[Jim Curtis]

Hi Bob,

To continue our OT rambling, I couldn’t agree more about health insurance. It’s a cruel game rigged against us. However, my client is a provider, a chain of hospitals, and what’s encouraging about it is that they’re looking into customer service and looking at patients as consumers, not cattle to be treated as commodities in a feed lot – being sensitive to wait times and meeting expectations, giving value for out of pocket expenses, and less of thinking of doctors as gods who can continue to put their schedules ahead of their customers. This is something I feel is long overdue. I live in Dallas, and these Doc-in-a-box have been popping up on every corner, and I think the competition is heating up. Too bad that insurers don’t feel the same heat. You may know this, but health insurers are exempt from anti-trust laws, which means they are free to collude and rig prices so that there’s no difference between the different insurers on price, and that makes them also free to provide crap service, as long as everybody is doing it.

Thanks for the intel on Tolis’ competition. When I got into LTO, I started with Retrospect, and quickly grew dissatisfied. At the time, I think there were only two other competitors on Mac. One was a German company, and the other was Tolis, with their product geared towards digital media production.

BRU PE isn’t a product I use daily as I do with the Adobe apps, so the $300/year seems a bit out of proportion, but as you put it, maybe it’s a position I should re-think. We US people pay around $660/year for the CC suite, and considering how much time I spend using it (five days a week, all day long) vs. BRU PE (~once a fortnight for a couple hours), the BRU PE support seems exorbitant, especially considering how little bother I am to them. In the seven or so years that I’ve needed help, I’ve needed help for maybe a total of one hour. So, if I’d been paying them annually, their support from me would have earned them $2100/hour.

I’m also paying Blue Cross a ransom for my insurance, and since I’m pretty healthy, it’s not been a great return either.

Cheers,
Jim

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 5,1; 6-core 3.06 GHz; 128 G RAM all the same brand; dual boot: 1011.6 & 10.12.6; QT 7.6.6; Primary display: 4K HP Dreamcolor; secondary: 24\” HP DreamColor; Nvidia TITAN GPU; ATTO R680 RAID5 16TB; ATTO H680 HBA for HP LTO5 tape; USB3 PCIe card; latest drivers all around

[Jim Curtis]

Adobe has a forum monitored by Adobe employees offering support. So does Avid. Avid tried the ransom model, and last I checked (when I abandoned them around 2010) it was ongoing (and probably necessary for complicated large installations), but they must have realized that in the age of the internet and public forums, it’s not a great idea to allow disgruntled customers to trash the company without stepping in to do some damage control – and if that requires free support, then so be it.

It’s a coincidence that I happen to be working on a project now for a big and getting bigger health care company who has come to realize this. They have two people on staff whose full time jobs are to scour social media for complaints, and to respond quickly to them. Their reply usually starts along the lines of “We’re sorry that we have not met your expectations. Let’s see what we can do to address your concerns.” They don’t point fingers and accuse and belittle customers, even when they’re wrong or uninformed, as the worst examples of “customer service” advocates are wont to do.

Tolis seems to have done away with their BRU PE user to user support mail list that didn’t have much traffic. They have a woefully out of date “knowledge base” (consisting of a whole 22 articles going back five or six years for BRU PE). I joined the Cow years ago, but it fell into disuse as I’ve learned to solve most of my own problems. I googled to find this forum for archiving, and is the only one I found geared toward the production industry. That makes this the more or less de facto user forum for thrifty BRU PE users. Slings and arrows.

Companies are going to have to get used to customers characterizing their model of support as ransom. We are creatives, after all. It’s a metaphor!

I’ll only be dragged kicking and screaming to any new Apple OS, and never again until 10.x.5 at minimum. Fool me twice…. I have a test partition with Sierra 10.12.6 and BRU PE only on it, and I plan to eventually do a fresh install of all my software and plug-ins, which will take days likely, as several of my plugs and apps will require a web authorization reset, meaning I have to contact some vendors and explain what I’m doing (I’ve had to do this before when upgrading MacPros or after a crashed boot drive.). Using Migration Assistant in the past seems to have migrated my problems and leftover trash in my Library and App Support folders.

Sorry, I seem to have rambled horribly off-topic.

[Jim Curtis]

Mike from your Support Group sent me a build of BRU PE Import Tool that will launch and import tapes in both El Capitan and Sierra. So, thank you, Tim for your advice to contact the Support Group.

I don’t think it’s unrealistic for software vendors to keep pace with the operating systems their software runs on, and to release patches and fixes when the OS changes. Nvidia and ATTO do this continuously, without charge. ATTO support is some of the best I’ve ever experienced.

