AJA Io Final Cut 5, Dropping Frames

[Jus10case]

From my original post, here is my drive configuration..

( There is a 2nd SATA 200GB (ST3200822AS)internal drive that I have been capturing to for 8 months with no problem at SDI 10Bit Uncompressed from my digibeta deck. I pulled that 200GB drive and replaced it with a 500GB 7200 16MB Cache Segate (ST3500641AS). With the 500GB drive it immediatly started dropping frames on capture. So I benchmarked the drives and the 500GB was a MB or two slower than the 200GB so I bought another 500GB drive and Raid 0’d them together using the SwiftData 200 kit from transintl.com. This config tests out at about 90MB/sec read, and over 100MB/sec write, and still I get the dropped frames problem. Can anyone help? Please? I am starting to have to capture 128Min at a time and the 200GB drive just isn’t large enough to hold it. )

The internal SATA card that comes with the SwiftData kit is a FirmTek SeriTek/1V4 that gives you 4 internal ports.

As far as editing, I have been doing edit jobs on it, for 8 or 9 months now I guess, with just the 200GB drive, and I have just never really run into any problems. I know it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t to me, but before I ran into this problem with the 500GB drives I had never really researched the requirements. The system was originally bought mainly to do DVD’s on, but due to a shortage of machines to work on and our workload, I was forced to do cut a bunch of spots on it, and some longer format stuff also. I have a new Avid Adrenaline going up next week so that will take care of some of strain on our final cut machine, but I would like to have it function the way it theoretically should. I saved the text of the kona test from both the 2 500GB raid 0 and the single 200GB drive but I don’t have them on me, but I will get them off of our final cut machine on monday and post them.

[Jus10case]

Whats with all the CAPS and negative comments? EVERY piece of information that you say is needed to persue furter, was all in the ORIGINAL post (please read for comprehension and then proceed).

[Bob Zelin]

you write –
The internal SATA card that comes with the SwiftData kit is a FirmTek SeriTek/1V4 that gives you 4 internal ports.

I use the Seritek 1SE2 and Seritek 1VE4 cards ALL THE TIME, and even the 1SE2 with Seagate SATA drives (7200.9) gives 128mb/sec performance with 2 drives stripped together. If you are only getting 90-100mb/sec from two drives stripped together, then something else is loading down your system – perhaps you have a slower Firewire card in the same buss with your SATA host card. May I suggest to you that you remove EVERYTHING from your computer (including any capture cards like AJA and Blackmagic), and just keep the Firmtek card in there. Then do the speed tests with AJA Kona System test. If you still only get 90-100mb/sec with both drives at RAID 0, please delete the raid group, and try one drive at a time, to see if one drive is flakey in it’s performance. There is no reason that you should not be able to get over 120mb/sec performance with your setup and your Seagate drives. I am assuming (with no info from you) that you may have a firewire or other card in your MAC in addition to the SATA card (and I don’t mean an AJA Kona card – which should be in a different buss, like the PCI-X buss).

I did not see where you wrote down what MAC G5 you have, but I assume it’s a newer MAC G5, and NOT a MAC dual 1.8GHz machine. I recently posted that I used a dual 1.8 for the first time, and I COULD NOT get over 80mb/sec with the new Sonnet X4P and Sonnet Fusion Chassis with 5 Seagate 500 Gig drives all at RAID 0. This identical setup in a dual 2.7 MAC G5 does 178mb/sec write and 220mb/sec read, but in the dual 1.8 gig MAC will not exceed 80mb/sec. Go figure.

Please keep me in the loop on your test results.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

you write –
Whats with all the CAPS and negative comments?

REPLY –
becuase you deserve a slap. Just because.

Bob Zelin

[Tony! Hulette]

Bob’s comment about having problems with the 1.8ghz Mac’s is similar to what I’ve remember reading others have complaining about. It seems like the buss speed in those Mac’s is slower, or somehow restricted, causing problems with some hardware/pci cards. If possible try using a different Mac and see if your problems go away. You can always sell your 1.8 and buy a used 2.0 ghz Mac (or better) for relatively little cost. Other than that, I’m not sure what your problems might be. If you get any more info about your problem, or solution, please pass it along to us. Also, I know you spoke to AJA, but its not a bad idea to contact them again with whatever additional details you can supply to see if they have any similar experiences or possible solutions. Contacting the SATA card manufacturer might be even a better place to start as this problem appears to not caused in anyway by the Io itself.

Good Luck, let us know if you find a solution

Tony!