To those using iMacs for editing

Hello all - please bear with me. I'm wordy, to say the least.

I just bought a new iMac for my home editing business - upgraded from an old G4 and FCP 3 to the new suite (not yet here) and the iMac. Couldn't spring for the Mac Pro just yet - was hoping iMac would be a nice fix in the meantime.

I had firewire issues off the bat - external LaCie drives worked fine, then the next day wouldn't mount on either G4 or iMac. Apple folks swapped the iMac logic board. Got it back the other day, same thing happened. Drive worked great, went to plug it into the G4 and it wouldn't mount. Then it wouldn't mount on the iMac.

I returned to the Geniuses today and mentioned that between the drives working and then not working, I had connected my GL-2 to the iMac. Drive and camera were not mounted at the same time - I used the drive, ejected it, used the camera, unplugged it, went to mount the drive, no-show.

The Genius said that the camera was causing the firewire port problem because it demands a lot of bandwidth. When I plug the drive back in, the iMac doesn't think it has enough bandwidth to allocate to it, so somehow that's frying the ports on my drives. :-\

He suggested putting the iMac to sleep or restarting it after disconnecting the camera and before mounting a firewire drive, to sort of "clear its head."

Does this make sense? Those of you who use iMacs - I know some of you do and have said they work great - is this seriously what you have to do? Something about it feels like an Apple "we don't want to deal with the problem" copout to me.

My G4 can have 3 drives and the camera plugged in, and I can capture directly to the drives - zero issues. Genius said perhaps the older chipset in the G4 was more tolerant and allowed this to happen, where the newer chipsets on the iMac "respect the limitations of the port more." The angry part of me says that's a load of crap - brand new computer, why can't I safely plug in my stuff? ;-) I have found posts from folks with similar issues that date back to 2004 - no real solutions. The other part of me says maybe he has a point and I just don't get it.

So for now I'm using only USB2 for the drives and Firewire for the camera - I'm afraid to plug any more drives or my deck into the dang thing for fear it will fry them too.

If restarting is really what I have to do to make everything "get along," I'll do it and be quiet. However, if there's really a hardware problem here, I don't want to ignore it.

Thoughts? Comments? I'd love any input. Thank you a million, and sorry again for the novel-length post.

Lys

if you are seeing fw drive issues on both your g4 and imac, the common denom is the lacie drive - they BLOW ASS!

I know the whole LaCie kerfluffle - have come across MANY posts in this last week. ;-)

However, they've worked great for me for years, and these particular drives both worked perfectly on the G4 until being plugged into the iMac. Only after that were they unable to mount on either machine. My simple brain says something in the iMac messed 'em up.

I am indeed a little leary of LaCie at the moment, however - any drives you'd recommend??

Might be your LaCie drive but if your camera is not mounting trash your FCP preferences and try again. Here is how

[www.lafcpug.org]

Make sure camera is plugged in and set to VTR mode before you launch FCP. You cant use USB for capture. FW only. Well you can but it wont work very well.

Next thing to try is another FW cable.

Michael Horton
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Thanks - camera isn't the problem, though. Mounts and works just fine.

It's the fact that after the cam is mounted, the external drives will no longer mount using FW, only USB.

The Mac Genius said the camera was at fault and that I should restart between camera and drive use to make sure the iMac's FW port "knows" that the camera is no longer attached and that the bandwidth is available for the drive.

My question was to others who edit with iMacs - is this really what you have to do? Restarting after disconnecting the camera? Just seems odd to me.

Thanks!

The do the same thing I said with the camera. Trash your preferences and try again

Michael Horton
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if it happens on both your imac AND g4, its HIGHLY likely that the machine is NOT the problem.

i suggest 3 things:

1. as mike said. trash all your prefs
2. get a good quality FW cable - spend a few extra bucks on gold connectors and good insulation
3. get yourself a good tried and true FW drive (i suggest those from OWC or promax)

If you still have problems, see if it makes a difference if you use Firewire Basic for the Canon, rather than the Firewire NTSC setting you get by using the preset in the Easy Setup.

In other words, Final Cut Pro>Audio/Video Settings>Device Control Preset>then choose Firewire Basic.

Or leave the preset as you find it in the Easy Setup, and borrow a Panasonic camera (all models work well with FCP).

Yes. I'm using an Intel iMac.

Cable's good - high-quality, works great on other computers. Trashing prefs, I'll try, but not sure it will help. FW ports on drive are toast. Many thanks for the drive brand advice - will try them!

Two things though - my first post was apparently not very clear, and I apologize.

1. The camera is NOT the problem. I can use the camera perfectly - I'm capturing from it now.

2. The drives have worked perfectly for a long time - until being plugged into the iMac. That, to me, is not a drive problem or a cable problem, but a problem with something on the iMac's FW port that is ruining the FW connections on the drives.

The Mac Genius claims this occurs because the camera takes up too much bandwidth and the iMac doesn't release that bandwidth once the camera is un-mounted.

Subsequent devices plugged in will not mount because the port doesn't think it has enough bandwidth left to support them. Unfortunately, this also renders them unmountable on any other computer.

In short:
Camera = fine.
All drives plugged into G4 = fine.
Drives plugged into iMac before camera = fine.
Drives plugged in after camera plugged in = FW ports fried, will not mount anywhere. G4, laptop, iMac, PC. G4 had zero problems until after drives were plugged into iMac.

