At my wits end

[Arnie Schlissel]

Here’s exactly what I & everyone else here knows about your system:
You’re running FCP 4.5
You have an Io
You have some sort of SCSI RAID that doesn’t work
You used to work on an Avid

Here’s exactly what we don’t know:
Why your RAID failed
What kind of material you’re working with
What Mac you’re working on
How much memory you have
What kind of drive you’re currently working with, and how big, and how is it formatted
In short- everything that would be needed to give you some help

Meet us halfway, tell us everything you can tell us about your system. Odds are that you’re not set up properly, & that’s why you’re dropping frames now.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Walter Biscardi]

[Arniepix] “Meet us halfway, tell us everything you can tell us about your system. Odds are that you’re not set up properly, & that’s why you’re dropping frames now.”

If everyone would just fill out all this information in their profile, it would make troubleshooting so much faster and easier for all of us.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Michael Vance]

I am digitising S-VHS media that is going through UVW1800 via the S-Video input. For sync I am using the video output of the SVHS player into the sync input of the 1800 looped into the sync input of the AJALAIO. This is the only way I know to get a stable picture from the SVHS player into the Mac. Now I’ve done this successfully in the past so I think it shouldn’t be a problem. The problem I have is with stuttering playback.

The media was captured on one of two WideSCSI SEAGATE drives. The drives interface to the computer via an ATTO ExpressPCI UL4D. Theses drives are in theory fast enough to do nearly do realtime uncompressed NTSC 10bit without even being striped. Apparently the drives aren’t having any problem playing the media back in Quicktime, so I don’t know why they would in FCP.

As to why the two drives won’t stripe. I don’t know. The error message says the won’t “because of the error” Presumably, that would THE error I guess. You know, that one.

I figure no matter how bad the drives are, and I’ve tried digitising to them both, they should at least be able to handle DVCPro50 or DV. I’ve tried all the easy setups. When I digitise uncompressed 10 bit that actually seems to have fewer stutters than the others. I don’t know, maybe I don’t know the secret handshake. If someone knows please help me.

Hardware Overview:

Machine Model: Power Mac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 2.5 GB
Bus Speed: 1.25 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.8f7

DIMM0/J11:

Size: 256 MB
Type: DDR SDRAM
Speed: PC3200U-30330

DIMM1/J12:

Size: 256 MB
Type: DDR SDRAM
Speed: PC3200U-30330

DIMM2/J13:

Size: 1 GB
Type: DDR SDRAM
Speed: PC3200U-30330

DIMM3/J14:

Size: 1 GB
Type: DDR SDRAM
Speed: PC3200U-30330

ATTO ExpressPCI UL4D:

Name: ATTO,ExpressPCIProUL4D
Type: scsi-2
Bus: PCI
Slot: SLOT-4
Vendor ID: 0x117c
Device ID: 0x0030
Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x117c
Subsystem ID: 0x8013
ROM Revision: 1.4.2f1
Revision ID: 0x0008

ATY,RV360:

Type: display
Bus: AGP
Display Type: CRT
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 128 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x4152
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-A13602-121

Display:

Type: display
Display Type: CRT
VRAM (In Use): 64 MB
Resolution: 1152 x 870 @ 75 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes

Display:

Type: display
Display Type: CRT
VRAM (In Use): 64 MB
Resolution: 1600 x 1200 @ 70 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes

SCSI Bus:

SEAGATE ST3146807LW:

Capacity: 136.73 GB
Manufacturer: SEAGATE
Model: ST3146807LW
Revision: 0007
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk1
OS9 Drivers: No
SCSI LUN: 0

MV1:

Capacity: 136.61 GB
Available: 135.96 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s3
Mount Point: /Volumes/MV1

SCSI Bus:

SEAGATE ST3146807LW:

Capacity: 136.73 GB
Manufacturer: SEAGATE
Model: ST3146807LW
Revision: 0007
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk2
OS9 Drivers: No
SCSI LUN: 0

MV2:

Capacity: 136.61 GB
Available: 134.2 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+
BSD Name: disk2s3
Mount Point: /Volumes/MV2

USB Bus:

Vendor Name: Apple Computer, Inc.
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Product ID: 32773 ($8005)
Bus Power (mA): 500

FireWire Bus:

Speed: 800 Mb/sec Speed

IoLA:

Manufacturer: AJA Video Systems, Inc.
Model: IoLA
Unit Spec Id: 2599
Speed: 400 Mb/sec Speed
Unit Software Version: 20

System Software Overview:

System Version: Mac OS X 10.3.7 (7S215)
Kernel Version: Darwin 7.7.0

Final Cut Pro HD:

Version: 4.5

[Blub06]

Where are you located, city town?

[Michael Vance]

New York, NY. Are you trying to make my misery complete?

[Arnie Schlissel]

I’m in NY. I can probably help you over the weekend. But there will have to be beer involved. My email & phone # are on my website.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Walter Biscardi]

[michael vance] “The media was captured on one of two WideSCSI SEAGATE drives. The drives interface to the computer via an ATTO ExpressPCI UL4D. Theses drives are in theory fast enough to do nearly do realtime uncompressed NTSC 10bit without even being striped. Apparently the drives aren’t having any problem playing the media back in Quicktime, so I don’t know why they would in FCP.”

I’m not familiar with those drives, but I did have a LOT of issues with the UL4D card when I was still running SCSI drives. My drives simply would not mount correctly and when they did work, they would suddenly stop working for no apparent reason. I went back to my older UL3D and all the problems went away for the drives.

Do you have any Firewire drives available? If so, try capturing to the DV codec to those just to see if you can capture / playback fine.

If not, set your Mac HD as the Scratch Disk and capture one clip in the DV codec to see if that will capture / playback fine.

If either of these tests work, then your issues lies in the SCSI Card / SCSI Drives. The fact that they won’t stripe together is a real red-flag on the setup. Could still be a bad drive in there or something wrong with one of the arrays.

I only ran Medea SCSI arrays and never had a lick of trouble with them until I put in the UL4D. I’m betting once you get your harddrive situation cleared up, everything else will smooth out.

For 8bit Uncompressed, you can easily run a G-RAID FW800 or LaCie Big Disk Extreme FW800 unit.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Gary Adcock]

Q[michael vance] “he media was captured on one of two WideSCSI SEAGATE drives. The drives interface to the computer via an ATTO ExpressPCI UL4D. Theses drives are in theory fast enough to do nearly do realtime uncompressed NTSC 10bit without even being striped. “

IF you cannot stripe the drives there may be a directory issue. That could also account for FCP not wanting to handle the footage correctly.
A single scsi drive ( and these drives are SCSI-2/ 3 not the later SCSI 160 / 320 ie: board speed) according to the model numbers I looked at.

try 2 things-
1) you need to run diagnostics on the drives. if you cannot stripe them something is wrong with the drives.
2) reformat them!!! scsi drives have the ability to bypass bad sectors on the drives. (ATA and IDE drives cannot do this) if it a bad sector the reformatted SCSI drive can work around any issues on the platters.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation

[Blub06]

No, I live in the area and can come by to help if the other guy cant. I can have a look at your drive situation but I think I can be more helpful with getting FCP up and running with the footage that can be played from the desktop. In other words, the easy part.

I think Adcock is right, in the end you might have to resrtip the drives. You might want to do that sooner than later.

Email me if you want me to take a look. I am a free of charge kind of guy, just dont expect me to spend too much time, If I cant fix it in 30 minutes i will have the sad face on and be out the door.

Chris