Kona SD and G5 issue

[Fred Connors jr.]

OK…

Have you swapped cards, and does the problem move or stay in the G5?

What other cards do you have in the G5?

What disk array are you using?

I ask these questions because the KONA-SD is a 33Mhz card and it was not designed with a G5 in mind.

Fred

[Tig Coates]

The Kona-SD is fine I am guessing

The Dual 1.8 and 2.0 G5 with PCI-33 are faulty machines
There is fault with the PCI as reported by Blackmagic design
and they have submitted a radar bug to Apple
as have several other manufacturers

Any fast dual G4 and PCI-X G5 seems to work with AJA and BMD
cards. PCI-X needed for HD. (The single 1.8 seems to work!)

I was going to purchase Decklink Extreme until I found out about the problem.
The problem with BMD cards is similar.
No problems with capture but problems outputting.

I decided to extend the budget and check out the Kona-LS
and although the AJA site does not mention the problem.
There is clearly also a problem.

To conclude. Would AJA representatives please respond as to
whether there is a problem with PCI-33 Dual G5 1.8 and 2.0.
If there is and AJA have not already done so issue another radar bug
to Apple. It seems that my 1.8 is unable to cope with uncompressed video.

Thanks
Tig

[Jarrod]

I’ve tried swapping cards and the problems still persist on the G5. The G5 setup worked perfectly with Panther & QT 6.5.2 so I don’t think there is a problem with the PCI slots or the G5. The only other card in the computer is a UL4D for my Ultra 320 disk array. The G4 is using an Xserve Raid. I have not tried moving the card to a different slot since installing the full BMD v5.0 driver. It didn’t work with the beta versions.
Thanks for your replies.

[Fred Connors jr.]

The UL4D should be in the top slot, the PCIX133 slot, with the correct firmware (I think it is 1.4.2) and 3.40 driver.

The KONA-SD should be in slot 2 or 3 by itself.

This configuration works. We have this configuration last December before we installed the KONA2 cards.

If your G5 is one of the PCI only machines, it is not going to work. The PCI only G5s canot pass data form one PCI device to another fast enough for uncompressed video. You should contact our reseller or AJA for details.

Fred

[Jarrod]

Thanks Fred- but i think you are missing the point of the post. I’m trying to get it to work in Tiger and FCP 5. The Kona SD worked fine in Panther and FCP 4.5 in the G5. It is only in Tiger and FCP 5 that I am having problems with the Kona SD in a G5. Tiger/FCP 5 and Kona SD work perfectly in my G4. It is only in my G5 that this combo is problematic. I just can’t figure out why it works great in a G4 and not a G5.
Thanks again for your suggestions.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

This is puzzling as I tested the combination of dual G5/2.0, Mac OS X 10.4.2, QuickTime 7.0.1, Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2 and DeckLink 5.0 drivers with the Kona SD and it worked fine in both NTSC and PAL for 10-bit uncompressed. If you are only running Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 or 5.0.1, please update to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2 and try again.

Another thing to check is in Final Cut Pro HD’s menu, select View > External Video and make sure that “All Frames” is selected. If you are switching between Apple’s easy setups which use Firewire and Blackmagic easy setups which use SDI, then the external video may have switched off.

Finally, AJA recommend placing both the Kona SD and the UL4D (or UL3D-66) on the shared 100 MHz PCI-X bus of your G5. They suggest placing the Kona SD in slot 3 and ATTO SCSI card in slot 2. You can find this in their downloadable PDF configuration guide. It is also very important for the firmware and drivers for the ATTO card to be up to date. Old versions definitely cause problems with the G5’s and newer versions of Mac OS X, but the current ATTO firmware/driver versions are running fine.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Jarrod]

Thank-you Luke for your help with my issue. It was the kind of info I was looking for. Unfortunately moving the card to the suggested slots made the Kona SD studder on 8bit playback and lowered the preformance of my Ultra 320 raid, so I moved them back. UL4D in slot 4 (top slot) Kona SD in slot 2. At least this would make the card usable for monitoring in 8bit. I guess I will try rebuilding the computer, perhaps some components on FCP or QT were not installed correctly. Even without the latest OS and FCP upgrades the G4 is still running perfectly. This G5 issue is very confusing. Thanks so much for your time. Of course I do welcome any other advice or suggestions.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

This is a strange problem. Can you please run Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and use it to test your Ultra 320 RAID. It does seem as though there is some problem with disk speeds and the particular UL4D card you are using.

Here’s one thing that might be happening to you. I remember failing to install the UL4D drivers and yet the U320 disk array still worked but slowly. It turns out that there is some level of native SCSI support in Mac OS X and because the disk array mounts, it is easy to overlook installing the UL4D drivers. I found a huge increase in performance after installing the latest UL4D drivers.

If you’ve done all that and it still doesn’t help, then would it be possible to use the Xserve RAID with the G5, at least as a test? The Xserve RAID is not as fast as a U320 RAID. If your problem goes away when using the Xserve RAID, then it would appear that something to do with the UL4D card and/or the disk array is causing your problem. If the problem still remains, then there is some more general problem which we will need to track down.

Please let me know how you go.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Jarrod]

Thanks Luke for your persistance in solving my G5 issue. I really appreciate it! Ulta 320 raid is fast over 260 MB/sec (4 drive volume) So I don’t think data through put is the problem plus I’m sure FCP would warn me of dropped frames. I tried rebuilding the system HD but problem is still there. Card works perfectly in Panther so I was wondering if I should get it to work in 10.3.8 and FCP5 then try to upgrade to Tiger? This is something that i have not tried yet as I went from OSX 10.3.5/FCP 4.5 straight to Tiger and FCP 5. Hopefully it works. Thanks again.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

Firstly, I’m still not sure if you’ve updated to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2 yet and this is very important. We were seeing some issues with dropped frames in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.0 which have been resolved with the update to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2. Admittedly this behavior was in relation to HD video but for all I know, it might help with SD too.

Secondly, given your problem is weird, I would suggest that you don’t dismiss the possibility that something about your disk array and SCSI card could be a factor under Tiger and FCP5 even though it works fine in Panther with FCP 4.5. I’m running an ATTO UL4D with a U320 SCSI disk array but maybe ours is a different U320 disk array or maybe you need a firmware update to your disk array. Some of these issues only arise when working with newer versions of Mac OS X and it so it is best to set up a test to prove either way whether it might be a factor in your problem. The disk benchmark is an indication of performance but the test utility might not show up a problem which occurs when doing real work.

Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 as a minimum. Unfortunately we’ve received many customer reports of problems with Mac OS X 10.3.9 and we recommend that it not be used with our drivers. It is an unsupported configuration and we have some notes about that at https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=86

My best guess at this point is that you might be running Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.0 or 5.0.1 and need to update to 5.0.2. Alternatively your disk storage system might be playing up under Tiger and the tests mentioned in my previous post would still be worth considering.

Good luck 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design