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Need PCIe Recommendation
Hello,
I have a brand new Mac Pro Quad Xeon (2×2.66Mhz, 2GB Ram), a LaCie Biggest F800 and a Panasonic AJ-HD1200A. I need to be able to capture DVCproHD and DVCpro50 over firewire to the F800 drive. I understand that to do this without dropped frames or audio drift I need to install a separate PCIe Firewire Card. Correct?
1. What’s a good firewire card that will work in the new Mac Pro’s PCI-Express slots?
2. Does it make a difference wether the deck is connected to the mac port and the drive to the PCIe port or Vice Versa?
Thanks For All The Help,
SamMacPro 2×2.66Mhz, 2GB Ram, LaCie Biggest F800, AJ-HD1200A
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9 Replies
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[Sam Goldstein] “I understand that to do this without dropped frames or audio drift I need to install a separate PCIe Firewire Card. Correct?”
Never heard that one. We use FW400 for the connection to the deck and FW800 for the connection to our G-RAID’s.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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What he’s talking about is that, at least on the old machines, all the firewire ports share the same bus, so their speed is limited to the slowest device connected, in this case, the deck. So, it’s a good idea to install a separate firewire card, and run the deck on that.
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[Chris Babbitt] “What he’s talking about is that, at least on the old machines, all the firewire ports share the same bus, so their speed is limited to the slowest device connected, in this case, the deck. So, it’s a good idea to install a separate firewire card, and run the deck on that.”
Ah, I’ve only run the deck on G5’s so we never have that issue, even on the old Dual 2.0.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Thanks for thoughts guys…
But I have tried putting a G-Raid on the 800 port and the deck on the 400 port and it dropped frames quicker than when I tried to capture to the system drive. Remember, I’m using DVCpro50 and DVCproHD footage. I can get away with short clips, but not an entire 30 minute tape…. I must have tried 10x last night to get it to work with both the system drive and the G-RAID.
Any further insights???
(Incidentally, I’m using my G-Raid instead of the F800 because the F800 enclosure had a CMOS Battery Failure, but the G-Raid should be faster for this stuff anyway.)
MacPro 2×2.66Mhz, 2GB Ram, LaCie Biggest F800, AJ-HD1200A
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Yeah, I have a separate card for my system. Only one I could find at the time I needed it was from Firewire Direct (they were good)– it’s called a Nitro AV or something to that effect. I believe it has one FW800 and several FW400 ports. I have used my G-RAIDs (FW800) on the built-in and the video device (FW400) on the PCIe card AND the other way ’round. They seem to be about the same to me and the Kona speed test comes out the same either way. G-TEch shows a PCIe card on their website that should be available by now, but I can’t say as it would achieve any different result. My system has been completely trouble free with the Nitro card.
By the way, it didn’t work at all with some camcorders and VTRs without the card, as expected. Some camcorders slow the bus down to 200mbps or less.
-TomFinal Cut Studio, FCP 5.1.2, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7.1.3, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V3, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800.
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Hey Walter… I was reading back on some of your posts and discovered that RAM needs to be installed in a certain way. Currently I have 4 512K’s all on the top riser.
1. Am I to understand that I should remove the ram in 3 and 4 on the top riser and move them to the first and second slots on the lower riser?
2. Could this be why I am having a dropped frames issue with a G-RAID on the FW800 and the AJ-HD1200A on the FW400?
3. I still need to know if anyone has successfully used a PCIe Firewire card in a Mac Pro?
Thanks Again!
SamMacPro 2×2.66Mhz, 2GB Ram, LaCie Biggest F800, AJ-HD1200A
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[Sam Goldstein] “1. Am I to understand that I should remove the ram in 3 and 4 on the top riser and move them to the first and second slots on the lower riser?”
Yes, from what the Apple repair center told me AND if you open the side of the Mac Pro, there’s an illustration inside that door showing the proper installation of RAM in the riser cards.
Put the first two RAM chips in the first two slots of Riser A. Then the next two RAM chips in the first two slots of Riser B and so on.
Does your System Profiler show 1GB or 2GB of RAM? It might only show 1GB like mine did. I ended up putting the other 2GB of RAM back into our system because we removed the fibre channel array from our workflow and are currently running FW800 and SATA in the main suites. So I have 1GB sticks in Slot 1 and 2 Riser A and Slot 1 and 2 Riser B.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Well it correctly says “2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM” in About This Mac. I think I’ll reposition them anyway. It can’t hurt the situation.
-Sam
MacPro 2×2.66Mhz, 2GB Ram, LaCie Biggest F800, AJ-HD1200A
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Place the F800 on the mac port and camera on the card.
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