File Sequences with Xena

[Greg Beckt]

Hi Jeff,

Were you ever able to determine what was causing your issues??

I’m trying to determine what issues are causing several issues with my system.

Xena+PPro+CalDigit

Thanks,
Greg

[Jeff Brown]

Hi Greg,
I’ve made some progress by updating to ALL the most recent CalDigit HW and SW drivers. HD720 sequence play in Machina, and can be used in Premiere (non-RT) via “Premiere file seq”, but not “AJA file seq” import. HD1080 is still problematic.
I tested with various combinations of stripe sizes and block format, basic vs. dynamic disks, none of which affected the ability to use sequences, though I did get the best read/write speeds from 256K stripe size and default block size on a dynamic volume: R/W of about 300/400 MB/sec, and that’s with a PCI-X connection.

that’s all i know at this point,
Jeff

[Greg Beckt]

Hey Jeff,

Thanks for the reply.

I finally got an opportunity to test my system. Updated all drivers, firmware, software, etc across the board…reduced media on the RAID to about 20%…defragged everything and checked all settings.

I still can’t get 1080i 10bit to playback consistently. I’ll get about 6-15 seconds of playback and then the stuttering starts, eventually freezing up for long periods. And this is with just cuts only and no audio.

I get good numbers for read/write using the AJA test tool, but playback in BOTH PPro and Machina are not there.

Not sure if our issues are related but I’ll let you know if I find out any more info.

Greg

[Jeff Brown]

Hi Greg– boy that sure sounds like the same problem, no? Thanks for the update. I need to get a table of my results to CalDigit and AJA; I’m wondering if there’s something with the CalDigit driver and large chunks o’ files. The AJA board should handle it fine: I’m pretty sure SpectSoft uses Xena hardware in their RAVE systems, and they get playback/record of 2K DPX files, though it is a dedicated Unix box (DDR).

-jeff

[Ramona Howard]

Jeff,

We are using the OEM version but our driver also supports both the Kona and the Xena (it’s all the same to us). In fact we used Kona 2s many years ago because there was nothing else and still have a few customers running on it today using the same driver that we have for the 3s. File system plays a large role and we are on a Linux solution, running a vanilla kernel. Helps to have OS and file system pros on the team……

Also keep in mind that we have been doing this for about 8 years so lots of years of experience under our belt of putting out a solid all in one solution together 🙂

Cheers,
Ramona

[Jeff Brown]

Thanks for the confirmation, Ramona. I was citing RAVE as proof that the hardware is certainly capable of what Greg and I are fussing with. You do have the advantage of not having to go thru Windows to get things done!

-jeff

[Ramona Howard]

Jeff,

Ah, confirmation correct.

Taking the clutter out of the mix certainly helps. Not sure if you can really do that on other OS platforms 🙂

Cheers,
Ramona

[Greg Beckt]

Hi Jeff,

Wanted to let you know that I did end up having a drive in my array that was starting to go bad. Outside of the performance drop, it wasn’t really apparent via check disk, etc…but I worked with CalDigit to test all the drives individually to isolate it.

I have two S2 VRHD enclosures and am able to have a simple 1080 timeline playback continuously with just one enclosure while I get the other drive replaced.

I’ll let you know if the performance holds up when I jump back into a real projecct with all the audio/preview files, etc.

Greg