Stuttering Playback HDCam-SR Uncompressed 10-Bit RGB

We are setting up and testing our system in preparation to do a film-out test of a FCP/Color workflow.

We can ingest HDCam-SR 4:4:4 10-bit Log @ 23.98psf footage with no issues. But we cannot get it to playback smoothly in the canvas nor on our external monitor. The video stutters along at less than 15fps.

If we down-convert the video to DVCPro HD 1080 23.98 it plays smoothly.

One anomaly we have found rather by accident, is when the Log and Capture window is open (hence external monitor is disabled) the video plays back in the canvas smoothly.

Is the FCP/Kona combo incapable of playing back HDCam-SR 4:4:4 10-bit Log @ 23.98psf in real time?
When set the External Video to 'off' in the View menu, the playback in the canvas is smooth again.

Another odd anomaly is that when clips, which show they are 23.98 fps in Final Cut bin, are opened using QuickTime Player, the Inspector shows frame rates of the clips at 21.30 or 23.82 or another seemingly random rate.

Could our internal video card (NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT) be the bottleneck? We are getting the stuttering on our external monitor. Do the two cards work in conjunction?

UPDATE: We just upgraded our Graphics Card to the Radeon X1900 XT. This did not solve the issue. (All is not lost, we needed to upgrade to that card for Color realtime playback anyway)

Here are our System Specs:

Final Cut Studio 2 (FCP 6.0.1)
MacPro Dual Core 3.0 GHz - 4 GB RAM
14 TB Xserve RAID 50 (Four 2Gb Fibre Channels)
Kona 3 Capture Card

Generally speaking this sounds like an I/O issue. Although it appears you have enough bandwidth with the XServe RAID I would troubleshoot that first.

The data rate for HDCam-SR 4:4:4 is something north of 190MB's/sec [per stream], I suggest making sure your RAID is delivering that kind of performance.

We are well within spec. We would not be able to capture without dropping frames if we weren't.

For the sake of eliminating this factor from further discussion, here are our I/O test results:

Write Speed - 360 MB/sec (average)
Read Speed - 560 MB/sec (average)

Two dedicated Xserve RAIDs (Four RAID 5 arrays), software RAID 0
Four 2Gb Fibre Channel interface with the CPU

The Xserve RAID has been optimized for maximum throughput as outlined per AJA and Apple.
- Allow Host Cache Flushing unchecked
- Read Prefetch: 8 stripes (512 KB/Disk)

<<<We would not be able to capture without dropping frames if we weren't. >>>

<<<the Inspector shows frame rates of the clips at 21.30 or 23.82 or another seemingly random rate.>>>

We had a cousin to that problem. You may have sailed up to this point with all flags flying, but I'll put money on you having damaged clips. No, it is not normal for QuickTime INFO to give you batty numbers.

I don't remember how we got them, but we, too, had 24 frame clips with oddball numbers and they misbehaved completely when we tried to manage or produce with them. We carefully recaptured the material and the problems and oddball numbers vanished.

You remember all the capture tricks, right? Clear the desktop, all views Fit To Window, etc.

Koz

After doing all the recommended clean-up jobs (trashing prefs, all views fit to window, etc.), and after further testing we cannot isolate either issue.

We started from scratch. We created a new project after trashing prefs and did a log and capture with both HDCam-SR 10-bit log 4:4:4 23.98 PsF, and with HDCam 4:2:2 23.98 PsF. Both captured and upon opening them in the inspector in QuickTime Player still had non standard frame rates, 23.82 & 23.81. New frame rate with every clip. We are left scratching our heads and cannot isolate this issue.

I really don't know how to capture more carefully than we have.

Could this be a deck issue? We are using a Sony SRW-5000 with the optional Dual Link board installed.

Having lost almost 2 days to this problem, we devised a work-around to get the media ingested. I don't know if this will work in practice but I refuse to sit idle. We are going to capture the media, errant frame rates and all, drop them into a sequence and export them as new media with the correct time base of 23.98. Hopefully we can at least get our tapes ingested and not have wasted 3 days of HDCam-SR deck rental while I research this issue further.

Even with this work-around and correcting the time-base to 23.98 media we cannot get the Kona 3 to play back smoothly. It still stutters on playback.

