Dropped frames then hanging in FCP w/ IoLD

[Bob Zelin]

Hello Michael –
I bet this is your problem. In the last 3 weeks, I installed a new “super fast” SCSI drive array on an AVID Meridian system with an ATTO UL3D card, and the picture stuttered. “How could this be”.

This is what the problem was, and I bet this is what your problem is. The ATTO UL3D card (and UL4D card) has drivers that are specific to the MAC operating system – and the version of MAC OS that you are running. If you simply go to http://www.attotech.com, go to support – first download the ATTO Disk Configuration Utility – run it and observe what version driver you have, and THEN, download the CORRECT UL3D driver for OS-X 10.3.x – I bet your problem goes away.

Of course, you can forget all of this, and buy a $279 Firewire 800 drive, and do 8 bit uncompressed with no issues.

Everyone that owns old SCSI products crys, that they spent so much money on this stuff, and they MUST keep it working – no matter how cheap the new, improved technology is.

Bob Zelin

[Michael Lazar]

Thanks Bob! I’ll give that a try and let you know what I discover. It would be *great* if this cleared things up.

BTW: I know what you mean about the SCSI stuff. For me it’s one part “old timer syndrome” and one part that I have other needs for SCSI and I had this handy enclosure laying around so as long as it’s available. 😉

What I really want is a “small” SATA-based SAN so I can acccess my content from any machine in the studio. One or two TB would be plenty.

Michael

[Michael Lazar]

I’ve installed the most recent version of the drivers for the ATTO card but I’m still seeing the same problem in FCP: playback is flawless for a while, then I get some dropped (black) frames on the monitor and then a little later, the monitor goes black and FCP displays a terminal beachball.

I’ll point out again that I can use QT to play the same 8-bit UC clips from the same array w/o any problem and I can play the clip though perfectly from within FCP if I’m not going out to the IoLD – so I don’t have much reason to suspect a problem pulling the data off the drives fast enough.

For playback through the IoLD I’m selecting the following preset:

ProIO SDI 29.97Hz – NTSC US – 8-bit 422 (720 x 486)

which I’m pretty sure is the right one (or is it?).

Are there are other variables that I should be looking at to help isolate this problem?

Michael

[Bob Zelin]

I’ve installed the most recent version of the drivers for the ATTO card but I’m still seeing the same problem in FCP: playback is flawless for a while, then I get some dropped (black) frames on the monitor and then a little later, the monitor goes black and FCP displays a terminal beachball.

Michael –
When FCP with AJA or Blackmagic hardware can’t respond fast enough, you get the classis “Dropped Frames” error message on the screen – not the terminal spinning beachball. Something else is going on there – I have no idea of the condition or age of your SCSI drives. We can sit here and diagnose your old SCSI array, but for $259, you can have a 250 Gig Firewire 800 drive tomorrow, and your problems will be gone. If this is not an acceptable answer, then do the following – reinitialize your drives using Apple Disk Utility, and set them up in a dual buss configuration, 2 drives per ATTO buss. Make sure that you are using the correct U160 or U320 terminators.
I ASSUME that these are at least U160 drives, and not some antique AVID 9 gig drives that you had lying around.

If you want more help with this, tell me EXACTLY what drive array you have, what enclosure, and how you have it wired up. Are they old AVID drives, Rorke DATA drives, or some homebrew Mac Guru’s piece of crap?

OR – you can buy a single FW800 drive, and be done with it.

Bob Zelin

[Michael Lazar]

Bob –

Thanks for the recommendations.

I spoke to Aja support about an hour ago and their opinion was that I’m running out of CPU – just. The machine in question is a “Quicksilver” 933 Mhz G4. It seems reasonable, though I’m not able to explain to myself how I can capture 8- and 10-bit using the Io w/o dropping a frame but then can’t play back the same material. Perhaps capture and playback are asymmetric WRT to the way the Io makes use of the CPU – i.e. capture is less CPU intensive than playback?

Fortunately, for the time being I can continue to use this system for editing by disabling video preview through the Io. I wasn’t in the market for a new machine this year but perhaps I might look into a CPU upgrade. I can’t imagine I need a lot more horsepower than I already have in the box.

Michael