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My hotrod needs a jump start (FCP performance issues)
My new hot rod octo-core mac is fun and all, but somewhere there may be a potato in the tailpipe. Performance is pitiful right now, can’t get real-time playback without a sudden stop every six or so seconds.
I have the easy setup set for 8-bit DV 48 Khz. I digitize my DVC Pro25 footage to match, confirmed via control panels in the log and capture interface that the tape ingest is thru the AJA IO, 8-bit DV SDI, Dv 48 khz.
Everything matches as to format so there should be no rendering issues. But there are. I can’t get the $%#^$ timeline to play more than a few seconds before it stops and tells me I must have too much going on, I need to either get faster drives or reduce some settings.
If I export the timeline to an 8-bit Dv 48Khz mov file, that file plays perfectly on it’s own in Preview. If I import that file into FCP, the playback issue occurs.The hot rod is spinning it’s wheels. For one track of video and two of audio? In 8-bit, on an octo mac? With a terabyte of space on a Promax external drive SATA RAID set. Something is not right here. I’m beginning to suspect it is the IO.
I have tried re-setting the AJA IO to factory defaults and power cycling the IO, no change.
All my captured video is in a scratch drive folder in the RAID drive.
I think this is most likely not bum hardware (everything is just a couple months old) but wrongly-set parameters or prefs or maybe a file directory problem. This baby shouldn’t choke on 10- bit with four or five layers but here it is acting all overtaxed on 8-bit DV footage in one layer.
Any suggestions on a checklist to run down to better diagnose or cure this? Switch to 100 octane maybe?
Stats:
FCP 6.0.4
Mac Pro with two 3x3GHZ Quad-core Intel processors,
32 gb od 800 mhz DDR 2 FB-DRAMGraphics: Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 with 1536 mb VRAM
2 cinema display HD monitors 1920 x 1200 displaysSATA RAID: Hitachi drivesm HFS+ Sonnet tempo SATA EXP IDE COntroller
Aja IO model 0x1, 400 mb/sec max.
Software vers. OX2, OX22, OX 11, OX24 -
9 Replies
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Mark,
You told me a week or so ago that you’ve got a mirrored drive setup, i.e. Raid-1. If that’s still true, I’ll repeat what I told you before, which is, that’s your problem, and the potato is caused by you, the pilot.
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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No, far as I know it is set up as RAID-5, which is supposed to be a good compromise between speed and reliability. Drives are rated at least 7500 rpm, I’ll have to dig to confirm.
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How many drives do you have raided together?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Five drives, two pair and the fifth I expect is the parity drive
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Odd, cuz I kind of remember us chatting earlier about this and you mentioning that mirrored drives. However, ponward and upward… You need to run the Disk Read/Write test in the AJA System Test app (should be installed in your applications folder) and see what throughput you’re getting. Report back with some numbers and I’ll help you further.
Your problem would typically be related to any one of the following:
1) funky drive throughput
2) bad RAM
3) incorrectly configured PCI cards
4) faulty AJA drivers that need uninstall and reinstallDavid Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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An update, still have the problem, was starting another project and fooling with the easy setups between 8-bit/ 48 khz uncompressed and 10-bit /48 khz uncompressed, then testing with short grabs of tape via SDI (which is how our deck is set up to fed the IO, the io of course runs firewire into the apple). I made sure everything was set to the same uncompressed 8-bit 48 khz for project and capture.
I digitized some clips in 10-bit as stated above, and these play flawlessly in my 8-bit timeline with no hiccups, but the audio tracks are blank, no waveforms, and you can’t hear anything. I switch to recording in the 8-bit, drop the 8-bit grab into my 8-bit timeline, and now I have video and audio waveforms on the tracks and I have sound when I play… but I am back to the system skidding to a stop every two or three seconds of playback, with the same darn trouble message.
So I’m thinking, there’s perhaps something set up wrong in the scratch drive settings or drive assignments that is creating too much lag in tracking the audio for the video to keep up, thus causieng the brakes of my hotrod to lock up. Right uo till now I had the box that says “make separate audio and video files” UN-checked, it’s been that way all along. Tried it with that box checked, but the machine apaprently won’t allow assignment of the audio to any folder in the video RAID. Or at least, that’s how I’m interpreting what I’m seeing.
Do you think I’m onto something, and if so, walk me thru what the correct settings on a system should be, please, that way maybe I can see where things have gone wrong. I should be able to nuke the system late Friday and start the new week clean, with better settings, only, WHAT ARE THEY🙂
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Mark,
In my last response to you I asked if you had run the AJA Read/Write test. You failed to respond. Without the results of that test you’re flying blind and no one wil be able to help you diagnose your problem.
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Doing the best I can, this is like building the landing gear while the plane is in flight, I can’t stop the work I’m doing long enough to fix the problem that’s hampering the work I’m doing…. but I’ll do what you said as soon as I can.
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Hi Mark,
Just a shot, but do you have different makers of RAM installed?
Found out through a colleague that you need to install ram in ‘sets’ of matching 2 per side. Meaning you need to have 4 matching RAM sticks -2 per side.
I didn’t think it could be a RAM problem-drives, pref, etc. BUT it was RAM. Once all the RAM was even, the performance came back.
Here’s an apple spec, but there’s a better one that I couldn’t fine.
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2248Good Luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production
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