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Sluggish eSata/Macbook Pro/XDCAM
Hello I am running a Macbook Pro 2.4 Intel 2 Gb RAM, FCP 6.0.5, QT 7.6, OSX 10.5.6. I recently bought an eSata card (tempo) for my MBP and a Western Digital My Book 2 TB drive. I copied some XDCAM EX 1080p24 (35 mb/s) footage from work in the hopes of working on it at home. This setup was running great on a G5 mac at work, and most recently a new Mac Pro (same software specs as above), but now that I have brought it home the eSata performance is totally sluggish, I drop frames on a dip to black. Not working on anything FX heavy at all, the most would be a split screen, which it will play but if I try to stop it I get the beach ball, let alone if I try to edit anything. I’m sure this isn’t the screaming fast eSata performance I’ve been reading about…not sure what the problem is. Any ideas? I’ve tried switching the RT/Unlimited RT, messed with my user settings and I still get the same result. Others have told me they have edited this footage with FW 800 so I must be missing something. Anyone using this same setup?
TIA! -
12 Replies
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Hi Kang,
Download the AJA System Test and check the read/write speed of your drive.
I’m working with a MBP and eSTA drives and I get around 90/100 MBPS.
Run DiskWarrior and have a look how are the directories of the drives.
When they are messsed they low the speed of any HD.
Rafael -
Thanks for the response…I ran the test and was getting 80ish write and 100ish read levels using the 1920×1080 10 bit setting, 128 mb file size. I assume this is pretty much normal?
EDIT: I tried the 16 GB setting as well and got a 88/106 reading. -
Hi Kang,
Don’t forget about DiskWarrior or so.
I’m able to cut 720/10b Unc with the eSATAs.
rafael -
On Western Digital’s web site they list several different models as being My Books, there’s a Mac Edition, a Home Edition, Office, Mirror, Studio, Studio 2…which do you have?
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I have the studio 2.
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Is it set up for Raid0 or Raid1?
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I didn’t change anything so RAID 0 is what the default is I believe.
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Another thing to look at is to go into your Disk Utilities program that is part of the OSX and see if the drive is formatted as Extended (Journaled) as external drives should be. Also be aware that as drives get filled up, or as they go through lots of write/erase cycles without ever being reformatted or defragmented, performance goes down.
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Thanks for the response, all is well in terms of being Extended (Journaled), the drive is actually brand new. The read/write tests seem to be normal so I don’t think it’s the drive…maybe my system just doesn’t have the power for this, no one has said they are actually editing in this configuration so that could be it?
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Your system should be fine with this. XDCam is only 35mb/s.
I know it may sound obvious, but double-check your system settings and sequence settings. Use an XDCam easy setup and make a new sequence – cut some footage in to this and see if there’s any difference.
Jason
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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