[Jim Blokland]

Hey David:

Thanks for your note. I figured it was just your North American humour rubbing Sam the wrong way. : > )

Me, I’m from the frozen north, and up here in the chilly climes of Toronto, I’m busy transcoding to ProRes!

And then a super-clean run-through my system, just to cross that off the list.

Then hopefully smooth sailing after that.

For the record, my gut feeling is that the issue involves XDCAM and a mixed media timeline — and it may be compounded by the fact that on the Westmere Octos, we’re now in 64-bit. But this is all just a guess for now…

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Hey all:

Just found a long thread on Apple’s FCP forum, with multiple cases of users having the same issue with XDCAM footage.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2628596&start=0&tstart=0

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Thanks Rafael. I’m going to give Drive Genius a try first and see how it goes. TechTools looks good and will try it if no luck with DG3. I noticed on DiskWarrior’s site, they say they don’t have a bootable DVD yet for the new MacPros. Talk about living on the bleeding edge!

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Thanks for the tips Rafael. I really appreciate it. I’ve got a copy of Drive Genius 3 and Data Rescue 3, I’ll give them a try. It’s just frustrating when you buy a brand new system in order to be able to work more efficiently, and it ends up slowing you down, ya know?

Did you mention which MacPro you are running? Is it the Westmere or a previous generation? FCP hasn’t been updated since the introduction of these 64-bit kernel machines, so it might be worth booting in 32-bit mode to see if it performs better. One way or another, I hope to get back up running smoothly.

Only another 20 hours of ProRes transcoding to go!

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Hey Rafael:

Thanks for your post. I am wondering if my issues are related to my new Westmere Octo MacPro running in 64-bit mode. The reason I suggest this is, I did a clean install of Snow Leopard on a bare drive, followed by a clean install of FCS3 and the Matrox 2.0 driver — repaired the permissions after updating all the software — and the system seemed to work well for a few hours, then the crashes started again.

So, with that system being rebuilt clean from the ground up, I must conclude that this is not what is causing the crashes. I know with Media Composer 5, right now on the Westmeres, you have to switch back to 32-bit mode in order for the system to recognize the dongle. So there are issues specific to this setup. Obviously, you haven’t been cutting XDCAM on Snow Leopard for the past three years…but I assume you’re running SL now with no issues…

At any rate, I would appreciate any tips you may have regarding cleaning up or rebuilding directories, because as you probably are aware, when you rebuild permissions with Snow Leopard, it never completely comes out clean.

Thanks in advance for your help, and any advice is most welcome.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Hey Sam:

I’m not waiting for the next version of FCP — that may be a long wait — but when it comes, I sure won’t miss the 40 hours of transcoding I now have to do in order to effectively edit XDCAM footage!

I also want to say that I have received a great deal of help from this and other forums over the years. People here are generally very knowledgeable and willing to lend a hand. I have benefitted immensely from the folks here at the COW.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Hey Jeremy:

One more question re ProRes flavours: one post suggested going all the way to an offline ProRes proxy. This has eliminated the crashing bug for him. I’m wondering if I need to go that far, or whether you would recommend ProRes 422 or even ProRes HQ, so I just do the transcode, then link up and forget about the XDCAM forever and ever amen…

I’ve also read that anything over ProRes 422 is overkill for XDCAM originated material.

What’s your take?

Thanks in advance.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Hey Sam:

Thanks for your note. I understand the frustration. Especially when it seems like you’re the only one having the issue. I hope Apple fixes this in a future software iteration. I’m not a huge fan of XDCAM to begin with, but I’m sure I’ll be seeing more footage shot with that codec in future — and I’d like to know that my brand-spanking new Octo can deal with it without having to transcode to ProRes every time.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Hi Andrew:

Thanks so much for this info. Finally, something that makes sense to me. I’m working on a doc feature, with 80+ hours of material — but it will be worth it to not have to deal with the incessant crashes.

I’ll post back when I have (hopefully good) news.

PS: Are you pretty happy with the look of the proxy ProRes? Good enough for screenings on decent-sized screens?

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Hi guys:

Thanks for your responses so far. I have tried turning off thumbnails, doesn’t seem to make a big difference. I have also repaired permissions, no difference. Is there software for rebuilding directories you can point me to?

Last night I did a clean install of Snow Leopard and FCP and the Matrox 2.0 driver on a bare drive. Worked okay at first, but then it began to crash too. 4 times within a half-hour. The sequences are only 20 minutes long maximum, and the project files are only about 30 MB, so that shouldn’t be the issue.

I’m going to try splitting up the media onto two drives next, see what happens. I’ll post back then.

Any other advice most welcome.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3