[Toobit]

Sorry for forgetting to list specs. I am not by those machines until Monday, so I’ll list what I can remember and if there is something more you need I’ll grab that on Monday.
The two Mac’s match perfectly, including software updates, since we always update them together:

2.8ghz Quad-core Mac Pro (2 of them)
-2gbs of RAM each
-AJA Kona LHe card
-AJA FCP driver v5.1
-Mac OS v10.4.11
-Final Cut Studio 2 v6.0.2
Is there anything else you want that might help?

As for the drivers, when we installed the routing system and connected the Kona cards to it, we upgrade the drivers to the newest listed on the site (5.1). Then, it was working fine for several weeks like that. When we were troubleshooting this week, we reinstalled the drivers again and it didn’t help.

But, remember that the grey screens are only on the capture and only with certain users, everything works fine if you are logged in as one particular user. I’m pretty sure that the Kona drivers are machine wide, not user wide? Right? I mean, you couldn’t have a different driver loaded depending on the used. Either way, I did reinstall the drivers under my login and rebooted and it didn’t help.

As far as the AJA TV thing, I will try that, but my bet is that it will be fine. All users can open media in FCP and we CAN playback (in viewer or timeline) THROUGH the Kona card to the SDI monitor. We only get the grey screen when trying to capture.

The video signal is coming through, becasue if I am in capture and seeing the grey screen, I can playback the tape (timecode is running and audio is coming in) and then switch the capture settings to something else (it doesn’t matter what I switch to, but for instance going from 525 DV to 525 ProRes) and suddenly I see the video come through for a moment and then a second later it “loops up”. The video keeps playing and the audio is heard but the picture that it is capturing becomes this quick little 5 frame loop.

I’m just totally confused as to why things would be different based on the USER! I guess this means I don’t have to do any work since it won’t work under my login…I just feel bad for the one guy in the office that it does work for, he’s gonna be busy!!!

[Toobit]

I had this happen with a brand new Mac Pro also in December. It turned out to be exactly what Peter mentioned, a corrupt graphic file. The project was pretty visually intense, involving a bunch of PSD’s that were being keyframed. When playing back it would hit a spot and crash, but it wasn’t the SAME SPOT each time, but always happened during the graphic. Then, I forced a render on it and it would crash the render.

So, I opened the project and saved it with a new name. I thought it would be fixed, but it turns out, each time I opened THAT new project it would give me an error and wouldn’t even let me OPEN it anymore. So, I figured it was one of these weird PSD’s and I opened the PSD, saved IT with a new name and then trashed the original.

When I opened the project again that media was missing, so I just reconnected it and it was all good. Worked ever since and never had an issue.

I will admit that for a good 10-15 minutes I was ready to throw my brand new 8-core through the window. But, I then remembered a message I read on here about when the media in a project gets “corrupt”, I was ableto fix it and I was able to save a windows life (and a new Mac Pro’s)!

Honestly, this board is amazing…this collection of experience is the best tech support I’ve ever had.

[Toobit]

Thanks, that did it. Had an old FXFACTORY demo left on there.

[Toobit]

I’ll check. I just tried it on my MacPro, running Leopard, and they import fine, so it must be this problem.

[Toobit]

Thanks. This is a great idea. I agree completely. The stills will have some “moves” on them, Ken-burns style, but I am too worried about it getting boring.

My biggest concern is if we want to go from the full wide-shot of the painting and then zoom into something super close-up, it wouldn’t be seamless. We’d start on the wide, but then zoom in and have to switch to the close-up. But, I’m even thinking that I could shoot multiple shots of hte painting and “stitch” them together in Photoshop.

[Toobit]

Good to know. It is a brand new MAc Pro and Kona, so I am not even 100% sure it is a Kona LH, but it seems like that is what hte box said. I’ll check tomorrow.

So, if it IS a Kona LH then it seems like I should probably downconvert to SD on capture. If it doesn’t upconvert then I will have to do any upconversion in compressor or something, right?

thanks
-Tucker