[Akbar Ukani]

Hey Bob,

I was using the internal SATA drives which were not configured in any particular raid. The application is installed on the boot drive with Mac OS X of course and the other 3 drives are configured individually. They primarily contain all my video and audio files. I don’t do any ProRes yet…it was just a basic native XDCam 720p60 35Mbits/sec footage.

The 3 drives I have are Hitachi Deskstar 7200 RPM SATA II with 16mb Buffer…

I figured it shouldn’t be a problem since i am editing native XDCam footage? Thanks for your insights

[Akbar Ukani]

I checked out the cards that you mentioned and they all seem to be x8 PCI Express…I have a Mac Pro where can I only have the following configuration for my PCI Express Slots

slot 4 (x4) – ????
slot 3 (x4) – will need it for the AJA Kona LHI
slot 2 (x1) – leaving it open for Matrox Compress HD
slot 1 (x16) – occupied by the graphics card

Do you know of any hardware raid controllers that can utilize slot 4 in my mac pro? Thank You

[Akbar Ukani]

You are right, FCP can only utilize upto 4GB of RAM, but I kid you not when I looked at the activity monitor on my mac pro, it showed i had approximately 200-250mb of Free Memory and almost 60%-70% of the total memory was “wired” (atleast thats what the pie chart showed)…I can’t recall the exact figure…the rest of it was either “active” or “inactive”

[Akbar Ukani]

When you put it this way then shoot it makes sense…I never tried converting the clips to ProRes to see what would happen…I guess I got way too caught up with the fact that it might be something wrong with the I/O box…besides Matrox says it on their website that you would be able to monitor native xdcam footage without dropped frames…I guess as a consumer I am not entitled to hold Matrox for everything they say about their product =)…j/k but thank you for your insight..I have already shipped the MXO2 back to B&H and I have decided to go with AJA being that it is so popular

BTW…as far as faster drives, the only option I can think of is to have a hardware raid controller on my mac….Therefore, with AJA LHI using PCI-Express slot 3 (x4) can you recommend any hardware raid controllers that would utilize the PCI-Express Slot 4 (x4)?

[Akbar Ukani]

Hey Gary,

I appreciate you taking the time to clarify things for me. I eventually called AJA tech support; however I was transferred to some voice mail. Thereafter, I decided to use their support system via the website. I got the response via the support system.

As far as the dropped frames, I would think that the matrox mxo2 which I had purchased (now going back) should playback video on my plasma tv without any problems considering the following settings

1. Dedicated Video Hard Drive for A/V only (hitachi deskstar 7200rpm SATAII)
2. Mac Pro 2.66Ghz x 2 with 8Gb of RAM
3. Sequence settings: XDCam 720p60 VBR 35Mbits/sec
4. RT Settings: Dynamic
5. Video Playback Output Setting in FCP: Matrox MXO2 720p59.94 YUV 10-Bit 1280×720
6. Mirror on Desktop Turned OFF

Any suggestions as to why I was getting dropped frames constantly. Also, in all instances with the dropped frames, I would notice that I would only have about 200-250mb of RAM free. I would have to reboot the machine and the problem would go away until I started monitoring footage again via FCP

[Akbar Ukani]

I understand that; however I am not a 100% convinced that it could be the hard drives because the same footage plays fine if I am not monitoring it on the plasma hdtv. In addition, if it were the drives then it really shouldn’t affect my computer RAM to the point where it becomes sluggish all over where it would require a complete reboot

In addition, the hard drives I have are hitachi deskstar 7200 rpm and they are nowhere near full.

Can you please explain? and if possible address my initial question about Kona LHI and XDCam EX? Thank you for your help

[Akbar Ukani]

Hey…Yes I certainly understand that once it gets compressed in the camera then pretty much its Quality In = Quality Out =)…

however, the reason I am trying to get into ProRes directly from the SDI port is because I am having some issues with the native xdcam files when adding filters and transitions between shots…doing so degrades the playback quality significantly and I am thinking perhaps I can overcome this playback problem if I convert the footage into something of an “frame” based editing codec instead of staying in Long GOP

any steps to achieve that workflow? I can definitely use media manager in FCP, but I just want to see if I can achieve it via the SDI port from the camera? Thanks

[Akbar Ukani]

Hi, Thank you for taking the time to help me?…I am currently running into problems with XDcam…I forgot to mention that I just bought a Matrox MXO2…Here Are My System Specs

Mac Pro 2×2.66Ghz Dual Core processors
8Gb RAM
3 Non-RAID SATA 7200 Hitachi 16Mb buffer drives (500Gb a piece)
512Mb ATI Radeon XT1900
1.33Ghz Frontside Bus
FCP 6.0.5
Mac OSX 10.5.9

With the MXO2, when I enable video playback via FCP, I have the sequence being displayed on my Plasma TV without any problems the first few minutes; however then I start getting dropped frames. Eventually, it gets to the point where I have only 200Mb of Free Available Memory….the rest of the memory is “wired”…restart the computer and it works fine but then same errors

To resolve this, i did the following:

– Complete uninstall of the MXO2 software and Reinstall Version 1.4
– Complete uninstall of MXO2 software and reinstall version 1.3
– Sequence playback is set to Dynamic
– Render Sequences using ProRes
– Turned off “mirror playback”

Neither helped the situation…its a basic 720p60 XDcam footage…The tech from Matrox didn’t have a clue either…Any suggestions