[Steve Godun]

The good news is that Tekserve still has the machine, and they’re replacing the motherboard.

The bad news is that I just unboxed another brand new Mac Pro, another brand new Kona3 card, set them up, and I’m getting EXACTLY the same problem with this one.

Crap.

[Steve Godun]

The machine is currently on the bench at Tekserve in Manhattan. I’ll post the results when they come.

[Steve Godun]

“What decks and connections are you using?”

The engineering staff isn’t in yet but I will get this info when they’re in.

“Are all the machines on the same versions of QT/ OS/ FCP.”

Yes. Software-wise they are virtually identical. The only differences are minor things that should not affect this (e.g., one machine has Yahoo Messenger on it, the others don’t). But again, even if I move the OS/system from one machine to another, the problem stays on the machine.

“Does content still appear affected with no card in the machine?”

With no card in the machine there’s nothing to capture from, so there’s nothing there. (E.g., if I remove the card, launch QuickTime Pro and try to capture, it correctly tells me that there’s no video source.)

“Does a clean install of the systems and apps still show an issue.”

Did that. The issue remains. Also tried cloning a known-good system to this problematic system and the issue remains.

“Have you tried running the AJA conflict catcher app? its in the aja utilities folder”

Did try that. It reports no problems.

“I personally do not believe all of the machines are exactly the same- something is different and you need to stop and re-evaluate.”

We have five edit suites and another half dozen graphics/rendering workstations. The five edit suites are 100% identical; all of the hardware was purchased and installed at the same time, all of the upgrades (over the years) were purchased and installed at the same time, and all of the hardware and software configurations are identical. Ditto for the graphics/rendering workstations. Each of the machines were cloned from a common source. The only differences between the machines are, as I said, minor things which shouldn’t have an effect on the video, and also as I said if I clone one system to another the problem stays with this particular hardware.

I’m bringing this Mac Pro into Apple today to see if they can discover anything. Thanks for the help.

[Steve Godun]

In production we’re using FCP. For purposes of testing this issue I’m using QuickTime Player (since it’s about 50x faster to launch than FCP) which shows me the same results as FCP.

I am positive that all of the connections to/from the deck are compatible and in the correct order. (Remember, I have several systems which are virtually identical to one another, and all of the video editing systems use the same decks/hardware.) I can take any one of the existing systems and connect it to the devices that this problematic system uses, and the other system works fine. Likewise, I can take this problematic system and connect it to the devices that any other system uses, and the problem follows the problematic system.

It should also be noted that this issue arises even if there’s NOTHING connected to the Kona3 card. Therefore, the connection type is somewhat pointless. If I have two identical systems with nothing connected to the Kona3 card on either system, and one of them gives me color bars and the other gives me static, then the problem is very obviously not one of connection type.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. This is just bothering the heck out of me. 🙂 I’m going to tackle it again on Monday. I plan on swapping the hard drive and Kona3 card into another box and see if the problem follows the card and drive.