Hello Everyone,
I am hoping you can all help. My manager has bought a Mac Book Pro and a fairly comprehensive editing system, and asked me to help him set it up. We have, however, hit upon a few problems - and have received wildly varying responses from the various professionals we have asked. Hopefully someone on here will have had experience with these kind of issues.
So here goes, and apologies for my first post being a long one .....
Specs:
- Computer is a Mac Book Pro. 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB Ram. Running OSX v10.5.7.
- Software is Final Cut Pro v7 (I believe he actually has the full Final Cut Studio package).
- Interface Hardware is an AJA IOHD box.
- External HDD is a 4TB G-Raid.
Scenario:
- As MBP only has 1x FW800 port built-in, an Express Card with 2x additional FW800 sockets was bought (a "Sonnet" something-or-other, if memory serves correctly). HOWEVER, this didn't work. A little googling found that this particular Express Card did not work with the G-Raid.
- Next thought was to get an Express Card with an eSata port, as the G-Raid has an eSata connection too. eSata is faster than FW800, right ? As I understand it the limit here is down to the speed of the physical drive rather than the eSata connection ?
- 1x Express Card with eSata port purchased. Testing the water here, he bought what I would describe as an "el-cheapo" card at approx £20. The mindset here being that at that price it was worth a go, and if it didn't work we would only be out 20 quid.
So, with this little lot all connected up I started trying a few things. First thing to notice was that trying to launch FCP with the AJA IOHD box connected to the FW800 port caused FCP to "unexpectedly quit" right after opening. Open FCP with the AJA IOHD disconnected, then connect it afterwards and all is well with the world. Whether the Express Card was connected or not made zero difference. Something seems not quite right there, and it may be a clue to problems experienced later, but for the moment I let that particular oddity slide as we could work around it ....
Now that we could get FCP up and running (albeit with a bit of a bodge to get it started), we tried to capture some footage. The footage is on HDCam (HD DigiBeta) at 1080i, so we want to capture at the best possible resolution - we chose 1080i25 10bit uncompressed.
Using "Log & Capture" I get a lot of glitches on the footage as it is being captured (and also when the captured clip is played back from the timeline as well). No reports of dropped frames or anything during log & capture, however.
I accept that 1080i25 uncompressed is a lot of data to be throwing around, so I tried capturing at all manner of lower settings (Apple Pro Res, etc). Nothing captured and played back cleanly until I got down as far as capturing at SD (625i25 10bit uncompressed).
Thinking that it may be an issue with the eSata Express Card, I disconnected this and restarted everything, then set the FCP scratch drive to the internal MBP drive. As expected, this did not work. Lots of glitches, but also a "dropped frames" warning after about 1.5 seconds of capture.
So, armed with all this info, I called a few FCP experts. So far I have been told :
- "It should be possible, I've done it plenty of times."
- "It should be possible, but best to limit yourself to 720p rather than 1080i" (this one confused me as I thought the data rate would be similar).
- "Can't be done as the Express Card slot is on the same bus as the onboard FW800 port".
I guess what we really want to know is, are we being caught out by the el-cheapo eSata Express Card or is what we are trying to do just not possible ? If we go and spend big bucks on a "known and trusted" Express Card will we get a working solution, or will we be wasting our money ?
Thanks everyone for reading this long-winded ramble, and thanks for any advice or help you can offer.
Jon Mitchell
I am hoping you can all help. My manager has bought a Mac Book Pro and a fairly comprehensive editing system, and asked me to help him set it up. We have, however, hit upon a few problems - and have received wildly varying responses from the various professionals we have asked. Hopefully someone on here will have had experience with these kind of issues.
So here goes, and apologies for my first post being a long one .....
Specs:
- Computer is a Mac Book Pro. 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB Ram. Running OSX v10.5.7.
- Software is Final Cut Pro v7 (I believe he actually has the full Final Cut Studio package).
- Interface Hardware is an AJA IOHD box.
- External HDD is a 4TB G-Raid.
Scenario:
- As MBP only has 1x FW800 port built-in, an Express Card with 2x additional FW800 sockets was bought (a "Sonnet" something-or-other, if memory serves correctly). HOWEVER, this didn't work. A little googling found that this particular Express Card did not work with the G-Raid.
- Next thought was to get an Express Card with an eSata port, as the G-Raid has an eSata connection too. eSata is faster than FW800, right ? As I understand it the limit here is down to the speed of the physical drive rather than the eSata connection ?
- 1x Express Card with eSata port purchased. Testing the water here, he bought what I would describe as an "el-cheapo" card at approx £20. The mindset here being that at that price it was worth a go, and if it didn't work we would only be out 20 quid.
So, with this little lot all connected up I started trying a few things. First thing to notice was that trying to launch FCP with the AJA IOHD box connected to the FW800 port caused FCP to "unexpectedly quit" right after opening. Open FCP with the AJA IOHD disconnected, then connect it afterwards and all is well with the world. Whether the Express Card was connected or not made zero difference. Something seems not quite right there, and it may be a clue to problems experienced later, but for the moment I let that particular oddity slide as we could work around it ....
Now that we could get FCP up and running (albeit with a bit of a bodge to get it started), we tried to capture some footage. The footage is on HDCam (HD DigiBeta) at 1080i, so we want to capture at the best possible resolution - we chose 1080i25 10bit uncompressed.
Using "Log & Capture" I get a lot of glitches on the footage as it is being captured (and also when the captured clip is played back from the timeline as well). No reports of dropped frames or anything during log & capture, however.
I accept that 1080i25 uncompressed is a lot of data to be throwing around, so I tried capturing at all manner of lower settings (Apple Pro Res, etc). Nothing captured and played back cleanly until I got down as far as capturing at SD (625i25 10bit uncompressed).
Thinking that it may be an issue with the eSata Express Card, I disconnected this and restarted everything, then set the FCP scratch drive to the internal MBP drive. As expected, this did not work. Lots of glitches, but also a "dropped frames" warning after about 1.5 seconds of capture.
So, armed with all this info, I called a few FCP experts. So far I have been told :
- "It should be possible, I've done it plenty of times."
- "It should be possible, but best to limit yourself to 720p rather than 1080i" (this one confused me as I thought the data rate would be similar).
- "Can't be done as the Express Card slot is on the same bus as the onboard FW800 port".
I guess what we really want to know is, are we being caught out by the el-cheapo eSata Express Card or is what we are trying to do just not possible ? If we go and spend big bucks on a "known and trusted" Express Card will we get a working solution, or will we be wasting our money ?
Thanks everyone for reading this long-winded ramble, and thanks for any advice or help you can offer.
Jon Mitchell