Let's solve this glitch once and for all

Brian Broz said:
Ok I admit I haven't read the 5 pages of posts...but I can tell you
The problem is related to playing footage from either an internal drive, but usually do to connecting external devices to the Powerbook's FW400 port.
100% of the time, getting a PCMCIA to Firewire card solved the problem (in my experience) as apparently the built-in fiirewire shares the bus on the motherboard with several other connections (the PCMCIA does not).
Barry I'm not sure if you've solved this issue...but it's usually a $50.00 fix (PCMCIA to FW400 adapter card). In my experience the footage is not damaged.
I have also witnessed this issue on 2 acer Ferrari laptops (tacky as heck) which was also resolved by a PCMCIA to FW400 adapter.
Click to expand...
I have to agree. I edit/shoot with two Macs. One is an upgraded old Dual 800Mhz G4 desktop (now a dual 1.3Ghz G4) and a 15" 1.67Ghz Powerbook. I have not seen this issue on my Powerbook, but initally I saw it on my desktop frequently and it looked like a situation i ran into before. Back years ago I used to edit DV footage on an upgraded PowerMac 7600 with a PCI Firewire card. The bus speed on this old machine was 33Mhz and I used to get these blocks in my footage all the time. Eventually, I figured out that if the camera was alone on the bus and the winds blew from the ENE the capture was fine.
Back to my G4 desktop. My imported QT would have the block glitch. Clips played back from the camera did not. I immediatly bought a PCI Firewire card to put the camera and external capture hard drive on seperate buses and the problem disappeared. This system has so far worked like a charm.

I believe the dropouts(blocks) are due to the inability of the computer to transfer all the data b/c of high traffic on the bus. Also a Powerbook is not a Powerbook is not a Powerbook. There are differences in the components inside "identical" revs. My machine could have a different brand controller than one made 3 months later.

Hope this helps someone.
Todd
 
Well, that all seems logical, but... it happens on n8ture's G4 when scrubbing a clip straight from the slot. No firewire anything involved anywhere in the process. No internal or external firewire bus or anything. No additional traffic on the bus.

I would also question TSR programs -- those of you having issues, do you have a lot of other stuff running like virus checkers, spyware checkers, wireless internet connections, things like that?
 
THE LATEST ON "THE GLITCH":

Had the opportunity to work with a major FCP/P2/Mac expert this last week, and he got his first-ever instance of "the glitch." Never saw it before, but he got it, and the difference was that someone put a card in a Mac that wasn't write-protected. Importing footage off that card caused "the glitch."

How did this guy normally import footage? Off a P2 Store, using the pass-thru slot. And he'd never, in the last year, seen the glitch.

What difference does the P2 Store make? Well, the P2 Store is incapable of writing to the card -- it treats every card as if it's write-protected. And the Mac insists on writing files to unprotected cards. It writes a "trashes" folder, and who knows what else. PCs don't do that, and PCs don't get "the glitch."

So here's the new working theory: if you put a card in your Mac without the write-protect tab, you're exposing yourself to "the glitch." If you always write-protect your cards, you should be preventing "the glitch." If you always use a P2 Store to import your cards, you should be preventing "the glitch."

So now we need to hear from users:
If you're getting the glitch, are you always always always always write-protecting your cards before reading them on a Mac (either in a G4 Powerbook slot, or via using the camera or PCD10 or PCD20 card reader)? If you don't religiously write-protect your cards, try it and see if the glitch goes away.

If you use a P2 Store as a pass-thru slot, have you ever gotten "the glitch" that way? If this theory is correct, you should never have seen it.

Bottom line: if you're affected by "the glitch", try write-protecting your cards before putting them in the Mac or reading them by a Mac. Try that and see if the problem goes away!
 
A P2 Store still mounts as logical disk volumes, and those are write-enabled. So wouldn't the Mac still create a Trash folder on the volumes when the P2 Store volumes mount? Shouldn't you still get The Glitch(tm) even if you don't mount a P2 card directly?
 
Maybe; that's for Mac users to verify. I was told by a Mac user that it didn't write to the slot. Maybe it writes to the drive volumes but not to the slot?
 
Barry, don't hate me but I recently replied to an anamorphic thread you were responding to and I stated I needed to salvage a backup dv recording out of my HVX's a/v outputs in case there was a p2 import problem. I was importing from the P2 Store into my new HP laptop (Win Professional) then out to a 500gb Lacie HDD. Now that it is being edited on the newest Avid, there is one key scene with no audio only video and another lost contents folder altogether. I didn't have time to use the verify function but figured I could check the contents properties to be certain all the files transferred in terms of file size. I did not have the p2 viewer installed at the time. I read your previous post regarding mounting the files to recover lost p2 files but I thought it was a mac/fcp issue.
I think I should devote more time to confirm complete file transfer regardless of the added time it takes to save nightmares in the edit room. My only choice for the lost files is to attempt to up-rez the backup dv footage that squeezed the 16 x 9 480i output from the HVX to 4 x 3 DV interlaced.
 
