Kona SD and G5 issue

[Jarrod]

I don’t think the raid is the issue. All Atto/FCP and OSX updates have been done. I’ve tried the Kona Card in another G5 with an Xserve Raid and still the freezing in 10bit problem persists. So it must be the Kona Card right? So I call AJA and they sent me a new card but the problem is still there. With the new Kona card video will play in 10bit for a little longer before freezing up but still unusable. Kona card works great in panther so it must be a software issue. Do you think there is a driver issue with the new 64bit OS? Kona card runs great in g4 but it is only a 32bit machine. Kona card runs great in G5 under panther, but panther is 32bit OS. It’s when I switch to Tiger on a G5 that this problem occurs, but only on G5, g4 on tiger Kona card works perfectly and that is without OS and FCP upgrades. I must be a issue with the driver, right? Thank you so much for your help Luke, I really appreciate it.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

Your problem is very puzzling. I’ve got a bunch of Kona SD cards here and none of them have the issue you have encountered. No one else in this forum has reported similar problems with playback on Mac OS X 10.4.2 with FCP 5.0.2. CharlieX in this forum reports he is having no problems with the same configuration as you except his G5 is the 2.7 GB model. I’ve run our tests on the 2.0 GB (PCI-X) model and just don’t see these problems.

The fact that swapping cards, with no other changes to the system, led to a change in playback behavior could mean a possible issue with firmware. However that is pure speculation and I don’t really know. Another possibility is that we are testing on different models of the G5/2.0 DP (PCI-X). The original G5/2.0 was the “best” model in its range. The second generation of G5’s included a G5/2.0 as the “better” model in its range. It is conceivable that there is some difference in behavior between these two machines. Can you tell me which model you have?

Finally, please quit out of FCP and launch Blackmagic Deck Control. Open a 10-bit clip in to Blackmagic Deck Control and try playing it out to your NTSC monitor. Does this work OK? This is a useful comparison test which will help us to understand if the problem is confined to FCP or whether it is more general.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Jarrod]

I have the original dual 2.0 G5. I have tried playing a 10bit clip out of Blackmagic Deck Control app and the problem is still there. Clips don’t play smoothly out of Quicktime using full screen mode to NTSC monitor either. They don’t freeze up but they don’t play as smoothly as they do on the G4 with working KonaSD card. If it is a firmware issue as you speculated, doesn’t the firmware get updated with the BMD driver update? Would you happen to know if there is a firmware update from AJA that is G5 specific? Thank you for your continued help.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

Thanks for your answers and your patience in pursuing this problem. FYI, QuickTime Player is not such a good test as it has no way to output directly to SDI. Making it go full screen over the extended desktop is not really a valid test especially as QuickTime Player is designed to vary its playback speed for use with Internet streaming video. Final Cut Pro and Blackmagic Deck Control are valid utilities for testing this problem.

[Jarrod] “doesn’t the firmware get updated with the BMD driver update?”

The firmware on the Kona SD works differently to our cards. The firmware chip on the Kona SD is programmed when manufactured. Any updates require that the card be returned to the manufacturer for reprogramming or a replacement chip. We do things differently in that we dynamically load the firmware in our cards at startup time but this is not applicable to the Kona SD due to the differences in hardware.

This raises a question as to whether you purchased your Kona SD before or after G5’s started to ship? I think there was a firmware update to help with G5’s but you might already have it if you bought your card(s) in more recent times. The fact that you did see a difference in behavior between you two cards, without chaning any software, does suggest some kind of hardware difference between the two cards and firmware could well be the explanation for this. Can you please answer the following questions:

1. When did you purchase your Kona SD card(s)?
2. When the video image “freezes” during playback, does the audio continue to play smoothly?
3. When the video image “freezes” during playback on your broadcast monitor, does it continue to update smoothly on your computer screen or does it also only update when the video is paused?
4. Finally, open one of your troublesome 10-bit NTSC movies and use QuickTime Pro to export it with the same settings but choose PhotoJPEG encoding and set the quality to “High”. Save the PhotoJPEG clip to your internal disk and then remove all PCI cards except for the Kona SD. Can you successfully play out the PhotoJPEG movie to the broadcast monitor using FCP5 and Blackmagic Deck Control? If so, can you also Edit to Tape successfully?

I’ve been discussing your problem with our engineers and they requested answers to these questions so we’re doing our best to work out your puzzling problem. I’m also going to test the oldest Kona SD card that we have as we usually test with the one with the newest firmware for best compatibility with G5’s. If I see any major difference, I’ll let you know.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

We might be making some progress in understanding your problem. Having said that QuickTime Player was not a good test, it looks as though it might be an excellent test but in a different way.

I managed to configure a system here so that it would drop frames when playing back NTSC 10-bit clips. I did this by using a slower, Firewire disk array. It dropped frames using Tiger, Kona SD and the DeckLink 5.0 drivers but did not drop frames using Panther, Kona SD and the DeckLink 4.8 drivers. This appears to match the behavior you were reporting.

