XDCAM PITA – frequent crashes

[Walter Biscardi]

If it’s a big project, I would not recommend cutting on a FW800 raid. I would at the very least be on a eSATA raid and something faster than that if possible.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Biscardi Creative Media

Creative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital.

Read my Blog!

[Andy Mees]

[Jason Porthouse] “Any suggestions/fixes/workarounds aside from disabling thumbnails”

Jason
Can you confirm that switching your views to List View (without thumbnails) in the Browser window does fix the issue? Ie Can you confirm that it is specifically the thumbnail drawing thats causing the issue? Does trashing the existing thumbnail cache help at all?
Cheers
Andy

[Jason Porthouse]

Walter,

I agree, and will be trying to port across to a faster drive ASAP.

Andy,

It seems to give two different types of crash. The first is on switching to Thumbnail view, or opening a bin that’s already thumbnailed. On drawing the thumbs the program crashes – though not always. List views don’t crash, and trashing the cache or moving it doesn’t seem to help. I get an error message post crash (the ‘FCP has quit…’ one, with no report or definite error)

The second type of crash involves moving around the timeline. Any quick scrolls across the footage and sometimes (only sometimes) it just bums out to the finder. No warning, no ‘FCP has quit unexpectedly’ – nada. Again, seems to happen more frequently if thumbnails are on in the TL (I can live happily without these)

I only get this with XDCAM, and it would seem that material originated in 25p as opposed to 50i is worse. Regular HD (ProRes), HDV, Uncomp SD – solid as a rock.

*sigh*

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Mark Maness]

How about some more specs on your Mac?

Is it a Mac Pro or a G5? How much RAM? What version of the Sony Software Transfer program do you have? Do you have the latest drivers from Blackmagic?

[Jason Porthouse] “Any suggestions/fixes/workarounds aside from disabling thumbnails (I have in the sequence settings, I really need to use them in the bins though…) “

Why do you have to use the thumbnails? Are you logging your media with proper descriptions?

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Jason Porthouse]

[Wayne Carey] “s it a Mac Pro or a G5? How much RAM? What version of the Sony Software Transfer program do you have? Do you have the latest drivers from Blackmagic?

[Jason Porthouse] “Any suggestions/fixes/workarounds aside from disabling thumbnails (I have in the sequence settings, I really need to use them in the bins though…) ”

Why do you have to use the thumbnails? Are you logging your media with proper descriptions?
“

Wayne, its a Dual Xeon 2.66, ATI1900, 4g RAM. No Sony software, just media on a drive. Latest BM drivers (I’ve tried earlier ones to no avail).

Thumbnails are useful to me for 2 reasons; primarily on this project because it’s been logged in cam (all clips are called FOOD00000 where the 0s are ascending. Yeah, I know, but try getting the producers to spring for a couple of days editing the names…) and I like visual. Helps me get a handle on the footage in the absence of naming and logging, something that we can no longer insist on.)

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Walter Biscardi]

[Jason Porthouse] “Thumbnails are useful to me for 2 reasons; primarily on this project because it’s been logged in cam (all clips are called FOOD00000 where the 0s are ascending. Yeah, I know, but try getting the producers to spring for a couple of days editing the names…) and I like visual. Helps me get a handle on the footage in the absence of naming and logging, something that we can no longer insist on.)
“

I think it’s the media array quite honestly and has nothing to do with XDCAM. I have about 30 hours or so of documentary material on our system and I don’t have any issues using thumbnails in the Browser. I use the List View with Thumbnails as that gives me both the thumbnail and all TC information. No slowdowns or issues with this much material and more to come soon. I’m running on an 8TB partition on a 16TB Ethernet based SAN here.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Biscardi Creative Media

Creative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital.

Read my Blog!

[Victor Perez]

Are you absolutely sure there is no media or renders on your System Drive? A right click on your Sequence in the bin, Reconnect Media will show you a list of where all the media and renders are on your machine.

While we were in the process of moving to a new facility all our XDCam projects were edited off of our local drives and firewire 800 drives for over 2 months. Barely a hick-up we were amazed we were able to Master and Version various projects during that time.

Victor

[Jason Porthouse]

I’m tending to agree with you Walter, whilst FW should theoretically be fine, I think there’s the possibility of the buses choking with data and causing a crash. I’ll have to do some jiggling around and make space on my RAID, and see if it solves the issue…

Victor,

Absolutely sure, there’s nowt on there but OS and apps. All media and related files are on separate drives or RAIDs.

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Mark Maness]

Ok, Jason…

Let me ask you this. How are you ingesting your media? Is the XDCAM HD from the EXS series of cameras? And what Easy Setup are you using?

I didn’t know it was possible to bring in XDCAM HD without the Sony Software UNLESS you are capturing to another codec. Can you shed some light on this?

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Jason Porthouse]

Wayne,

Sorry for the confusion. I’ve received the media on an HDD from the production company who’ve ingested it from EX1s(20%) and the F700 (the rest), using the latest Sony software. They’ve then cloned the drives and sent one to me.

I’m using XDCAM HD422 25p CBR setup, modified to use my Blackmagic for monitoring purposes.

Hope that clears it up!

_________________________________

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*