LHe Kona slot placement

[Gary Adcock]

[Wayne Wright] “Still getting warning Dropped Frames when trying to play 1080i25 HDCAM EX footage.
“

Dropped frames are almost always the result of the storage not being able to keep up. Dropped frames as a result of an issue on the card are almost unheard of without some other issue.

Video cards should never be placed in Slot 2 next to a graphics card.

Try the kona card in 4 and the Lacie in 3 then

what is the rest of your config- OS, QT and the like, and HOW is the RAM config’d?

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

Inside look at the IoHD
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php

[Bob Zelin]

as gary said, dropped frames is due to your storage, 99% of the time.
Run AJA System Test on your Lacie storage. You have not stated what resolution you are trying to work at in FCP. Modern drive arrays – even the bad ones – all run at over 160Mb/sec. If you are getting 60 – 70Mb/sec from your Lacie, it’s your drives.

LEt us know the results !

Bob Zelin

[Wayne Wright]

Hi Gary, since last message have moved Kona LHe back to Slot 3 with Lacie SATA ll 3Gb/s PCI-Express Card 4E in slot 4 and reset Expansion slot utility to 1) x16 2) x1 3) x4 and slot 4) x4. LaCie Biggest S2S is set to standard default out of the box RAID 0 configuration. Did not light up at first until drivers were updated but seems to mount OK up till now.

XDCAM EX media played in FCP still drops frames from the Lacie. Displays first couple of frames ok but then drops frames almost immediately. I still need to try your option of shifting LHe to slot 4 and Lacie card to slot 3 and watch what happens. What Alternate PCI Express Profile should I select? New position will pop up on boot, I think? Ordinary DVCAM sequence content also looks soft?

Other config info is:
Mac Pro2,1
OS 10.4.11
RAM: 4GB (How do I need to config the RAM?)
Quicktime 7.5.5
FCP 6.0.5
Also Kona KL Box (SDI output 1 to Kona Hi5 for HDMI output to Samsung flatscreen)
3 x 1TB internal drives
1 x 1.3TB internal drive
(so drive bays all occupied)

Thanks again for assistance. I’ll wait for a response on current setup otherwise I’ll try your slot swop suggestion.
Regards
Wayne

[Wayne Wright]

Hi Bob. Hope I understand AJA System Test correctly. Test: Disk Read/Write on Biggest S2S says Write: 167.4MB/s and Read: 161.7 MB/s with video frame size of 1920×1080 10-bit.

Thanks
Wayne

[Bob Zelin]

well, that is plenty fast for DVCProHD or ProRes422 or ProRes422HQ. If you are trying to do uncompressed HD, these drives are not fast enough. But if you are doing any of the compressed HD formats, you should have no issue.

NOW, if you are doing compressed HD, and still getting dropped frames, I urge you to play back SOMETHING ELSE in a different project, with another sequence, and see if it plays back. A corrupt sequence or project will cause random drop frame errors.

Bob Zelin

[Wayne Wright]

After swopping the cards, reloading the software and also (possibly more importantly) disconnecting my Sony HDV deck things started to play OK ..voila ..no dropped frames. When playing from the timeline I’m only getting dropped frames when the HDV deck is being referenced by the system. So after I capture using this deck I just cut power on that offending deck. Progress, thanks guys for your suggestions.

Just a note on Soundtrack: When sending an audio track from FCP to Soundtrack Pro for processing am unable to monitor audio via the Kona LHe even though AJA Kona selected in Sys Prefs and AJA Kona selected in Recording Monitor tab. Can hear waveform when played via built-in line output speakers.

Sound plays to Kona ok when played from FCP timeline though??

Am I doing something wrong or is this not an option with the LHe?

Thanks.

[Dean Brennan]

I am having the same problem with my Kona LH and cannot monitor the audio from the LH. I also cannot select the LH as an input although it shows up in the configure device lists. Wayne, have you had any luck or found a solution? Has anyone else ran into this or know what is going on?

Dean C. Brennan
Digital Video Specialist

[Gary Adcock]

[Dean Brennan] “I am having the same problem with my Kona LH and cannot monitor the audio from the LH.”

Unless you have exactly the same setup – you need to tell us what, how, and versions so that we can help.

Have you opened the Kona Control panel to set your audio?

if you updated your driver recently ( or your computer) have you updated the firmware also?

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

Check out
https://www.aja.com/kiprotour/

Inside look at the IoHD
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php

[Wayne Wright]

Hi Dean

No, still can’t monitor audio via Kona LHe within Soundtrack Pro, only via the built-in line output audio to some small desk speakers.

When in FCP can monitor audio fine via Kona analogue outputs. However if I send a .stap or play .aif samples I have to switch sound prefs to built-in line output.

Maybe I just need to update software drivers right across the board.
Current software configuration:
AJA ControlPanel – 6.0.2
Mac OS 10.4.11
FCP 6.0.5
Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2
Quicktime 7.5.5
MAC PRO EFI Firmware Update 1.2
MAC PRO SMC Firmware Update 1.1

Dean, any luck on your side?
Hi Gary, – what are we doing wrong?
Any suggestions – thanks Wayne

[Gary Adcock]

[Wayne Wright] “No, still can’t monitor audio via Kona LHe within Soundtrack Pro, only via the built-in line output audio to some small desk speakers. “

I do not understand why not, this has been available in Soundtrack since it came out.

All I did was to set the video out parameter to the Kona card- and since the 2 need to be paired the audio will follow to the Kona outputs.

Open the SP manual to page 477 for the diagram.

Note: Some broadcast-quality video output devices receive both the video and audio
from a project. When you use a video output device that supports both video and
audio output, Soundtrack Pro automatically routes your audio output to this device to
provide the best possible synchronization of the audio and video.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

Check out
https://www.aja.com/kiprotour/

Inside look at the IoHD
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php