I then uninstalled the DeckLink drivers so that G5 would not recognize that the Kona SD was present. I opened the 10-bit NTSC movie in to QuickTime Player 7.0.1, chose to View at Actual Size and then hit play. After a few seconds, the displayed frame rate rapidly fell and then the movie started to stutter and eventually the image froze just as you had described.

The significance of this is that the problem occurred when the Kona SD and DeckLink drivers were not in use and had been uninstalled. For all intents and purposes, the Kona SD card was not there. Therefore this appears to be a QuickTime 7 problem. Accordingly we are going to take this up with Apple and will see if they can assist.

The problem occurs with just G5 with Tiger, QT7 and the Apple Uncompressed 422 codec and this most probably means we no longer need to examine the card and drivers for the cause of the problem. However anything is possible and so it will be great to hear back from Apple on this issue. I will let you know what I can when I receive a response. Finally we seem to be making progress so this is good news and thanks again for all your information and patience.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Jarrod]

Thanks Luke, you’ve been a great help in keeping my piece of mind. I was not sure about getting any support for this card. I am very impressed by your persistance with my problem.
As for system through put, i really don’t think that’s a problem, Video continues to play in computer monitor and just freezes on NTSC monitor. At no time were there any dropped frames or studdering in the computer monitor. Only the sdi ouput of the Kona SD card would freeze, and on Edit to Tape the image would studder even on 8bit output, other than that all other functions of the entire system work well. It really seams like a card or driver issue, but lets see what apple says.
The Kona card was purchased almost 2yrs ago. AJA has already sent me an updated card but problem was still there. Have not tried the Photo jpeg test yet, let you know how it turns out.

BTW you can play QTs out to the NTSC monitor throught the Kona/BMD card by selecting it for your full screen viewing. the setting is in the prefs.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

Thank you for your kind words.

[Jarrod] “As for system through put, i really don’t think that’s a problem, Video continues to play in computer monitor”

That is curious as the test I ran showed dropped frames in FCP5 and QuickTime Player could not maintain 29.97 fps. I will continue to pursue this with Apple as they should be able to help with either suggestions or a fix.

Thanks for your answers and do let me know how the PhotoJPEG test goes as it could be quite a helpful diagnostic.

[Jarrod] “BTW you can play QTs out to the NTSC monitor throught the Kona/BMD card by selecting it for your full screen viewing.”

I assume you’re this is in reference to playing out of QuickTime Player? If so, that’s not good way to play movies out through your Kona SD card. The extended desktop is useful with applications that have no other way to output via SDI. However it will sometimes lead to jerky playback as it is kind of a cheats way to output video to SDI. To guarantee smooth playback, you need to use a video application which supports SDI output such as FCP or Blackmagic Deck Control.

QuickTime Player has some built-in smarts to help with streaming video over the internet. If your Internet connection slows down, QuickTime Player automatically adjusts the frame rate of the video. This is great for the Internet but highly undesirable when outputting to tape or a broadcast monitor. The Apple codec does not support direct output to SDI hardware and so you cannot output from QuickTime to your SDI output with a guaranteed frame rate. If you want to run a quick test of your video without launching Final Cut Pro HD, then Blackmagic Deck Control would be a good option.

I’ll let you know when I hear back from Apple.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Jarrod]

I tried the PhotoJPEG test- yielded the same result. I did a clean install of Tiger/FCP5/BMDv5.0 along with all the latest upgrades and the problem still persists which leads me to believe that it is an issue specific to the Original Dual 2.0 G5 since the issues occur on both of my G5’s. All together I have tried 3 KonaSD in 2 Dual 2.0 G5s with the same results. I just don’t know what to do. I think with my last install I have literally TRIED EVERYTHING. Thank you so much for your time and help. I really appreciate it. Perhaps in later driver updates this issue may be resolved.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

Thanks for trying the JPEG test which pretty much rules out a disk-related problem. I logged a bug in Apple’s Radar bug-tracking system and it was assigned bug number 4202894. While I have not received any conclusive feedback as yet, it does sound as though this is a QuickTime problem and the comment was made to me (by an Apple contact) that, “This kind of behavior is not totally unknown to us.” I did not get the impression that your problem had been examined by Apple when that comment was made. However given that the problem did seem to be familiar to some Apple people, and given that problems are seen even when our drivers are totally removed, it does seem likely that this will need to be resolved by a QuickTime update. If there is anything we can do to help resolve this issue, we will. We hope to receive some definitive feedback from Apple soon.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Dejwy]

I have the same problem as jarrod
In OSX 10.3.8 + FCP 4.5 all worked fine withou problems, now I upgraded to OS X 10.4.2 + FCP5 and I have problem with freezing SDI output (on PAL monitor). On VGA monitor video plazed with all frames every time, on PAL monitor it freezes.

I muzst say that 10-bit clips freezes when played in timeline. 8-bit clips are sometimes o.k.
But Editing to tape or print to video dont work correctly – output freezes in 8 or 10 bit although on VGA monitor is played smoothly and without problems.

I tested change cards in slots, but no combination works.

Dual G5 2GHz machine + OSX 10.4.2. + all updates
Kona SD + Atto UL4D (Medea Videoraid RTRX) + Apple FC HBA (XRaid – raid 50, 14 drives)

David Krames
Czech television