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Kona LHe and Quad sluggish
Hi there Kona Pro’s!
I am the new owner of the Kona LHe card, however I am finding many technical problems with this new card. Firstly I am experiencing a real lag in responsivness from seeing it on my 23inch display and to the composite monitor. In general FCP doesn’s seem to be as responsive at it should be when you are hitting the J K L keys backwards and forwards at various speeds.
The other thing it does, is that FCP will just hang for a minute or so, then catch up. It’s like there is a bottleneck somewhereIt seems to be not really up to speed considering I had a Kona 1 card earlier in my G4 running BMD drivers. That card worked wonderfully.
I have run through all the test’s, such as the Kona system/conflict checker etc. Apart from the lag which I certainly didn’t expect from the Quad and the Kona LHe card, I have found that the PAL setups are all screwed up, as well as the inability to use the Mac Desktop. I have read on this forum that there are driver issues. Could this be affecting my experience?
I have started to wonder if it is my drives, I benchmarked them and they are running around the 50MB a second mark which should be way sufficient for PAL DV 25. I thought about my RAM, tested and all fine. Could it be the latest quicktime?
I am going to pull the card out, and see if I have the same issues with just the Quad and FCP.I read in the installation guide of the card and it is recommended to run the latest Quicktime drivers and OS.
Here is my configuration.OS 10.4.4, Quicktime 7.0.4, FCP 5.0.4,
Quad 2.5, 6GB RAM and Nvidia GeForce 7800GT, MaxLine III 300GB SATA drive.The Kona card is in slot three from the bottom in the 8x slot. I have tried the 4x slot but same issues.
Any ideas on this would be great if you guys have some time.
Like I mentioned earlier, it is certainly not running the way it should with the latest and greatest!Thankyou
Jason
Life is too short!
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14 Replies
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[Jase] “I have started to wonder if it is my drives, I benchmarked them and they are running around the 50MB a second mark which should be way sufficient for PAL DV 25.”
That would be my first guess as the Kona card wouldn’t really affect playback performance as much as a lag in drive response. When you hit “Play” or any of the J K L keys, FCP is expecting the drives to immediately go and if they are not responding quickly, you’ll get a bad lag.
Are the drives near you where you can see them? Are they instantly responding when you kit a key or is there a lag from the time you hit the key and drive activity?
You say you’re running a SATA drive, do you have the latest / correct driver for the configuration you’re running?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Thankyou for your response Walter,
I think that you maybe right as the speed I am getting is no where near the specs of 155MB/sec. I didn’t think there were any drivers for drives? I just had a quick look at Maxtor and Western Digital and there are no drivers.
Yes, I am near the drives and they seem to be reponsive when I am just using the Quicktime player. However, in FCP there is a definate lag. FCP seems to very sloppy as it locks up sometimes when I am editing. It eventually catches up with all the keystrokes I did the minute or so before. Funnily enough though when you just scroll through the timeline with the toolbar it tracks through super fast.Hmmmm, I am stumped.
Life is too short!
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[Jase] “I didn’t think there were any drivers for drives? I just had a quick look at Maxtor and Western Digital and there are no drivers.”
Not for the drives, for the SATA card. If it’s not working correctly, that will totally slow down your performance.
Also, you need to make sure your card is in the right PCIe slot.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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The SATA drives are in the normal Quad’s drive bay.
As for the Kona LHe in the right slot, the manual says any slot. I have the card in slot three.thanks
Jason
Life is too short!
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[Jase] “The SATA drives are in the normal Quad’s drive bay.”
Oh it’s an internal drive. I never use internal drives for media.
I would not expect 155mb/sec from a single drive though, that takes at least 2 – 4 drives striped together to achieve that kind fo performance.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Thanks Walter,
I wasn’t expecting that kind of speed, though, if the drives are running at 50MB/sec I would’ve thought that would be sufficient cutting DV25.
Looks like I will have to run further hardware test’s. It really is not a happy puppy!Jase
PS: Have I got the Kona card in the correct slot?Life is too short!
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[Jase] “I wasn’t expecting that kind of speed, though, if the drives are running at 50MB/sec I would’ve thought that would be sufficient cutting DV25.”
Yeah, it’s enough speed to cut DV25, but if you’re looking for top notch performance, it’s a very slow drive. A speed test is just one part of drive performance, but how it operates when actually working with Final Cut Pro and playing back media.
That’s why when I review hard drives, the speed test is only presented as one small part of the review. I actually edit with the drives for at least a month in various situations. When you start editing with the drive, then you get a true sense of the performance of the product.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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How about resetting the computer’s SMU, or System Management Unit? The SMU is analogous to the PMU, or Power Management Unit of earlier systems.
Just a thought anyway.
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Thanks for that…where could I reset the SMU?
Life is too short!
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not to worry, found it.
Crossed fingers that this will work!Life is too short!
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