Dropped Frames

[Ernie Santella]

Dropped frames are always due to I/O speed. Check your Raid.

Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com

[Clyde Hance]

I don’t think this is the problem because to ingest the clip at all I had to turn off the “Abort capture on dropped frames” setting. With this checked the FCP would roll through the first 15 or 20 secends and then report a dropped frame error.

Could the problem be with the way I shot the footage, 60 fps, and now I am trying to capture at 59.94.

Yes, I am an Avid editor migrating to FCP.

Clyde

[Ernie Santella]

It seems everytime I’ve read about a user getting dropped frames, it turns out to be their RAID. Is your’s fast enough? Or, more likely, is it nearly full? When drives get past 3/4 full, the speed drops significantly. Do you have an app that checks disk i/o speed?

Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com

[Gary Adcock]

[Clyde Hance] “Could the problem be with the way I shot the footage, 60 fps, and now I am trying to capture at 59.94.”

first off

Dropped frame issues are 99% of the time related to not having enough drive speed, and you will need to capture to more than one single drive – However you do not mention what drives or OS version you are working with.

“Could the problem be with the way I shot the footage, 60 fps, and now I am trying to capture at 59.94.”

Video in not usually at rounded frame rates- this is the same as you did on your Avid. 59.94 is correct for a Varicam in North America – if you are working in the EU / 25p this is a different story.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Clyde Hance]

I’m running 8 gigs on a new MacPro using a Kona 3. This is the first project I’ve put any video on a new 3 tb xserve raid. I believe to this point I should be ok. The only thing left is the fibre, 100 ft,in between the raid and the Mac. I have been doing some testing and once the same video is ingested using the DVCPro HD 60 codec said video plays back fine. The problem is with uncompressed or the AJA Kona3 720p 59.94 codec.

Am I off base to assume that the fiber cable is the problem and what would be the fix?

Thanks,
Clyde

[Rune Hansen]

Hi.

What kind of configuration do you have on that XServe RAID? Uncompressed 720p60 requires a LOT of bandwidth, and you might need a fully populated XServe RAID to handle this. It is a common misunderstanding that the XServe RAID in any configuration can handle uncompressed HD.

—
Rune Hansen
Simplemente
Mexico City, Mexico

[Clyde Hance]

The raid is half populated, 7 drives on one side.

Clyde

[Ernie Santella]

It could be a bad drive. I had this happen. One of my 5 RAID drives started acting up and it would drop frames once in a while. I replaced it and it fixed the issue. Just a thought.

Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com

[Rune Hansen]

Hey.

You can’t really get sufficient read throughput to do 720p60 or 1080i60 uncompressed on half an XServe RAID. You might see better reults by putting the drives in a 4+3 configuration, and striping that as RAID 50, but don’t take my word for it. If you don’t want to splash out for all 7 new drive modules, you can probably get it done with a 5+5 or 6+6 config.

For uncompressed HD work, especially 1080i60 or 720p60, you really want a fully populated XServe RAID, or some other disk system. I know this sounds surprising, but those have been our findings. The XServe RAID is a very capable disk, but other units (including 5 disk arrays from Ciprico/Huge, the G-Speed from G-Tech) have all turned out to give much better throughput results per drive unit.

On the other hand there is a typical configuration error with the XServe RAID you might want to try: https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302780

Disclaimer: We’ve sold approximately 120+ XServe RAIDs since they came out, and only really suggest them to clients in 14 drive configurations. In this config it is both economical per GB as well as high performance.

Best regards,

—
Rune Hansen
Simplemente
Mexico City, Mexico

[Mark Raudonis]

If this is a new set up, check this out: (Quoted from apple)

If your Xserve RAID is used as storage space for video applications, such as Final Cut Pro, you may wish to uncheck “Allow Host Cache Flushing” in order to sustain the bandwidth and low latency for real-time video capture.

Here’s the URL.

https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302780

Lot’s of people seem to get caught by this on a new install. Good luck. Welcome to FCP.

mark