Tedjac
Forum Replies Created
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It seems part of the problem is with FCP… as it only addresses a max 2.5Gbs and is not 64-bit native. I’m not sure why it creates the instability it does, but according to the engineers I’ve talked to, FCP is part of the problem and won’t solve anything until a 64-bit version is ready…(hopefully FCP 6.0??) From what I understand it has something to do with the computer grabbing more RAM than FCP can handle (during big file moves and heavy rendering, for example). I guess this causes the kernel panics?? Like I said earlier, not sure what is going on, but smart people are working on work arounds for CalDigit, Atto and SoftRAID (that I’m aware of). Hopefully it will all make sense and be fixed someday soon. In the mean time, 2Gbs RAM it is!
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Is anyone that is having this “greater than 2Gbs RAM” issue using SoftRAID to stripe their storage?? I just read something that implicated SoftRAID in this mess. Anyone??
I was also able to use more than 2GBs on my Quad G5. It woud stiill kernel panic under heavy load, like long renders, etc. The Mac Pro was MUCH more unstable and would barely work at all with 4Gbs RAM. Now with 2Gbs… it seem pretty stable and has only froze up once is several days… and this freeze didn’t appear to be a kernel panic.
Sure wish we could get to the bottom of this!
Ted
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So is the problem with FCP… with the Mac hardware… with OS X… someone really needs to address this problem. Has Apple said anything about it? Is anyone successfully using more than 2Gbs of RAM w/FCP 5.1? What about external fast mass storage (not firewire or USB)?
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The above doc is not related to the 2GB problem… and it’s not just a Mac Pro problem as my Quad G5 had a similar, but less severe problem with storage hooked up to PCIe cards. The machines crash during long renders and other times at random. The crashes are usually gray screen five language kernel panics that require complete reboots. The problem has been confirmed by CalDigit and Atto… and I would bet that when the Sonnet driver is released for the Mac Pro, it will also crash with over 2Gb RAM… unless they found a way to fix it. I had the Sonnet 4 port multiplier card in a Quad G5 and it was very crash prone. My guess is it has something to do with communication speed vs. bandwidth… but I’m not a computer engineer, so I really can’t say. I do know that the problem SEEMS to be presesnt for any kind of fast storage card in a PCIe slot in a Mac w/ more than 2GBs RAM.
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The 2GB RAM limit seems to be with any PCIe card that addresses a mass storage device. Both Sonnet and CalDigit have the same issue with SATA cards. If you run more than 2Gb of RAM, the sytem becomes very unstable and crashes a lot. I know CalDigit is still working on the issue, but so far, no joy. I would really like to be able to put more RAM in the machine, but for now it will have to get by on only 2GBs of RAM.
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Thanks… I figured it out and it works great… does anyone know if Apple or Sony will be offering 35Mb/s CBR option anytime soon? The variable bit rate quality leaves a lot to be desired.
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Where can I find all of the Mac XDCAM software and drivers?? Sony had the Transfer software… what about the FAM and other necessary files??
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What is the process for importing files into a Mac? Is this even doable? What is the bit rate of these files and how are they integrated into a FCP timeline? Is Mac software available that accomlishes the file importing as opposed to just capturing over HD-SDI?
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The Easy Set-Up doesn’t contain any of the settings other than the Sequence settings. Nothing for Capture or Playback. I played around with using the HD-SDI output and selecting the XDCAM-HD compressor and it captures but the footage won’t playback in any of the timeline/sequence settings without really long renders. It sees the footage as MPEG-2… which I guess is what it is. Anyway…
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I talked to the owner of MacGurus where I got the towers and he said that the Seagates should be fine. He mentioned something about WDC Caviar drives having problems, but I’m not sure what he was implying. My drives are all identical Seagate 500Gb 7200rpm/16Mb cache drives that were all brand new when they went in the cases… I put them in the cases. The RAID seems to work fime for everything else, so I kind of doubt that it’s the problem.
I still am suspect of ther Sonnet SATA card and just ordered one of the new CalDigit cards to test and see if the problem abates.