drive (if it has the 2nd slot to add one) and i almost find it just as easy as doing so in a desktop, maybe except for having to unscrew a lot tiny screws, using a magnetic screwdriver.

NVMe SSD drives are so easy to install, and apart from my 2008 17" Dell Studio 1735, which currently has a 500gb Samsung Evo SSD in it, my other 3 laptops and my Dell Pro Max Desktop PC all have NVMe drives, the Dell PC has 3 inside it right now.

My backup storage is also a 1tb Crucial T500 NVMe ssd inside an NVMe usb enclosure, and that drive plugged into the super fast USB slots in my Dell PC, backing up is done in a flash.

I do also have a 1tb Sandisk Extreme micro sd card that i use in my small Lexar USB sd card reader as well, i often use that when i travel, but even that is a slow dog these days.

[Marayong]

Optical media ... I know ... really old tech, but it has the advantage that it's a non-magnetic type of storage and one that is, depending on the quality of the disks and how they are stored, potentially longer lasting than magnetic storage. Besides, I have a pile of them from decades ago when I was burning DVDs, so might as well get some use out of them. I've got a bluray drive in the desktop and a usb DVD drive if I ever wanted to plug it into a laptop .. useful for digitising old DVDs and CDs, if nothing else.

I'm sure it's easy to replace/add a drive to a modern laptop .. I've just never done it. The last time I changed a laptop drive it was a SSD sata drive. My desktop does have two NVMe sockets, alas they are buried underneath the graphics card & not accessible .. the mobo designer obviously believes a user will want *either* a video card or a NVMe drive but not both. That's gigabyte for you.

For external cloning I have a Startech dock with takes 3" and 2.5" satas and NVMe drives. It's easier to remove a drive than an enclosure, plus this dock comes with a high powered fan, which is useful to prevent ssd drives overheating when cloning/imaging to them. The dock is tested up to 16T drives and tech support at starteck tells me they should work on 32T+ drives since the chips & other hardware in the dock are compatible up to at least 64T, they just haven't tested them.

Samsung Evo's ... I've had so many of them die on me. Will never buy another one. I've got a bunch of them sitting in a drawer .. haven't decided what I'll do with them yet. I'm using one as a backup drive, but that's as far as I'd trust one of them.

[cp2]

For data storage 3 off 4 bay NAS drives each with 4x8TB Seagate Ironwolf drives in RAID5 configuration does for me. The two NAS drives used for films, TV programmes and music are 90% full though.

[Bridgy]

I'm sure it's easy to replace/add a drive to a modern laptop .. I've just never done it. The last time I changed a laptop drive it was a SSD sata drive. My desktop does have two NVMe sockets, alas they are buried underneath the graphics card & not accessible .. the mobo designer obviously believes a user will want *either* a video card or a NVMe drive but not both. That's gigabyte for you.

That is a bit dumb to have NVMe slots so they will be buried under a graphics card is just dumb.

Got to love my Dell Pro Max SFF Desktop, 2x 2280 and 1x 2230 NVMe drive slots, no slot for any other drive, no need these days with NVMe being the norm in laptops and computers, but it is very easy to install an SSD in there if you know what your doing, just need Sata connector to hook it up to the Mobo, good for those who might have a spare large capacity drive for files storage and can tolerate the horridly slow speed.

Taken the day it arrived with a single Hynix 512gb (PC811 SED SK) 4.0 2280 NVMe drive, Read is 7000 and Write is 6500, pretty dam fast and the same speed as my Crucial T500 drives, which are in the Computer now, the Hynix is used as a Files backup drive.


[Attachment 91604 - Click to enlarge]

NVMe drive prices are rediculous these days, i bought 2x 1tb Crucial T500 NVMe last December at $179, now $259 on Sale (normally $299) and i got 2x 500gb T500 NVMe drives for $139 each, now they are $219.

[Marayong]

Bridgy .. if you had anything other than a mini-card in that first slot, one of your highlighted connectors would also be unavailable because of the card. None of my pcie cards, including the 8-bit one is a short card. Different mobo boards, different priorities. But I agree, it is a bit dumb to place it there, but with the specified specs for what I needed, something had to be sacrificed to fit everything into the standard mobo size.

cp2 .. I've used raids arrays in the past, but I've since settled on a 4-bay dock which is rated at least 32T per bay with each bay having it's own power button. I've currently got 2x8T and 2x16T drives in there. I use that for video storage and a bunch of 8T external drives for backups and portable use. The dock is a lot cheaper than a NAS, uses FAR less power and will take any combination of sata drives. Yes, it has disadvantages compared to a NAS, but for me those disadvantages are either irrelevant or not critical. It's only for archive storage, so I only power up an individual bay when I need it. Anything that I want to keep handy I store on a large internal drive dedicated to just that. if I turn disk caching off I could even hot swap drives in the bays. If I run out of storage, I can upgrade a smaller drive to a higher capacity (the manufacturer tells me it should work with 64T drives).