As to the issue with authentication, Mike kindly explained that the issue is related to Apple security updates (which may be why I was “magically” bounced from being able to authenticate) and Tolis not being an “identified developer” in the Mac Security & Privacy firewall built into OSX, and that Tolis has to do some hoop jumping to stay compatible with OSX 10.6 onward. I don’t run BRU PE every day – not even every week, so I didn’t make the connection between a security update and BRU PE locking me out of Admin access.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 5,1; 6-core 3.06 GHz; 128 G RAM all the same brand; dual boot: 1011.6 & 10.12.6; QT 7.6.6; Primary display: 4K HP Dreamcolor; secondary: 24″ HP DreamColor; Nvidia TITAN GPU; ATTO R680 RAID5 16TB; ATTO H680 HBA for HP LTO5 tape; USB3 PCIe card; latest drivers all around

[Jim Curtis]

Tim, I corresponded with Bob in Sales about this issue on August 11, 2017 on my MacPro running El Capitan, after several years of it working more or less OK, when BRU PE first decided to stop authenticating, and the Tape Import tool started lying to me about BRU PE not being installed. It was then that I was told that I’d have to pony up $279 to have anybody from Tolis help with my issue, contradicting your claim that they would have helped me with my issue. If you want to back up that claim, please help me now.

Again, I did a totally fresh OS install with no other drivers except those for basic functioning, and the latest build of Tape Import Tool STILL doesn’t work properly. Seems to me that mission critical software like BRU should be capable of surviving Apple’s security updates or whatever, and should just work when CUSTOMERS first install it.

I’d appreciate being treated more like a customer whose business is valued from Tolis, and not a serf. I’m dismayed at YOUR attitude.

I run lots of other software, and Tolis software is the ONLY software that has given me this much grief, since I abandoned Avid Media Composer a decade ago for FCP and then Adobe CC.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.

[Jim Curtis]

Adam, one way to tell if the driver has loaded successfully is by the appearance of your drive icon on the Desktop. If the driver is working, you should see an XDCam icon that looks similar to the physical disk. If not, you’ll see a generic disk icon. Once you see the XDCam icon, you should be getting faster read speeds.

And when you do Get Info on the disk, you get a different disk type when the driver is loaded correctly. I can’t remember what it’s called at the moment, as I don’t have one to take a look at right now.

HTH,
Jim Curtis

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; CS5.5; MC 5.5; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.

[Jim Curtis]

I tried posting a link earlier, but I guess the Cow strips them. Go to the Sony Microsite and search for XDCam > Downloads. Click the link that says, “Product Firmware and Setup Utilities.” Then you should see a link for the “PDW-U1 XDCAM Drive (SD/HD)”. Then click, “PDW-U1 Drive Software version 2.32 for Mac OS X and Windows” and the driver for Mac & Windows should download.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; CS5.5; MC 5.5; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.

[Jim Curtis]

Epilog: After installing the driver software, I was able to copy just under 24GB in around 30 minutes.

So, it appears that the driver was the missing piece.

With the driver software installed, the XDCam disk icon looks like an optical disk. Without the driver, the icon was a generic Mac OS disk icon.

Thanks again for all the input, guys.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; CS5.5; MC 5.5; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.

[Jim Curtis]

Hmmm. The Sony site fooled me. What was listed under Firmware is actually Driver Software. I’m going to install it – and not update the firmware as I erroneously reported earlier – and see what happens. Sorry for the misinfo.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; CS5.5; MC 5.5; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.

[Jim Curtis]

Andy, I don’t see any XDCam drive software on the Sony site.* I see XDCam Transfer, AMA plug for Avid, SxS card and iLink drivers, but nothing for the drive unit in question.

Site link:

And these speeds I’m giving you are just for doing a Finder copy of the PROAV folder. The times double when using ChronoSync to do a copy and verify pass.

Once I get the PROAV folders copied, the re-wrap to QT is fairly speedy using the Sony XDCam Transfer app.

If you’re able to copy a 23GB disk in 40 minutes, then I’ve definitely got something rotten going on here.

I see on the Sony site that there is a firmware updates for this drive unit. It may have never been applied (As I mentioned, this is a loaner unit.).

I will install the latest (They actually have one for Mac! Yay!), and see if that improves anything.

Thanks again,

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; CS5.5; MC 5.5; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.

[Jim Curtis]

I just thought of a workaround, and wanted to get your thoughts.

If it’s Mac USB2 support that sucks, would it make sense to buy a cheap Windows laptop that had USB2 and Gigabyte ethernet just to get media off these optical disks faster?

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 3,1; 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; CS5.5; MC 5.5; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (9.0.3); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Monitoring: Kona LHi SDI to AJA HDP2 converter to HDMI on the HP DreamColor.