I should have just gone to the movies or watched football this weekend.

<<<QuickTime Player still had non standard frame rates, 23.82 & 23.81.>>>

It claims that is the actual listed framerate of the clip, right, different from the playback framerate which will change slightly with your display?

Have you been through the help and web site of the pieces of the puzzle? AJA in particular is usually pretty good about helping you to dig out. Google?

How sure are you that the work is actually in PsF? PsF is not an external format, it's only that way to fake out the tape machines. It's actually straight progressive after it leaves the machine--depending on the settings.

Any words from the rental shop? Sometimes they have the gray-hair in the corner that's run into this before. "Do you have a 24 inch Cine Display? Apple had troubles with those and it affects QuickTime....."

That's a joke, but I think you're going to find something like that.

Koz

<<< It claims that is the actual listed frame rate of the clip, right, different from the playback frame rate which will change slightly with your display? >>>

Yes, the 23.82, etc. frame rate is the actual listed frame rate of the clip. The playback frame rate is even less. From the QT player we get a playback rate of about 12fps when expanded to 99% of the image size.

We have read every doc and every white paper AJA has on their site. While I am continuing to learn/research the issue, I am still no closer to the issue. I'm sure the real trouble shooting will happen once the AJA engineers return to work tomorrow and I can call 'em.

I understand what you are saying about PsF, and I am specifying that here only because that is how the SRW5000 System settings read. I'm trying not to take any shortcuts in my vernacular. We already have enough of that problem in our industry.

I have contacted the rental house, and I actually ended up teaching them about how to set-up their deck. Ha!

Without much seat time in 24P I'd say you have applied probably the maximum recipe for pain to your system. I bet it's trying to transcode from 24Psf to interlaced for display, could be a huge drain on CPU.

Have you tired 8-bit? That's already a little relief. Ah, but you want to go filmout... hm. Even in DVCPro100 I saw transitions going to hell in 10-bit which behaved beautifully in 8-bit.

Definitely get AJA on the horn.

Just notions...

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:
Invoke the Audio Mixer with Option-6 !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Can you point to somewhere on the AJA documentation where it explicitly supports what you're doing?

Overstressing the machine is certainly indicated by the ability to get the canvas to straighten out by abandoning the Kona.

Koz

I spoke with an AJA engineer this AM, and we are currently trobleshooting a hardware issue at this point. Will keep you all posted as more information becomes available.

Loren Miller Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Without much seat time in 24P I'd say you have
> applied probably the maximum recipe for pain to
> your system.

Just wait until we try 2K! Bwah ha ha ha ha!

Seriously though, we have the same issue with HDCam 4:2:2. We did a test just to see if it was something to do with the dual-link set-up.

I've since been in touch with AJA and we are attempting to eliminate it being a harware issue. We are going to swap Kona cards and see if the problem goes away.

Maybe try a black magic card if all else fails.
They are cheaper and simpler but I find them realiable.

We capture 10 Bit HD on site when we shoot straight into an old G5 with an external RAID.
Havent had any uissues sofar.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Thanks Johan,

I'm glad to hear the BlackMagic card is treating you well. We have not identified the Kona card as being the culprit, just a suspect at this time. There are so many variables in solving problems like this one you just have to jump in and start eliminating suspects one by one.

Yes, when deciding if our facility should go BlackMagic or AJA, I too took the price difference into account. My final decision to go AJA was based on their great engineers and tech support people, many of whom I know on a first name basis. Also, their great customer service and proximity for replacement parts was a attractive factor.

Case in point, when I called AJA and told them of our issues they sent a new card out to me via Fed-Ex with out me having to pull my current card out of my box and send back to them before a replacement is sent to me. That's first class service!

Also I have found it is difficult to compare features across the board. I had a HD to DVI box from BlackMagic for a few hundred less than the HDP from AJA but was sorely disappointed that the box would not scale up to the full size of my monitor.

In my assessment, I'd be glad to pay a little more for a product when it comes with such great service and support. File this one away under you get what you pay for.

I hope I didn't just jinx myself. heh.

