FCP 7 XDCAM EX woes…still…

[Jim Blokland]

Hey Sam:

I’m not waiting for the next version of FCP — that may be a long wait — but when it comes, I sure won’t miss the 40 hours of transcoding I now have to do in order to effectively edit XDCAM footage!

I also want to say that I have received a great deal of help from this and other forums over the years. People here are generally very knowledgeable and willing to lend a hand. I have benefitted immensely from the folks here at the COW.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Rafael Amador]

[Sam Cole] ” would love to stand behind one of these ‘Apple Cult Members’ when their system crashes to see what they say then. Most of their pictures are at the top of this forum.”
Hey Sam, I’m one of those “Apple Cult” guys, which picture is on top of this forum.
Listen man:
My Mac simply DO NOT CRASH.
I DO NOT GET CRASHES, AND I WORK SINCE THREE YEARS WITH XDCAM.
Do you understand?
And this is because I understand my System and I do the proper maintenance.
You can keep complaining, insulting and miss leading other people, is up to you man.
But please, do it somewhere else.

Jim,
You are having the issues that people used to have a couple of years ago.
Think that most of the problems we have when running applications, comes from a non-optimized system.
A proper installation fallowed by repairing permissions and clean directories is the way to go.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Jim Blokland]

Hey Rafael:

Thanks for your post. I am wondering if my issues are related to my new Westmere Octo MacPro running in 64-bit mode. The reason I suggest this is, I did a clean install of Snow Leopard on a bare drive, followed by a clean install of FCS3 and the Matrox 2.0 driver — repaired the permissions after updating all the software — and the system seemed to work well for a few hours, then the crashes started again.

So, with that system being rebuilt clean from the ground up, I must conclude that this is not what is causing the crashes. I know with Media Composer 5, right now on the Westmeres, you have to switch back to 32-bit mode in order for the system to recognize the dongle. So there are issues specific to this setup. Obviously, you haven’t been cutting XDCAM on Snow Leopard for the past three years…but I assume you’re running SL now with no issues…

At any rate, I would appreciate any tips you may have regarding cleaning up or rebuilding directories, because as you probably are aware, when you rebuild permissions with Snow Leopard, it never completely comes out clean.

Thanks in advance for your help, and any advice is most welcome.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Rafael Amador]

[Jim Blokland] ” I am wondering if my issues are related to my new Westmere Octo MacPro running in 64-bit mode.”
This may be the first issue. FC runs in 32b.

[Jim Blokland] “I did a clean install of Snow Leopard on a bare drive, followed by a clean install of FCS3 and the Matrox 2.0 driver — repaired the permissions after updating all the software — and the system seemed to work well for a few hours, then the crashes started again.
So, with that system being rebuilt clean from the ground up, I must conclude that this is not what is causing the crashes.”
No.
Jim, a PERFECT installing (Erasing the HD and repairing permission after each single installation) doesn’t grants that the System is optimized.
In fact after a PERFECT installing, the system is a real mess. If you run DiskWarrior, you will find, at least, “a 30% of Items out of order”.
Jim, I live in a country without any Apple service (the closest one is one and a half hour flying) but I don’t miss that because I have no problems with any of my 3 Macs.
Maintenance is the key. Don’t wait for the problems to come. Spend half an hour every two or three weeks repairing permissions and re-building all your HDs directories (Diskwarrior, TechTools, DriveWizard,..). Buy a bit of peace of mind.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Jim Blokland]

Thanks for the tips Rafael. I really appreciate it. I’ve got a copy of Drive Genius 3 and Data Rescue 3, I’ll give them a try. It’s just frustrating when you buy a brand new system in order to be able to work more efficiently, and it ends up slowing you down, ya know?

Did you mention which MacPro you are running? Is it the Westmere or a previous generation? FCP hasn’t been updated since the introduction of these 64-bit kernel machines, so it might be worth booting in 32-bit mode to see if it performs better. One way or another, I hope to get back up running smoothly.

Only another 20 hours of ProRes transcoding to go!

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Rafael Amador]

[Jim Blokland] “. I’ve got a copy of Drive Genius 3 and Data Rescue 3,”
Data rescue is to recover files from failed media storage.
About DriveGenius, i’ve been reading well their web site and they don’t say much about what kind of file/directories maintenance does.
I do not know if is able to re-build directories, fix “Files Finder Info”, B-trees, etc.
If can do those task, is OK. If not, you will need DiskWarrior or TechTools.
You don’t need things like De-frag and so.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Jim Blokland]

Thanks Rafael. I’m going to give Drive Genius a try first and see how it goes. TechTools looks good and will try it if no luck with DG3. I noticed on DiskWarrior’s site, they say they don’t have a bootable DVD yet for the new MacPros. Talk about living on the bleeding edge!

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Hey all:

Just found a long thread on Apple’s FCP forum, with multiple cases of users having the same issue with XDCAM footage.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2628596&start=0&tstart=0

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Rafael Amador]

[Jim Blokland] “Just found a long thread on Apple’s FCP forum, with multiple cases of users having the same issue with XDCAM footage.”
Hi Jim,
A couple of years ago they were many, many problems for many people editing XDCAM on Octocores (curiously was just with octocores).
Sure was some hardware/software problems. Apple (as usual) never recognized the facts, but they fixed whatever the bug was.
I fallow this forum in a daily base and I really don’t see complains about issues as the one you are having.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[David Roth weiss]

For the record Jim, we like to help everyone, even you guys from downunder, and we were just teasing Sam about the Coriolis Effect being responsible for computer issues in the southern hemisphere. Apparently Sam is the only Aussie on the planet without a sense of humor, although I’m guessing his boss may also be deficient in that area.

In any case, I hope you and Sam both get this figured out and that you will let us know what the issue is, as most of us certainly never have seen or heard about this one, and we don’t have issues with crashing.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.