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Inconsistent Data Rate/Play back Issues
We are having some extremely inconsistent results with our Cal Digit S2VR Duo drive. First, the data rate speed seems to be very inconsistent. Yesterday, I checked it, and the AJA Data Rate test came in at around 90 MB/sec. This morning, on the same drive, with the same amount of info on the drive, the test came in at around 140 MB/sec.
Here is the specific problem we experienced yesterday. We use a software program called Mac Caption to generate closed caption info for our broadcast products. To spare you all of the complicated details, in essence, we do a picture-in-a-picture on our Final Cut time line. This requires two streams of video, and we customarily use standard definition 8-bit uncompressed as our codec. Yesterday, on two of these four programs, we could not get the timeline to play. Final Cut kept stopping the playback, telling us that we were dropping frames. We did everything the Final Cut warning said to do, like change playback resolution to dynamic, and all of that stuff. Finally, we re-rendered one of the video streams from 8-bit uncompressed (approximately 20 MB/sec) to DVC Pro 50 (approximately 7 MB/sec). Once we lowered the data rate on one of these video streams, everything played fine. This is curious because the S2VR Duo should be able to easily handle two streams of 8-bit uncompressed video. In fact, this very drive has handled it without problems in the past.
To make matters even more confusing, the other two programs that we were trying to dump to tape, also featured two streams of 8-bit uncompressed, and they played fine. At least for a while. We were making 10 Betacam copies of each program, one right after the other. On one program, the first six copies played without issue. But then we ran into problems, and we couldn’t get the last four to play until we dumped one of the 8-bit streams and replaced it with a DVC Pro 50 stream. On the last of of four programs, which used two streams of 8-bit uncompressed video, we were able to get 9 copies dumped to Betacam tape. We had trouble on the 10th, but after a few attempts, finally got it to play through without incident.
All of this on a Final Cut Pro system utilizing FCP 6.02. We are using an 8-core Mac Pro, in fact, the fastest machine Apple has produced to date. We are running Leopard. We have an AJA Io-HD as our video “card.” And we use a Cal Digit Fasta 4e eSATA card. We also have a Sonnet Firewire card installed on one of the other PCI slots. The Io-HD is the only thing plugged into the main Firewire bus.
Any guesses on what is going on? Why the inconsistent results? Is there an “optimal” PCI slot for the Fasta card? Does it matter which of the four SATA ports on the Fasta card that we connect the S2VR to?
I’m at a loss to explain any of this.
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4 Replies
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Have you called Caldigit?
What other audio do you have in your program and have you rendered a mixdown (select all then option-apple-r)?
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Yeah, call CalDigit. Sounds like a bad Power transformer…the brick that you plug into the wall.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
http://www.LFHD.net
Read my blog! -
Tim,
(I know we’ve had contact with you already on this)
We’ll square this away for you.Thanks.
Jon Schilling | Sales Manager
CalDigit Inc.
Storage Solutions that work for un-compressed SD & HD, Photography & Audio
http://www.caldigit.com
Tel: 714-572-9889 X234
Fax: 714-572-9881
e-mail: jons@caldigit.com
Skype me: cgijon
msn: mpujon -
I called CalDigit. They had me reset the P-RAM. Other than that, they are guessing right now. They recommend plugging the eSATA cable into a different port on the Fasta card, and even changing the cable. Per Shane’s response below, I’ll change the Power Brick too. Good suggestions, but they are kind of shots in the dark right now.
One detail I didn’t mention…..the drive is approximately 90% full. I realize that could slow it down. But would it cause inconsistent performance? Like I said, this drive tested at 90 MB/s yesterday, when we were experiencing the problem, and at 140 MB/s today. It is still 90% full today, just like it was yesterday.
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