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Regardless of which product is to blame, what work-arounds are there?

1. Split the RAID into separate partitions for Windows and for Mac filesystems.
2. Alternative RAID card e.g. by Promise Technology.
3. Convert the filesystem itself between Windows and Mac formats, by using iPartition (which I already have).

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OK so the RAID itself is now accessible to Windows (BootCamp-XP) but since it is formatted as HFS+ the filesystem does not mount as a Windows disk. Reseller helped investigate this further.At first, attempted use of MacDrive 7. a product that (as I understand it) lets Windows apps see HFS+ filesystems (e.g. disks). However after installation, windows kept booting then BSOD then rebooting etc… Exited by forcing a safe boot then uninstalling MacDrive. A query to MacDrive suppliers confirmed it was not compatible with the RR driver: (more…)

Had an AviSynth script which used to work OK on my old PC but not on my new one.

The first problem was that AviSynth’s AVISource command failed to find a codec for the DV (AVI) file I was trying to read.  DirectShowSource worked OK but AVISource didn’t, implying that there was no VFW codec for DV functioning on the new PC.  Indeed, the new machine had no DV Codec installed - because there isn’t one as default in XP.  When I installed the MainConcept’s DV Codec then the problem went away.

Next issue was when I put the AviSynth scipt thru VFAPI, it produced an audio-only stream.  Indeed in retrospect when I had dragged the file to VFAPI the video options had been greyed-out.   Same script worked OK on the old PC.   GSpot revealed that it worked on the old PC because that PC included an “RGB Color Space Convertor” DLL, namely LMVRGBxf.DLL.  This turned out to be part of Nero, which was indeed installed on the old PC but not the new.  Begs the question of whether such a file should ideally be on a PC and if so what are the choices?  Regardless, taking note of the “colour space convertor” description, guessed (correctly) that all I had to do was alter the end of the AviSynth script to use ConvertToRGB24 instead of ConvertToRGB32.

With those two fixes, VFAPI processed both video and audio aspects of the DV file and consequently the resulting *_vfapi.avi file was now fully (video and audio) playable in both Media Player and Sony Vegas.