Barry:

Are you indicating that this glitch occurs when a Mac user tries to import off the card?

Or does the glitch ALSO appear when you simply copy the card to the desktop, and then try to import files off the copied contents?

The reason I ask is that in a year, I've never write protected a p2 card, but I've also always copied the card to the desktop and then imported

Never a glitch.
 
Never a glitch here either, whether from Write Protected USB 2.0 from HVX, non write protect firewire or non write protect duel adapter
 
David S. said:
Barry:

Are you indicating that this glitch occurs when a Mac user tries to import off the card?
Click to expand...
Yep.

Or does the glitch ALSO appear when you simply copy the card to the desktop, and then try to import files off the copied contents?
Click to expand...
Yep.

The reason I ask is that in a year, I've never write protected a p2 card, but I've also always copied the card to the desktop and then imported

Never a glitch.
Click to expand...
Then it may or may not be related to write-protecting. But I'm taking this from a master FCP user/trainer who also, in 15 months, had "never" had a glitch, and told me there was no such thing as the glitch, and someone previewed some footage on his mac by plugging the card in unprotected (which nearly gave this guy a heart attack, as he NEVER does that) and viewed. Then this guy imported footage off the card and -- voila, glitch. The only thing we could think of was that it was the un-write-protected state, and the fact that Macs write files onto unprotected volumes when you first insert them.
 
I've never had a glitch either, but you can be sure I'm write-protecting now before inserting into my powerbook - after all it doesnt take any extra effort to safeguard the footage.
 
I'd love to write-protect my P2 cards but since I can only mount 4 P2 cards before my Powerbook either just flat out does not mount the 5th card or locks the computer up.

Since I have to restart the computer every 4th time I insert a card I leave the card unprotected since I have P2 Genie erase the card upon ejecting.

On Barry's suggestion, I did try write-protecting th cards and that did not solve that problem.
Also tried Powering Down the card before ejecting as well.

When Leopard comes out, I'll wipe my hard drive, do a clean install and see if anything changes. But for now, no write protecting for me. :)
 
I don't have an HVX (hope to soon), and have been reading about this problem.
Has anyone with the glitch problem tried disabling indexing of the P2 cards by opening spotlight and dragging the P2 icon into the 'Privacy' pane before transfering data? The same should be done with the media drive you are loading the P2 footage to. I wonder if the OS could be trying to index as the transfer is occuring, and sometimes this creates a glitch? Just a thought.
 
glitch

glitch

okay... this just started today. glitches. not the colored pixel ones, these are parallel lines that started at the bottom third of the screen but are now sometimes at the top.

the crazy thing is- it seems that even clips that i have imported months ago and had in a project timeline are getting them too.

i use the p2 store and have never had problems before.

i sense that my mac g5 quad has some kind of virus or something. i don't know what is going on.

any ideas?
 
If it's on footage that you've already converted, which was previously "known good", then I'd ask what changed -- specifically, did anything change in the way you connected the drives to your computer? Are they now going through a firewire hub or anything like that?
 
nothing has changed. fcp with an external g-raid 500gb- firewire800.

only about 70gb left on the drive though. i read in this thread that the drive needs 15-20% of space to run properly.

here's something new. it seems that when i play the "old clips" some of them will on first play have the glitches and then when i replay them they are okay. its just a few from from this weekend that are flawed. the footage looks fine in my camera ( i luckily haven't formatted the card), but i have tried many times to get it in the computer without the glitches (using p2 store and p2 genie).

one of the cards in the p2 store was tab protected orange- and i never do that. does that somehow affect the p2 store?
 
Anything new here in the last two weeks?

I'm getting ready for another project in May. I'm making the switch from Avid to FCP.

In the field I need a comp to copy MXF from p2 cards, and a computer that can act as a monitor for focus. I don't know the story with onlocation, but I love scopebox.

Ideally I could use a macbook pro with a duel adapter, and ingest p2 footage, and also use a tether from the HVX to scopebox. But I don't want to set myself up for failure by using an error prone workflow.

Would it behove me to use a PC laptop in the field with XP pro, ingest directly off the cardbus and use onlocation or DVrack for focus, instead of the macbook pro?

So far I've used a usb OTG drive off the camera, and imported into FCP off that drive. Or import footage on a PC, copy to an external FAT32 drive and import into FCP.

It sounds like the glitch is inherent to the FCP/MAC platform, so would the PC as an intermediate not really be worth the extra steps?
 
Best advice is to test the workflow.

I've used it for the last 12months and have seen only 1 single frame with the glitch. And i didn't protect my cards either (I do now).

If you can't test the workflow and you don't want to take the risk, go with a PC, its theonly way to be sure.

It'd be interesting to take a poll and see how widespread this is amongst apple laptop owners, my suspicion is that it is relatively isolated.
 
interesting.

Well. I've had so many problems with AVID, there's no question I'm switching to FCP, but I just need to find out if the PC is going to temper my risk.

I haven't had any problems in any scenario as of yet, but as I understand the nature of the problem can appear out of nowhere... not something I relish the thought of.
 
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