Firewire Video and Audio Simultaneously

[Carl Sealove]

Mac G4 Quicksilver Dual 1GHz
1.5 Gig ram
PT Mix/24
PT 5.1.1 software
OS 9.2.2
Canopus ADVC-100
(2) 120Gig FW Drives (Oxford911 of course)

I've been running audio from an external 120 Gig EZQuest Firewire Drive-no problems. Recently, I added the Canopus Firewire ADVC-100 capture box. This system works great. I have no problems running Video from the firewire drive and audio from an internal ATA 80 gig drive.

I have tried running audio from one of the 120Gig firewire drives and video from the other 120Gig firewire drive. This seems to bog everything down. Messages come up saying that a firewire drive connection has been lost. So far, I can get a few tracks of audio to play in this manner, but any more than a few results in the error message and computer freezes.

The Canopus box and the firewire drive dedicated to video share the same Mac firewire bus. The dedicated audio firewire drive is on the other Mac firewire bus.

I had assumed that the G4 Quicksilver has discreet firewire buses and that simultaneous firewire audio and video would be possible. Does any one have experience with this? (I know that I can always use the ATA drives for audio, but I want to see what the limits of firewire are - perhaps I just found the limits of firewire bandwidth.)

Thanks,in advance, for any assistance.

[Fokke van Saane]

Here; DP800, OS9.2.2 Canopus and one 120 GB FW drive.
The best results i gained by taking the audio off the FW drives, taking the video off the internal ATA drive. Someday, when i have time, i should partition the internal ATA drive and split it up in system/applications etc and a seperate partition just for video to keep it as less fragmented as possible.

It works great here, try it at your place too.

[Zownd]

One thing that really speeds up the system is hiding the video track from the protools edit window.
You might already have known [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[CPettigrew]

Carl-

I think I have good news for you. Here's what I did this morning: (after coffee) Took a 30-voice 48/24 session off the internal and put it on a OWC firewire drive. Plugged it into one of the firewire ports on the dual 1 gig. Plugged the second firewire drive, the one with the DV files, and the Director's Cut box, into my powered firewire hub, and plugged that into the other firewire port of the dual 1 gig. Trash the copied audio/sessions/fades from the internal hard drive.

Open session, pull in DV files (different movie, but same frame rate) and voila, smooth, unencumbered playback. I have no plugs; simple 30 voice (mostly 16 tracks, with occasional overlays and crossfades) session.

So I do think it's important to group your video elements (file, DV box) on the hub and have your audio on its own port. I have the monitor set to a Millions of colors, too. No hiccups.

Anyway, we'll talk later. I'll leave the session up. Not that it matters, but it's a Belkin 6-port firewire hub. The drives are OWC, running 9.2.2, ProTools 5.3.1.

Craig

[Carl Sealove]

Thanks for the replies.

Interesting -

In further tests I was able to get 32 tracks of audio (48k, 16bit low edit density) AND DV Firewire video to all play off the same 120Gig firewire drive!

Other configurations that work are:
A. Canopus ADVC-100 on one mac firewire bus.
(2) daisy chained 120 gig firewire drives on the other mac firewire bus.

B. (2) daisy chained 120 gig firewire drives on one mac firewire bus with the Canopus daisy chained after the drives on the same bus.

In scenarios A & B, audio and video will play from separate drives.

The problems seem to crop up when the drives are on different mac firewire buses and I try to use one for audio and the other for video with the Canopus connected to either bus.

Anybody have any idea what's up here??

[mikejavo]

As far as I know, most of the 120 GB ATA drives in Firewire enclosures are 5400 RPM. If your's are, that may have a significant impact.

[Carl Sealove]

These are both 120Gig 7200 RPM drives.
One is a Western Digital, the other IBM.

Any other thoughts?

[JamerJ]

Also try running just the video from
an internal drive and the audio from
the firewire drives. This seems to
do it for me...

[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]