XDCam HD 422 – excruciatingly slow transfer speeds

[Jim Curtis]

Epilog: After installing the driver software, I was able to copy just under 24GB in around 30 minutes.

So, it appears that the driver was the missing piece.

With the driver software installed, the XDCam disk icon looks like an optical disk. Without the driver, the icon was a generic Mac OS disk icon.

Thanks again for all the input, guys.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; CS5.5; MC 5.5; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.

[Andy Mees]

Thats good news Jim, glad you got it sorted.
Cheers
Andy

[Alban Egger]

Jim, we have the same issues here. Which driver did you install now?

We tried different ones and had terrible results on Lion and Snow Leopard machines, Macbooks and Mac Pros.

My speed is 0,2x realtime. So 4GB took me one hour to capture…….

[Jim Curtis]

I tried posting a link earlier, but I guess the Cow strips them. Go to the Sony Microsite and search for XDCam > Downloads. Click the link that says, “Product Firmware and Setup Utilities.” Then you should see a link for the “PDW-U1 XDCAM Drive (SD/HD)”. Then click, “PDW-U1 Drive Software version 2.32 for Mac OS X and Windows” and the driver for Mac & Windows should download.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; CS5.5; MC 5.5; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.

[Brent Dunn]

That’s why I usually transfer files of this size right before going to bed. It’ll be done in the morning and I’ll be ready to edit.

Brent Dunn
Owner / Director / Editor
DunnRight Films
DunnRight Video.com
Video Marketing Toolbox.net

Sony EX-1,
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 7D
Mac Pro Tower, Quad Core,
with Final Cut Studio

HP i7 Quad laptop
Adobe CS-5 Production Suite

[Alban Egger]

Ha, we didn´t get that one because it says DRIVE not driver. I didn´t want to mess with a rented drive´s firmware…..classic.
try it tomorrow and let you know if it helped 😉

[Lindsay Barker]

Thank goodness for these forums and the people that respond. I have the exact same issue. About to download the driver and see if it resolves it. 1 disc was taking 4hrs. Thanks in advance.

[Adam Pearson]

This URL will take you to the section of the website that has the XDCAM Drive software download.

For what it’s worth, I’m working on a project using these drive currently and all my software is up to date but I’m still getting horridly slow transfer speeds.

https://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/micro-xdcam/resource.downloads.bbsccms-assets-micro-xdcam-downloads-XDCAMSoftwareDownload.shtml#apps

[Jim Curtis]

Adam, one way to tell if the driver has loaded successfully is by the appearance of your drive icon on the Desktop. If the driver is working, you should see an XDCam icon that looks similar to the physical disk. If not, you’ll see a generic disk icon. Once you see the XDCam icon, you should be getting faster read speeds.

And when you do Get Info on the disk, you get a different disk type when the driver is loaded correctly. I can’t remember what it’s called at the moment, as I don’t have one to take a look at right now.

HTH,
Jim Curtis

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; CS5.5; MC 5.5; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.

[Joel Russo]

Yep! Download the drivers. Speed difference is night and day. Thanks guys! You saved me!