Basically, all I want to know is if it's common practice to use the camera, disconnect it, restart the iMac, then plug in FW drives. That's what the genius tells me to do, and that's what seems odd to me.

I hope I don't sound bitchy - I'm VERY thankful for the advice!

I just want to know if it's normal to use the camera, disconnect it, restart the computer, THEN plug in external drives. OR, are other editors able to use cameras and drives without any problems or restarts. If that's the case, then I have a computer issue I need to fix.

Thank you, thank you, thank you again - I hope I'm making a bit of sense!

No problems or restarts here.

In trashing your prefs, have you used FCP Rescue or (my preference) FCP Attic?

If not, try (after quitting FCP itself of course).

Repaired permissions from the installaton disk?

The reason I mentioned Firewire Basic was not that you were having capture problems, but that something was conceivably being glued up in using the higher level Firewire with a Canon.

I second Wayne's suggestion on OWC drives.

Thank you so much - that's what I'm looking for, other folks who use this system who either do or don't have the same issues.

Do you have a FW hub as well? I bought one, but haven't unpacked it. Genius said take it back - it's just asking for more resources to pull from that same port, which is already an issue. I saw a post on a Max FixIt board that said a port can maybe help. So confusing!

I really suspect I still have a hardware issue - just seems silly that you'd have to restart after each time the cam is plugged in. Then again, I've heard sillier.

This iMac did have a faulty logic board, which has since been replaced, but since the problem reoccurred, who knows. Maybe there's something I can do on my end to fix or work around the problem. So I really appreciate everyone's advice - I'll try anything!

I'll try trashing the prefs again and also use the FW Basic - I haven't used any Rescue or Attic programs. I haven't played with the computer at all yet - the drive mounting problem happened so soon after I unpacked it, then it was off to be repaired.

Thanks again - new suite is set to arrive Weds, so I'm excited to get the computer going properly so I can play with the new software. I'm coming from FCP3...should be quite the upgrade. =)

I have tried OWC and they are incredible, Scr***** LaCie the run hot and fail 1 out of 6 times.

Rick

OWC have saved my bacon a time or two. in both product quality and customer service standpoints

as a side note - the "geniuses" are strictly retail marketing BS. dont take what they say as rule. i have proven them non-genius on site more that a half dozen times...

Hi Lys,

Don't want to mix things here, but from what I understand this particular Apple 'genius' is talking rubbish.

There is no need to restart the mac when plugging in or out your camera.
This is NOT the root of the issue - something else is causing it.
I've never heard of anyone having to power doing when plugging a DV camcorder - just doesn't make any sense.

To be clear, some people DO recommend powering down when plugging in Firewire HDs, even though they are also meant to be 'hot-swappable', but that is to do with ensuring that all files are closed off I think, and nothing to do with bandwidth.

Regarding the bandwidth explanation that is totally wrong as well.
DV camcorders use a small part of the available 400Mbps firewire bandwidth and do NOT hog the firewire bus. (DV is only 25Mbps datarate).

What IS true (and this may be what he/she was thinking) is that some camcorders connect to the firewire bus as 100Mbps devices and NOT 400Mbps devices and this causes the WHOLE bus to slow down to 100Mbps, including your hard drives.
This is why it is recommended NOT to daisy-chain hard drives and camcorders off the same firewire port, although of course lots of people do it and it works fine for them.

This should NOT, however, stop the hard drives from mounting at all.

So I think the issue lies somewhere else to be honest.

One final thought - do the firewire drives ONLY have a firewire interface or do they also have USB (or FW800)? You could try plugging them in using a different interface.
[I only mention this because I just came across a Lacie FW HD where the FW400 port was dead - wouldn't mount - but it mounted fine on FW800 and on USB2.]

Sorry I can't be of more direct help.

Regards

Dave

Thanks a million, Dave! I'm glad someone else thinks the genius is speakin' hooey!

The first time this happened, they had to have a FW drive plugged in for a good hour or so before it started "acting funky," after which they determined it needed a new logic board (which I suggested to them in the first place) and they swapped it.

This most recent guy gave it about 20 minutes and declared everything fine, even when I told him they might need to experiment longer. I fear that there is something causing the logic board to fail that wasn't caught the first time, so now it's failing again. But I ain't no genius. =)

The 100/400 makes sense...would that "blow" the FW ports on the drive, then, rendering them useless? That's pretty much what happened to three drives - one was zapped, I moved it to another enclosure, it worked great, then failed again. Thankfully it will mount with USB. The other was an older RAID with only FW 400 and is deadsky unless I have the $$ for data retrieval.

I'm afraid to plug anything else into the FW port at this point, so I'm using USB for all drives and the FW only for the camera. That's annoying, but I guess I can live with it. I just don't want the thing to tank mid-project if there is indeed an underlying hardware issue.

A different genius mentioned the power supply possibly giving too much juice to the port - he had them order a new power supply, but I don't think they installed it when they swapped the logic board.

What's incredibly frustrating is that I find these same problems on tech support boards from as far back as 2004, and yet no fixes. They act as though they've never heard of the problem.

My suite should arrive tomorrow - I think I'll just see how things go for a week or so, then decide if I'll take the iMac in again. I am, however, going to call the guy who fixed it and talk to him - I'll tell him what you said about the other genius' response. This guy seemed to know what he was doing and didn't have the attitude of the second guy.

Thanks so much for the input - to you and to everyone who responded. I'll also give the OWC drives a try - sounds like a lot of people like them.

Lys