ADVC100 firewire issue... Is it Apple or Digi?

[Arno Peeters]

I run a fairly simple session (7.4.2 with DV Toolkit) on a brand new Mac Pro (2 x 2.8 Quad w. 10g mem) with DV Pal running trough my Canopus ADVC100. After a couple of hours building the session (foley) every time I drag audio from the workspace onto the tracks, the video moves along fine, but as soon as I let go of the region, the video drops out and I'm seeing a beachball for at least 2 minutes and than PT and video return as normal. The problem goes away if I switch the video to internal.
A new session now has the same problem from the start, although I know for sure it worked fine earlier.

Anyone else seeing this? Is it a firewire bandwidth problem or a bug?
Trashed databases and the usual, all at no avail. Switching my 002r and the ADVC's fw-ports didn't help either. Deactivated most of my plugins didn't change anything.

Any and all help highly appreciated: this in unworkable....

[DigiTechSupt]

Do you have both the 002 and the Canopus on the Mac Pro's built in FW ports?

If so - that's the problem. The Canopus needs the entire FW bus, so you would need to get a compatible FW card and connect the 002 to that, leaving the built in FW ports for the Canopus.

Digidesign qualified FW HBA cards for Mac

[Arno Peeters]

Indeed, that could be the problem. I had a PCI-card for the same reason in my G5. Would that change if I switch the ADVC100 to FW400 or are they on the same bus anyways?

And why then is it working fine when playing and dragging audio on the tracks from the region-bin? No hiccups whatsoever. The problem only occurs when dragging audio from my external USB2.0 (SFX) drive....

[DigiTechSupt]

Would that change if I switch the ADVC100 to FW400 or are they on the same bus anyways?

I doubt it - if I'm not mistaken, the FW ports all share the same bus/controller, so it's unlikely to change anything.

The problem only occurs when dragging audio from my external USB2.0 (SFX) drive....
__________________

Ah! Well, using a USB drive may be contributing to the problem. USB is very processor intensive and requires interrupts to shuttle data back and forth. If the problem goes away when importing from an internal or firewire drive, then it's likely that USB is the cause.

[Arno Peeters]

It happens when I drag audio from my internal drive as well: I mean via the workspace-window, NOT the region-bin....
A fellow tech suggested to take down Spotlight on the record-volume: no change. Also daisy-chaining the ADVC100 after the 002r didn't improve things.
There seems to be more at hand here than just a bandwidth-issue.

[Arno Peeters]

Did some more: reset PRAM, made new user, started my set with only an Apple mouse and keyboard, 002r and ADVC100 attached and even than it still happens, also when I drag audio from the same drive that my session is on....

[DigiTechSupt]

As I mentioned in my first post, if you have both the 002 and the Canopus on the computers built in ports, it's likely to be problematic.

Also, your video should be on a separate drive from audio - a qualified drive (in other words, not USB).