Problem
A minimum of two Videum Xpress (PCIe) cards (4400 or Quattro) are installed in one system. When 4 Windows Media Encoder tasks are started on a single cards, the system hangs or restarts automatically after a few minutes.

Failure mechanism
The problem is related to the motherboard chipset (e.g. Intel S5000 server chipset) and the PCIe bus load.

Solution
Use a motherboard with a different chipset. Or disable Delayed PCI Bus Transactions in the BIOS. Or upgrade the firmware of the Videum Xpress card from 8002 to a more recent release. Only firmware 8002 exhibits this problem.

Fireware upgrade
The firmware is upgraded during the driver installation, if the firmware upgrade option is enabled. This option is enabled by default. Never downgrade the firmware to version 8002, as this corrupts the firmware and the card needs to be returned to Winnov. Firmware 8003 solves this problem and is included in drivers 3.3.564 or greater.

How to determine the firmware version?



The screenshot above show the Videum Information Panel of a Videum 4100 AV Xpress card with firmware 8002. The firmware release are the first 4 digits of the Firmware Revision (see red frame in the screenshot above).

Read more on the firmware upgrade of the Videum Xpress cards.