[Art Guglielmo]

All software is up to date on both machines. There is about 80 gigs free on the firewire drive, but as I said, it does this when I move the project to an internal SATA Raid, with the whole drive free also.

Also, this is not a timeline thats even been edited. Just mark a 20 second clip with an in and out, throw it on the timline, and that cause problems. The G5 with the decklink card chews it up and spits it out for breakfast, the Mac Pro with the Kona card chokes almost immediately.

The Dual G5 has 2 gigs of ram, the new MacPro has 5 gigs of Ram.

The main differences are, the G5 has a decklink card, is loaded to the brim with programs and crap, but it runs the 1080i video perfectly.

The MacPro with a Kona card, with 5 gigs of ram, dual 3.0 ghz procs, and practically empty drives fails from ever playing the footage back without stoppage.

I’m not asking for the world here, DVCPro HD footage should not be difficult for this new machine to play back, considering my old G5 has been doing it for over a year now. If you look at my earlier posts, you will see the numbers that my disk array was reading with the Kona system test program. (115 – 120mb/sec)

Can the card be defective? Everything else seems to run fine, it shows no signs of other issues.

BTW, the card is plugged into slot 3, per AJA specs.

[Art Guglielmo]

I dont believe I am following you. When I play back just to the Mac desktop, or desktop cinema display, no frames are dropped. That is a FCP option, under user preferences, not a Kona card option. Only when the output is set to go through the Kona card, do any frames get dropped.

This is a brand new machine, with over 400 gigs free on both the system drive and the internal SATA raid drive also has over 400 gigs free. (the video and all my scratch drives are set to the RAID.)

When I play it off of the firewire drive, it is connected to the FW 800 port on the back of the machine.

My older machine is a Dual 2.0 G5 with a decklink HD card, and that has no problems playing the same stuff back consistently from both an internal raid and the exact same firewire 800 drive.

I am using Kona 3.2 software, with the latest OS upgrades, as well as Final Cut Pro upgrades installed.

[Art Guglielmo]

oh boy, Dont know how much help I can be other than to tell you I am also a Mac Pro owner that is getting “dropped frames” errors, even when I am using a raid that is getting good performance scores.

You might want to check out my thread I started a couple days ago:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=98&postid=861120

I did speak to AJA about the dropped frames thing, and was told this is a “handshake” between Final cut and the AJA card, and to turn off the dropped frames option and not to worry about it. Apparantly, this is a new feature. Who wanted this feature, I do not know, but I am not happy with the answer so far. I would have preferred honesty and for them to say “we dont have many Mac pro users yet, and we really dont know what is going on.” would have been a bit more respectable.

[Art Guglielmo]

I have been editing on Final cut since version 2.0. Between the computer, Kona, drives , memory, etc, I am in for over 10 grand total. (and I have a 2 year old G5 with a Decklink card that works better. Not good)
I am very experienced in Final Cut, but what I am not experienced in is KONA. This is my first Kona card, and I am trying to figure out if there is some magic setting I am missing.

I am a serious user, and have been for years. I wanted to keep them out of it, but this system was set-up by ProMax, and they were even able to log-in remotely and try to work on the problem, and even they have no ideas. I normally NEVER call tech support, as usually I feel I am quite sophisticated when diagnosing problems such as this. No offense to AJA, but when you get answers like they gave me, you tend to lose confidence in tech support. The fact of the matter is, this shouldnt be a tough problem to work out. The machine is brand new, with barely any media or other programs installed. Generally I am working with footage imported from an HVX, and its simply a matter of selecting the right “easy Setup”. The problem happens on every type of media though, including new media digitized through the Kona Break-out box.

This is not a mismatch error, or problems with set-up. As I stated before, just turning off the Kona output clears the problem up. I was really just hoping someone here had a magic answer, so now after seeing the replies, I am more confident there is a serious problem, either with the card or the Mac Pro. I will give AJA another shot, then I will be exchanging the card for another card, possibly another decklink. I was really excited about the Kona, and some of its advantages, but unfortunately, this isnt working out.

Does anyone else out there have a Kona with a Mac Pro that can verify this isnt a common issue ?

[Art Guglielmo]

I will call AJA again on Monday. I guess I should let you know I did call AJA on Wednesday, and was told to “turn off the report drop frames” option, as this is normal, and has something to do with the “handshake” between the card. Maybe I just got the wrong guy that day, and will give AJA another shot, as to be honest, I do not believe that this is normal, and if it is, someone let me know, so I can return this card, and shop for something else, as that should be unacceptable. (unless someone can really convince me that this should be happening, but I sure dont see anyone else on this forum saying they have this problem.)

Also, when I turn off the output through the Kona card, either with no output or desktop cinema display, the timeline plays fine. So it has to be something with the Kona card, and not the disk sub system.

[Art Guglielmo]

Sorry. Actually its a Lacie 500 gig firewire 800. Works great. The internal is (2) 200 gig SATA striped as raid 0, with the Kona card test giving me about 115 – 120 mb/sec. The Lacie is getting about 45 write, 73 mb/s read. Same exact symptoms from either drive.