Have a new Windows 7 HP Z400 running MC 5.0.3.4 with 6gb of ram. Using a G-Tech e-sata PCI card my connected drives are dropping frames during regular playback and a digital cut. I've got a 4tb G-Speed and a 2 tb Fantom Dual Dock
I've stopped the indexing of the drives, done mixdowns, tried running media off of just one drive - then the other. Im assuming its the card that is struggling here.
kris
Could be the card. Whenyou say G-Speed, is that a G-Tech drive?
Just fair warning, if it is a G-Tech drive, that we had the same one. Was a fantastic drive until it started doing some funny things, like dropping frames. We maintained it, tried to figure out the problem, and it turns out that was just it's funny way of letting us know it was a stone's throw away from being dead.
We ended up just getting rid of it and putting more internal memory into the machine. Like I said, not necessarily the problem, but fair warning to maybe start backing stuff up.
Z
It is a a G-Tech drive.
Brand new card and brand new drive. I just did my first onlne using that drive and noticed all of the problems. Hadnt paid them any mind in the timeline during my offline.
I've had a lot of trouble with E-SATA. I'm not sure why. In theory, it should be great but in practice on my system it was worse than USB. It may have to do with my card/MB configuration. Also, some drives have an E-SATA connector that just taps into the USB or FW system internally and is not true SATA. Hard to believe but true. We had some Seagates like that. Very stupid.
I finally gave up on E-SATA and use FW800. Do you have alternate connections on that drive? If so I'd try them.
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I've got an uninstalled FW800 card - and one of my drives is FW800 as well. Is FW800 fast enought to support uncompressed HD?
What slot do you have the esata card in on the z400? Are you on a Nitris dx?
I've tried the card in slots 3 and 4. Using a Mojo DX. Right now Im trying a Sonnet Tempo card I have in an older Avid (HP XW8200) that I havent had any problems with. Albeit, it is a different computer running a different OS.
Are you capturing and playin back at Uncompressed HD or one of the DNxHD flavors?
ramz434:uncompressed HD
Are you truly working with uncompressed HD? I can't get my Avid videoRaid to play back more than 1 stream of uncompressed HD without issues. The videoraid is a 10 drive array stripped across 2 channels of SCSI. Throughput maybe your issue here. No way will FW800 keep up.
What Im playing with now is just 1:1 SD and it cant keep up, but I have an HD project that I start digitizing on Monday. Ill be onlining that at DNX 225.
I have numerous eSATA drives connected to my system - none of them are striped, all individual drives. I primarily use them for P2 backup storage. I rarely use them as media drives while I'm editing. However, they have worked fairly well with short-form work when editing SD 1:1. I've tried using them with P2 DVCPRO 1080i HD files and have seen lots of dropped frames. The only thing I've been able to avoid the dropped frames is to do a mixdown to my Avid VideoRAIDs (two 10-drive SCSI in a 4-way stripe) using one of the DNxHD codecs. Then I have no dropped frames. Personally, I don't think you'll have much success with them for reliable editing.
good luck...
i would recommend getting a drive speed testing tool (you find one on the AJA website or look for Drive Speed). You need to figure you where the slow down is occuring.
Jef
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Jef Huey
Senior Editor
Never had an issue with dropped frames with my xw 6400 system or my z400 system with Cal Digit VR or SV2R raid arrays and their controller card. The SV2R is an older 2.5G 5 drive raid 0 stripe, the VR is a 2 drive raid 0 stripe, both using Mojo DX at DNXhd 220. Both run the AJA speed test at 1 g files 1080x1920, at around 220mbps sustained. Don't know what could be so wrong with the systems you folks have, but I have found E-SATA to be VERY reliable for the most part.
Are you using a regular PCI card or is it PCI express? If it's a regular PCI card, then it's only capable of transferring data at 1.5 Gbps and would limit the drive to about half of its possible speed.
It is a PCI express card. Ran the AJA test and the drive is reading at about 170 mbps. People who built the machine think it may have to do with the fact that one of the drives I have connected to the 4 port card is RAID 0, while the other is RAID 5.
I never had any problems with e-sata on my old XW8200 system.
Gonna test as soon as I have an opportunity (roll a digital cut with only one drive plugged in).
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