Dave Mac
Forum Replies Created
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Alister,
I would avoid any external FW device that has multiple drives but no fan (like the LaCie Big Disk Extreme). Several people have reported what seems to be heat-related failures with these units. I had one just fail (bad circuitboard, not drives) this week, three weeks after the one year warranty expired. Do a search in this forum for more feedback on LaCie drives. I know of people using the Bigger Disk Extreme (4 drive models) that haven’t had problems, but these units have fans (the problems I described could be due to poor design, leading to inadequate heat dissipation and heat-related failures; manufacturing defects on certain production runs; etc.).
If you want to get a pre-built system, I would recommend the G-Raid, which has a two year warranty:
Other terrific vendors include WiebeTech, OWC, MacGurus, and FWDepot.
If you’re mechanically-inclined, you could save a few bucks by purchasing an enclosure and drive(s) separately.
You want to use a FW800 connection, if possible, to get the best performance. From what you have described, you should fare pretty well with a two-drive “RAID 0” FW drive setup. Depending on your Mac, its memory, whether or not you have a separate internal “scratch” drive, you may get terrific performance from the external FW system. You can always adjust the RT settings in FCP to eek out better frame rates, etc. It’s a balance. With more detailed info about your system HW, SW, OS, FCP version, you’ll get much better feedback.
-Dave
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From your description, it isn’t real easy to tell what’s going on….
A couple of things:
(1) Are you making changes to the original items in the nested sequence? If those two items were each sequences, and you change those sequences, the changes should propagate to the nested sequence (you may need to re-render things, as well, as applicable). Make sure you are not editing “browser” clips instead of “timeline” clips (if the timeline clips were nested), as the changes won’t propagate into the nested sequence. I have provided just a couple of brief descriptions… the real issue may be due to something else.
(2) The “interlacing issue” in the nested sequence is likely due to the size of each nested item in the new sequence or the vertical position of each item, or both. Try shifting the vertical position of the nested items up or down, re-render if necessary, and check the results on an external monitor.
Hope this helps….
-Dave
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On the off-chance that you haven’t already ordered your RAM, I would suggest RAMJET as a terrific vendor. They are very Mac-friendly and I’ve had great success with them. Their current price is $115 for a 1 GB module.
You may take note on subtle differences between RAM vendors, specifically differences in latency ratings that sometimes can explain price differences. Also, you have an option of buying error correcting RAM versions for your dual core G5 (ECC modules a bit more expensive).
As you probably know already, you should install the RAM in pairs, with each pair being made up of modules with the same exact specs.
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Brad,
I feel your pain. I had to figure this stuff out, as well. The timecode break issue bit me, too. I also thought that multiple clips (non-overlapping in TC) for the same camera angle should work on a single track.
As Herb mentioned, having to create several separate multiclips is not intuitive; the manual and various tutorial DVDs, which tend to just mimick the manuals, never address these kinds of pretty basic issues.
Once you wrap your head around this and get some multiclips made and working, the process becomes much more enjoyable.
I should mention that everything, other than HDV-specific issues, happened to me with SD footage (DV-25).
I am looking forward to some tweaks to this functionality, as well.
Good luck with your project!
-Dave
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For the sake of reference for other LaCie users, or potential buyers, it may be that the 2-drive variants of the d2 case design are more prone to heat-related failure because they don’t have fans. Single-drive units may be able to adequately dissipate heat via the case. The units larger than the Big Disk Extreme units seem to have fans (I know a bunch of people with these units). The fans tend to be noisy, but I haven’t heard of any failures with those units yet.
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Well, I just had a 500 GB (dual 250 GB) Big Disk Extreme fail on me after 13 months (out of warranty). In over 20 years of using computers, I have never had anything die completely on me like this. I have replace hard drives when they became noisy, but never had a complete unit (external or internal) die like this. I guess I’ve been rather fortunate.
From other’s reports, it seems like the power brick (supply/transformer) or the FW bridge go bad much more often than a drive failure occurs. I am waiting for an new case from fwdepot.com to see if the two drives will continue to work (didn’t have the unit in active use, so there was no data lost).
The problem with the controller board/bridgeset going bad on these multiple drive LaCie units is that they are RAID-ed and you will lose data, even if the bare drives inside are still good.
I have had about a 50% failure rate with the d2 variants of the LaCie external drives. Never had a problem with any other, even “no name” brands. It may be that LaCie’s design or quality of the power supplies or controller boards weren’t quite as robust as they should have been, or there wear issues in manufacturing. I did buy all of my LaCie drives within a couple months of each other, so that could explain the failures if they were design-related or manufacturing-related, or both.
The worst part is the circuitboard/controller may be about the cheapest part of the entire unit… it sucks that it failed (in my current case).
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Tom,
This project just screams for a real clip database/logging tool.
I would recommend CatDV Pro. It is terrific tool and allows for custom description/note fields. I would not recommend HD Log, as I find it to be really clunky and not as capable as CatDV Pro. HD Log’s only superior feature seems to be its ability to do “live” logging.
Best of luck with your project.
-Dave
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Jeremy and Patrick,
Thanks for the helpful and speedy responses!
I just checked my Decklink Pro card and it does HD downconverting… I am guessing that this means I can preview HD footage from FCP with my current card.
Now, I can wait until I get a new tower with PCIe slots (quad whatever later this year or next?) and just get a Kona 3 (or current version then) instead of buying a Kona 2 card now for my PCI-X dual 2.5 GHz G5!
I really appreciate the time and consideration you spent in responding to my query.
-Dave
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Jeremy, et al.,
I am wondering a couple of things about this. I have a PVM-14L5/1, connected via a Decklink Pro (SD) card.
To properly view, say something using DVC Pro 50 or DVC Pro HD (I know these may have different requirements), would you need to output via an HD card, like the Kona 2/3 or Decklink HD? I would guess that those cards are converting to analog and sending that signal to the monitor?
If you are using an HD card with HD-SDI outputs, and you add the HD-SDI card to the Sony monitor ($1500), would you get better results for previewing HD footage? Would this apply equally to both interlaced and progressive HD footage?
My principal interest is accurate monitoring of HD footage (not uncompressed) for color correction. I wonder if just using a Kona 2/3 card would be enough, or if I should also get the HD-SDI card for the Sony monitor?
Thanks.
-Dave
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Kevin’s advice is true, but it misses an important detail. When you normally shutdown your Mac, all drives are dismounted as part of that process.
Some external FW drives, namely LaCie, will also power down when they sense no power coming from the Mac. Others require you to manually power down the device. LaCie drives (at least my 3 d2 models) will also power up when you turn on your Mac.
It might be better to say that when you wish to power down your FW drives, in order to disconnect them, while your computer is still on, you should first eject/unmount the volumes corresponding to those drives.
-Dave