SxS Card Drivers & Snow Leopard Revisited
 

I have several Macs that I use for production work, 2 of which are used working with XDCAM EX files. One is a MacPro running 10.5.x and the other is MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.3. My MacBook Pro has had latency issues responding to app switching usually pausing for 2 to 3 seconds before the computer properly responds. I had a sneaking suspicion the SxS driver was at fault but did nothing about it till today. After I uninstalled the Snow Leopard compatible version of the SxS card driver the latency disappeared.

How are other people finding their Snow Leopard laptops with the SxS driver? I'm asking this as I have a lot of production software on my machine that could be causing the problem in combination with the SxS driver but somehow I doubt that is the case.

Please post up if you are running a Snow Leopard MacBook Pro with the SxS drivers either negative or positive so we can get a representative sample of whether or not this is a wide spread or isolated problem.

Both my Mac Pro tower and my Macbook Pro are fine.

Same here. Macbook Pro and MacPro desktop both on Snow Leopard and all the latest drivers....no issues.

MBP 15" with Snow Leopard and latest SxS driver and no issues.

MacPro with Snow Leopard is fine too, but it doesn't have the SxS driver loaded as it doesn't have an ExpressCard slot.

MacBook Pro, Snow Leopard, and yes, I discovered this morning that Clip Browser wouldn't launch. After scratching my head for a while (and re-starting, etc.) I repaired disk permissions with Disk Utility, and Clip Browser launched.
As Craig Seeman pointed out in the thread I started, Snow Leopard has permissions problems. I'd noticed this with Snow Leopard and Avid (my editing app of choice), but hadn't run into problems with Sony until this morning.
Regards, Malcolm

By the way... I just fired up Clip Browser again, and it failed to launch (same error message, which makes no sense to me, and it knows it). I repaired disk permissions, and it didn't work, so I pulled out a flash USB drive that I had plugged in, and without this in place, Clip Browser launched perfectly.
So this USB flash drive may be at fault. (I'd noticed that I'd had to try four or five times to get it to open on my desktop, so it may be broken or breaking).
Malcolm

I am using MBP 10.6.2.

No problems whatsoever. Is it possible 10.6.3 is the culprit?

I always wait a month or two before updating.

No, I had the problem with 10.6.2 as well Olof. Very strange problem. I put a fresh hard drive in the laptop a couple of months ago and reinstalled everything, no importing. As soon as I installed the snow leopard friendly SxS driver the machine became really sluggish. Even running apps in "Terminal", very simple UNIX apps, would take a second or two to respond once initiated. As soon as I performed an uninstall of the driver this morning, the machine got really snappy like it should with a freshly installed OS.

Andrew,
Is this happening if all you install is FCP Studio and then the SXS drivers etc., or do you have other stuff installed as well? I would be looking at drivers for scanners still cameras or any other FW USB or Express port drivers, that may be causing this conflict.

I always try not to install any extra drivers, in most cases you don't need them.

Have you tried looking at your Console logs to see if there are problems?

Hi Guys,
I have Clip Browser V2.6 installed and working on my MacPro 8 core Snow Leopard machine it works with SxS cards not a problem. My problem is with MXF files in XDCAM Transfere.

I have a 17" MBP which I bought in January. inserting SXS cards caused a kernel panic. I re-installed everything after formatting the drive, this time not installing VLC... Then it recognized my SXS cards, but "log and transfer" did not work, only XDCAM Transfer works. Trying to install 10.5.8 did not work, the Apple people told me that it is not possible to install 10.5.8 with this machine anymore. I also had Wifi issues and as a result they replaced my whole machine in March. With this new MBP I still have the same problems, cannot "log and transfer" with FCP. I also use ShotputPro to save my cards to a Glyph PortaGig drive as well as the MBP. I cannot log and capture the footage from the Glyph drive either, so the problem is not only with the SXS cards. (The Glyph drives however work perfectly with my MacPro using "log and capture" - very fast - no problem at all)

I have no clue why it seems to work for some people and why not for others. I really liked it when I could stick my SXS cards in my laptop and quickly transfer the footage - unfortunately this no longer possible.
I sometimes film a rehearsal and then, on the same day the performance. This I like to do in 720p @ 50 fps. After 2 hrs the cards (2x16 GB) are full and I need to offload them. I would love to check the footage but now all I can do is use ShotputPro and hope for the best...

And of course - Apple blames Sony and Sony blames Apple.
Since I have had the problem with 2 different MBPs - I think the problem is with the software, FCP and SXScards and not with the machines. (Unless I am really unlucky...)
I even reformatted the HD and did a clean install of Snow Leopard, then FCStudio and then the SXS Drivers and XDCAM Transfer / Log and Capture before installing anything else. The problem existed then as well - all the software and drivers are the most recent versions, my MBP has 8 GB Ram.

I have been using Apple computers for almost 20 years and FCP since version 3 and never before have I wished my old computer, old OS and old software back... but now I miss them... :-((

Never had any issues on my custom built (from PC parts) Hackintosh quad. Using express card to USB adapter by MxM.

Clipbrowser seems to run fine on my MBP 15" with Express card, 10.6.3. I had problems with 10.6.2, the clipbrowser used to crash at stat up.
XDCam transfer runs OK, but seems to crash my Mac from time to time, usually when inserting a SxS card.

Andrew
that is very interesting. Did you use the regular uninstaller? If this works I am considering doing that after pulling footage in because the Machine (which is supposed to be the fastest Laptop currently available from Apple) is so slow, it is impossible to even do a scene selection because each play command takes a few minutes to start playing. I assumed the problem was Slow Leopard. I guess I could just reinstall it before transferring footage from a card and then uninstall if I need to check the footage.

Oliver I believe I used the installer but performing an "uninstall" with it and rebooting the machine, as the driver loads at a very low level in the OS.

-Andrew