[John Moore]

Hi All,

After the second run with Media Patrol the Pegasus drive has been running OK. It seems that Media Patrol was able to correct whatever was causing the problems in the first place because it has been quite stable the last four weeks and we have completed a rough cut with only minor interruptions. It seems like it is important to initialize the drive to your machine and not use the set up straight out of the box.

best

John Moore

[John Moore]

Hi Bill,

My RAID has now rebuilt drive 2 that was replaced by Promise. It took 26 hours to rebuild the drive and the RAID is now working again and I’m running Media Patrol on it. I’ll give it one more go and if it fails again that’s it. It’s going back.

It’s amazing some of the reports on these drives like the one you mention having to reverse the cable to get it to work. Several people have reported that mobile phones interfere with the Thunderbolt cable and unmount the whole drive. see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-VGVR2YDck

Evidently silver foil wrapped around the drive can fix this problem.

What settings did you use when you initialised your RAID.? Block size, stripe, read ahead etc. My tech did the set-up and I’m not sure what he used.

Best John

John Moore

[John Moore]

Hi Bill and John,

Great that your machines are working well but there are a lot of people out there very disappointed with Pegasus drives. Have a look in Apple’s support community under Pegasus. There is obviously some sort of software problem. I’m in a difficult position because I’m in the middle of an edit that has to be delivered to a broadcaster in the not too distant future and I specifically bought an iMac with Thunderbolt to do this job. I can’t connect it to anything else but a thunderbolt drive. Here is a typical thread from Apple Community.
Re: Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?
Oct 18, 2011 3:29 AM (in response to ByronCox)
Wish I’d found this thread before I bought my new System, Macbook pro, thunderbolt 27″ display and R4 Drive, it has ejected 7 times this morning. Tried bypassing monitor, same problem, different cable, same problem, just swapped to second r4 thunderbolt port, seems ok at moment but not confident. Spoke to promise support who gave impression it was unusual problem!!!, hard to believe when you see the thread above. Don’t think they’ll sell many more of these if problem is not sorted urgently.

John Moore

[John Moore]

Hi Kristian,
have tried that video output trick and it didn’t work unfortunately. I was most hopeful about it.

John

[John Moore]

Hi Callum,
Thanks for your suggestion about running an older version of the Decklink software. I’d be interested to know which one you recommend.

In this computer which is a dual 1.25Ghz G4 we are running a Decklink Pro SD and its connected to a standard LCD monitor via the y out cable. We are cutting broadcast docos shot on DVC Pro HD but editing in Blackmagic DV for offline purposes which gives us the most flexibility for not having to render effects and will work with our network system.

Our network system is a 2 Gig dual processor G5 with gigabit ethernet operating as a server attached to a 5 TB Raid 5 array. We have three computers of various sorts attached to the server from a 1.25Ghz single processor G4 to a 2.7 Gig Dual Core G5 non of which have decklink cards and none of which are affected by this slow down problem. They all run fine. There is a Decklink HD in the Server and thats also working fine.

We still have the slow down problem when we disconnect the G4 from the server system and remove the gigabit ethernet card. take out the Blackmagic card and put in a second video card to run the monitor and the problem disappears.

I was thinking of trying Decklink 6.1 because I’m pretty sure that was working on the machine when we were running FCP 5.

Thanks John

[John Moore]

Thanks for that Jerry but I’m not that sure RAM is the only problem. If I replace my Black Magic Decklink card with a second video card to drive my monitor the problem completely disappears and the machine runs smoothly. When I replace the Decklink card the problem comes back. Slowdown after about 2 hours work. I have to quit and re-open the program to get rid of the problem.

I’d appreciate any other thought you may have because I like my decklink card but will have to junk it if I can’t solve this problem.

John Moore

[John Moore]

Thanks for that Rainer, you could well be right.
I’ve seen other posts where new machines seem to have the same problem and have blamed it on the Black Magic software and that turning off the video output (Apple F12) solves the problem. I’m going to try that before going back to Studio 1 even though I find it hard to believe that that the Black magic stuf would cause a problem. Its usually super reliable.

John Moore