But for my photos I prefer to use at least one non-magnetic media for backup, which ATM means optical disks. I await the day when optical storage onto cubes hits the market (that's currently in development). Main storage for photos is an internal drive, plus an external drive for backup 1 and DVDs for backup 2. I use the same dual media backup for everything else that's really important and which is irreplaceable. Recorded/downloaded video doesn't fall into that category. I'd be pissed off if I lost all the copies of a movie I'd had archived .. but I'd be devastated if I lost all the photos of the grandkids over say a 1 year period. Hence I use multiple backup media types ... and ATM that's limited to magnetic drives or optical disks. Optical drives are slow and have a low storage capacity, but magnetic drives, whether tape, floppy, hdd, ssd etc are all susceptible to corruption from power surges or even the wrong type of cosmic ray at the wrong place and time. Cosmic rays are a known cause for magnetic drive failure, drives both in storage and in use, and there's nothing you can do to prevent it other than rely on the low odds of it happening to you .. but with so many drives on this planet, it's just happened to someone somewhere on the planet. Optical drives are immune to this sort of damage.

As for NVMe vs sata .. it'd be nice to have the faster drives, but it's not critical for my needs .. and sata is a LOT cheaper. In fact for very high capacity drives (16T+), the only real options are platter sata drives. Yes, 16T+ SSDs do exist, but only at well above US$10,000 each. 30T+ platter drives sell for under US$1000. My budget could stretch to the last, but definitely not to a 16T SSD!

[Bridgy]

Bridgy .. if you had anything other than a mini-card in that first slot, one of your highlighted connectors would also be unavailable because of the card. None of my pcie cards, including the 8-bit one is a short card. Different mobo boards, different priorities. But I agree, it is a bit dumb to place it there, but with the specified specs for what I needed, something had to be sacrificed to fit everything into the standard mobo size.

You referring to the blue PCI slot next to the 2230 NVMe slot, if i had a 2230 card in that short slot i can put a low profile graphics card in that blue slot and it won't affect the card, i could still get to it without removing the graphics card because i tried it, i can't use any normal size graphics card in this box as it is only 80mm height, and i don't use external graphics cards anyway, i only need the onboard graphics on the CPU, in my case Intel Arc which is more than i need for my work.

[Marayong]

No, I meant the short 8-bit slot to the right of the blue pcie slot. If one put a normal length card into that slot it would be on top of the nvme slot. Obviously a graphics card would go in the blue slot, but if you had more cards to go in, then it would then impact that nvme slot. My point being that every mobo design has compromises ... yours can't have 3 full length pcie cards and also have access to all of the nvme slots. With mine a graphics card blocks the nvme slot. The guy who built it for me said it might be possible to plug in an 'extension cord' into the nvme slot and plug a nvme into the end of that .. presuming such an extension cord exists, but then the nvme would be left 'flapping in the breeze'

[Bridgy]

So you are referring to the card indicated by the red arrow being a normal size/length card then it would cover the 2230 slot ?


[Attachment 91624 - Click to enlarge]

If so then i could still remove a 2230 card from that NVMe slot very easily because the riser where the short card plugs into now is the same height as the blue riser, which is about 20mm tall off the surface of the mobo, and looking at the card that is in there now, there would easily be at least 20mm clearance between the bottom edge of the card and the top surface of the 2230 card, and the small hold down screw can be accessed and removed as well (might not look like it but it can be) so if you remove the screw, the 2230 card will spring up on the screw end, and i could grab it and pull it out.

If you could look inside this small box you will see what i mean, but stuff like that is a non issue anyway because i don't have any need to install any other cards (except NVMe) other than what is in there now, that is why i bought this Pro Max PC because of it's tiny size and that it has a really good CPU with Intel Arc graphics, and no need to worry about stuff blocking access to other slots or cards.

I can only use a low profile graphics card as well because anything else will be too high and the lid would not fit back on the case, these are Small Form computers and are designed for those who just need to use it as it is without wanting to upgrade parts.

On a proper desktop that is built to have dedicated graphics cards or have those big cpu coolers that cover half the motherboard, then i guess you make sure that you use a mobo that has the NVMe slots easily accessible regardless of what you plug into the mobo, otherwise you need to look at alternative drive options, but i personally would never go back to using any old technology as far as storage drives go, if i can't use NVMe drives for everything i do now then i would give computing away completely.

I do miss build big gaming rigs though, probably built well over 200 while my son was going thru high school and college.

[Marayong]

It's hard to tell from a photo ... it's only a 2D depiction.

In the end I don't need the extra speed and since sata ssd's are a lot cheaper, I'll stay with them. We also have different needs so my pc box is ... big. Very big. I could've gone with a mobo that a bunch of easy to access nvme slots, but inside the box I have a 1T boot drive and 3x8T data/backup drives. The cost of 3x8T nvme drives would be quite painful (even for satas it is painful), so I needed a mobo with at least 3x sata ports .. more actually since I also wanted a bluray burner. With other required specs, there wasn't much choice in mobo's, so I was stuck with one which has the nvme slot under where a graphics card would go. As I said, every computer design is a compromise based on one's requirements.