HD200 With Mac Pro Problems
 

Hi Guys,

I just recently made the transition from SD to HD. I purchased two JVC HD200s with the Focus HD100 disk recorders. I’m using a Mac Pro Dual 2.66 Intel running OSX version 10.4.11 with 6Gbs of memory and Final Cut Pro 6.0.5. For some reason I am having several problems editing the HD 60P footage captured on the HD100 and transferred to a drive on the Mac Pro.

For starters I am still getting a Media Performance Warning whenever I import files from the HD100 into Final Cut Pro, and that could be part of my problem. But my real concern is the Dropped Frames Warning I get often when trying to play back clips in Final Cut that stops playback in it’s tracks. It’s the warning I used to get before I understood that you couldn’t store your footage on the same drive as your operating system. The warning tells you to turn off unlimited RT or lower your compression rate, lower real-time audio tracks or increasing the speed of your system. But that was some time ago with a G4 and one hard drive. But with the system I have now and two additional hard drives to store footage, am I to believe this system is not fast enough to run HD footage?

My question is: Is a Mac Pro Dual 2.66 Intel running OSX version 10.4.11 with 6Gbs of memory and Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 adequate to edit HD 60P footage. I would appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction to research this problem.

Thanks!

Earl,

Your MacPro should be able to play this footage- it's definitely not the processor having trouble. This sounds like a hard drive issue.

You say you have two media drives right? Are they internal or external firewire?

Thanks for responding Justin
 

Justin,

My original Mac Pro was purchased with all Internal Drives

Bay One 250GB Serial ATA 3 GB/s: 7200-RPM 8MB Cache (Operating System & Programs)

Bay Two 500GB Serial ATA 3 GB/s: 7200-RPM 8MB Cache (For Media Storage)

Several months before going HD I added a Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM ATA Drive to Bay Three and partitioned it into three separate drives, witch gave me the ability to store different event on it’s own drive, not to mention being able to erase a drive after a production was complete without affecting other events.

At this time I also partitioned the 500GB drive in Bay Two into 2 separate drives one for my operating system and programs (200GB) and (265GB) for misc. files.

And finally the original 250GB drive in Bay One was erased and an emergency boot-up system install.

This system ran great until I imported the first HD media file from the Focus HD 100 recorder onto one/or any of the partitions in Bay 3

The thought did cross my mind that I needed a faster drive. But I wanted to do the research first apposed to just buying equipment. Let me know if you or anyone else has any ideas in resolving this problem.

Thanks

What type of format did you use when you partitioned the drive?

It isn't out of the question that a duo-core Mac-Pro would run into dropped frames with multiple streams, but with that much ram there should be absolutely no issues... assuming your drives are fast and formatted HFS.

If I were you I would pick up some software to gauge the speed of each partition just to make sure you are up to speed.

Xbench: Comprehensive Macintosh Benchmarking

Or Black Magic has a good one.

check ur Drives
 

XBench or BalckMagic's Disk SpeedTest should do. It's most likely that your drives can't playback the footage. Most straight 7200 RPM drives can't play some HD back without dropped frames. And once you start compositing and adding filters it'll tax the drives even more.

After reading both of your comments and realizing that I did have the hardware to run HD video in final Cut on this Mac. It made me look at my problem from an entirely different prospective. Thinking back to when I reinstalled Final Cut and going over each setting, I ran upon a setting that said “Report dropped frames during playback” Ding! And thought of the comment that Tim made about dropped frames. I unchecked the box and for the last several hours I’ve been playing with HD footage in Final Cut Pro. Although I will still check into some of the other comments, because I’m sure it is dropping some frames, but it’s nice to be able to start in the right direction.

It’s been great going from my old JVC GY-X2B’s and learning what the HD200 has to offer. And now, finally, I can move forward in the HD editing process. I guess you could say that I went around the block just to get next door. But like a friend once told me, it’s all good practice.

Can’t wait to get the ProHD Guide

Thanks Guys
Earl

Sorry but un-checking that box is like putting a rug over a pile of dust you just swept up. You've analyzed the problem, found the issue and now told Final Cut not to warn you about it anymore. Your problem could be solved by buying a GRAID2 from G-Tech or striping your drives internally or many other solutions.

If my boss saw me un-check that box and create a HDCAM SR for a client, I'd be done right there. It's sloppy. Treat the problem not the symptom.

OK - preaching over...
-C

With all due respect this isn't HDCAM, it's HDV. Lower bitrate(HDV) means lower demands on a hard drive.
I have 2 1TB 7200rpm scratch drives in my mac pro -not raided- and run multiple DVCPRO HD and XDCAM EX streams from them.
My guess is that one or more of your partitions is slow.
Do the speed tests and see.