[Jason Porthouse]

Just to add, make sure if your machine is older (I think it may be) that the PCI setup utility is correct. It’s in /system/library/core services/expansion slot utility. There’s a PDF on the AJA site here:

https://www.aja.com/support/kona/kona-system-configuration.php

That should give you all the gen to make sure it’s set right.

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

I have had massive problems of a similar kind working with XDCAM in FCP.

I’d say make sure the Kona is installed EXACTLY as per instructions. It should be slot 2 AFAIK.

You say you have 9 gigs of RAM – this means you have unevenly matched pairs on risers. You need to sort this pronto! So if you have 4 x 2 gigs and an odd 1, ditch the 1. If you have 4 2s and 2 512s, ditch the 2 512s. You need the same ram on each riser, and the same number on each riser – so 4 1gigs on each is good, 2 2gigs on each is good – but don’t mix 2s and 1s on risers even if they’re symmetrical. Follow?

Also – turn off thumbnails in the TL and see if that helps. It reduced my crashes.

HTH

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

I cut HDV 50i on a dual G5 regularly. Works fine, nice and snappy and no timeline problems. Only thing I notice when I come back to my Intel is the rendering speed. BTW, the G5 uses a mix of FW 400/800 and SATA drives.

HTH

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

AFAIK Media 100 844i included bespoke hardware accellerators. My old Fast 601 did the same. The market we’re in has changed since then – some would say for the worst. I don’t think so.

Whilst my 601 would cope with multi-stream uncompressed SD video, the overall package of FCS offers more to me. Yes, rendering happens but it’s not an issue for my workflow.

So you may well find that the fastest current Mac/FCS solution won’t give you enough realtime HD streams with all the effects you use without rendering (remember btw you’re dealing with at least 4x the data in terms of computational power to process HD)so you may have to look elsewhere. Something like Flame or Smoke would probably give you the realtime functionality you need. It comes at a price though – so we’re back to the cost/performance equation again.

If I were you I’d hang fire till FCS3 and Snow Leopard arrive. You may find this combination solves many of your problems.

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

[tel jaba] “but doesn’t that mean tat only one hard drive gets backed up? I mean how would 4TB be backed up on 1.5 TB?”

Tel – no it doesn’t – Raid 5 ensures that any 1 disk can fail and they integrity of your data is intact. If any disk fails the system can use the extra disk to rebuild the stripe. The plus is that short of doubling up an entire array (which is actually no guarantee if you think about it) it’s the most robust solution statistically speaking and offers the best cost/performance ratio. The downside is you loose 1 disk’s worth of capacity – so 5 x 1 TB disks will give you 4TB storage. For the cost it’s a no-brainer IMHO.

I’m sure Google will yield many articles by men with pointy heads explaining exactly how it works, but if I were you I’d set the ES up in RAID 5 and forget about it…

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

Well, hell, I’m gonna stick my neck out here and predict FCS3 will be announced at the UK supermeet on June 26. That’s why Walter Murch is being flown in. Either that or he’s read the CV I sent him.

But hey, whadda I know??

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

Hi Kang,

I’ve done lots of work with XDCAM EX, and whilst mine’s been on a MacPro 2.66, my colleague does sync pulls using his 12″ G4 Macbook Pro running XDCAM EX 35VBR off a firewire 400 drive. It’s fine, even with some FX.

So I really can’t understand what’s bugging your system. Double check the sequence settings, make sure everything is the same – you’re not getting a render bar on the timeline are you? For basic FX you shouldn’t be. You’re sure the render is set to the SATA rather than the Macbook HD? In fact, make sure everything is on the SATA (save for the project). I really can’t offer any more advice – other than I’d suspect a setting somwhere being out. Take heart from the fact it should work OK… it at least narrows down your options.

I’ll come back to you if I have a eureka moment.

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

Your system should be fine with this. XDCam is only 35mb/s.

I know it may sound obvious, but double-check your system settings and sequence settings. Use an XDCam easy setup and make a new sequence – cut some footage in to this and see if there’s any difference.

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

Thanks chaps,

Funnily enough I used the 3-way thinking along similar lines David. It seemed to be better but not perfect.

Moving the sequence to Blackmagic 10 bit PAL made things slightly better, but not perfect.

I didn’t think to slap a broadcast safe on, will give it a go, so thanks for that. It was about 1 in the morning…

What I still don’t get is the fact that after rendering the black levels went lower than 0 – in fact you can see on the scopes that the blue channel has dipped the least, but is still down. It’s in FCP scopes as well as on my external ones… pre-render, it looks exactly as it should, inky black with scopes reading correctly. Yet another PAL bug?

BTW this originated from a Z1 shooting DVCam. Ingested to ProRes via SDI. I do have a digital copy (firewire in to FCP then burnt to DVD as QT) so I may try that to see if it’s any different.

Thanks all

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

Thanks Mark, but as I said in the post its PAL ProRes. 0 IRE. I assumed, as I’ve always experienced in the past, a crushed black is a crushed black and once it’s at 0 on the scope no picture information is there. It’s always been that way in the hours of onlining i’ve done, and whilst the slight noise is a nuisance, again black is black…

Ahh well, never do freebies for friends. They’re always the hardest to do.

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*