<<<great engineers and tech support people, many of whom I know on a first name basis.>>>

It could be said (tongue firmly jammed in cheek) that unless you are a developer, this is a bad thing....

Koz

So, its been 5 days into the troubleshoot and still no answers.

The new Kona 3 card arrived today and we did a swap out. Issue still remains. At least we know it's not a Kona card issue.

Also, my copy of Disk Warrior 4 came today and I did a rebuild of the directory of the System Drive and tried to rebuild the RAID directory and I got a funny little message that said I needed to be running Mac OS X 10.5 to do that operation!?! And to think I wasn't going to upgrade that computer to Leopard anyway. Go Figure. The battle goes on.

Next step, wipe the drives, reinstall the system and then Final Cut Pro.

ACK!

"Maybe try a black magic card if all else fails."

Gotta say that I've had no problems with the AJA but I have the Blackmagic HD 4:4:4 on one of my systems and it works fine with 2K DPX and 10bit UC 4:4:4 on my 450MBps eSATAII RAID

It might be worth considering testing the BM products if AJA doesn't come up trumps.

One thought - have you got the bandwidth set up correctly on your slots for the AJA and the Fibre Channel to work at full speed?

[docs.info.apple.com]

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

What version of FCP are you using.

Another update folks,

I have copied a piece of my captured media to a portable drive and it was uploaded onto another system running the same configuration as my system. The stuttering continued. There was some discussion of this being a new issue in FCS2. So the testing and trouble shooting continues.

I put a clean system drive into my box and loaded FCP 5 onto that system drive. Installed the Kona drivers and imported my saved media.

The stuttering continues. And so does the search for my solution. I'm starting to think about (gasp) that BlackMagic card as a viable option. There is not much else left to try.

- Jackson

I'm using 6.0.1 but it worked fine on 5.x as well.

Did you check the PCIe bandwidthis set up correctly on your slots for the AJA and the Fibre Channel to work at full speed as I mentioned earlier?


Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Yes, The Expansion Slot Utility has been configured to Apple and AJA spec. Just for fun we swapped the cards around to see if that would change anything. It did not. So, the cards are now back in their original configuration. Fibre Channel HBA in the top slot (per Apple spec.,) and the KONA 3 in slot 2. Both slots 1 and 2 are assigned 4 lanes each. The 3rd slot is vacant. Slot 4 is the ATI XT1900 Graphics card and assigned 16 lanes.

Just for the record, the RAM configuration is as follows, four 1 GB sticks symmetrically seated in the slots. Two 1 GB sticks in the upper tray, two in the lower tray, per Apple spec.

Other notable trouble shooting items...
- reset the PRAM
- installed a new system drive with clean system install (10.4.10)
- clean install of FCS 2 & KONA drivers (v4.0)
- whispered nice words of encouragement to the CPU

But, as I stated in another post on this thread, since this same issue is occurring on another system, at a separate facility, we are ruling out a configuration issue.

- Jackson

UPDATE: From the Release Notes - KONA 3/3X/2, LH/LHe, & LS/LSE Version 4 Univ. Binary:

"There is an issue with video output and Dual Link HD Log RGB and RGB 4:4:4 1080PsF 23.98/24 for driver version 4.0. If you are working in either of these formats, AJA recommends that you continue using Final Cut Pro version 5.1.x with the KONA version 3.4 driver. (This restriction will be removed in a future KONA software release.) Other Dual Link Log RGB and RGB settings, such as those for 2K, are not affected."

BLAST THOSE PESKY READ ME FILES THAT WE ARE ALL TO BUSY TO READ!!!

How many man hours could we have saved? I shudder to think about it. Chalk this up to lesson learned.

I appreciate all the input on this matter. I'll update this post once a fix has been released from AJA.

Glad you found the possible cause...

Will you be getting a Blackmagic card in the interim?

Their are a number of FCP post-houses that I use that run both because of exactly this sort of thing. If one doesn't work at least they can continue on the other.

Let us know how you get on.

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

>>BLAST THOSE PESKY READ ME FILES THAT WE ARE ALL TO BUSY TO READ!!! <<

Heh. I totally agree with that. They should call them 'Read Me - No Really, I Mean It - Really Really Important - You'll Be Sorry If'n You Don't.txt' files.