Adobe OnLocation HDD Too Slow warning?

O

ozzymandius

Active member
I have Adobe OnLocation running on a new Win XP laptop, 2Ghz AMD X2 Turion, 2GB ram, 120 GB 5400 rpm main drive. The only programs I have loaded on the laptop are OnLoction and P2CMS, so it's pretty bare. Virus checkers and any other programs that might run in memory are disabled.

I record to an external 750 GB 7200 rpm Lacie Firewire drive.

When I start recording in 1080 24PA or 720 60P modes, I often see the warning pop up on the software DVR - "HDD too SLOW!". In 60P recording, that warning stays on the screen for the duration of recording, whereas for 24p recording it only pops up at the outset and then vanishes after a second or two. However, in either case, the frame capture buffer in the upper right of the DVR barely moves more than one or two blue bars (never gets to any red zone), which leads me to believe that all is fine. And when I check the footage in Final Cut, I don't seem to notice any dropped frames or other anomalies.

So the question is - can I safely just ignore that "HDD too SLOW!" warning? It seems to be an overly conservative type of warning.

Anyone else safely record, edit and output completed projects despite seeing this same warning during the recording phase?

Or am I just asking for trouble down the line by ignoring it?
 
Yes, seems to be fine in device manager and I don't experience any other problems with copying files to and from any drives (main or firewire external) using Windows Explorer.
 
Maybe some specific options of the drive or its connection to the laptop?

I suppose the drive is empty and\or defrag'd, right?
 
Beats me. Everything sound right.

Does it happen to be one of those dual FireWire\USB drives?

If you have USB, try through it, I heard that Firewire drives aren't so stable.
 
Yeah, it's a dual. Same problem thru USB (actually a bit worse) and same problem when recording direct to the laptop's main drive (the latter being 5400 rpm vs the 7200 rpm of the external)
 
Strange, I even recorded 1080 on the int. 5400 drive and it worked decently [I just tested it, not for the real shooting].

Never had problems with the USB\SATA drive.
 
I got a drive with Quad connectors and tried with eSata, instead of firewire. All other drive specs the same. Now it seems to work (mostly) fine. The HDD Too Slow warning pops up very rarely or not at all. Have not noticed any dropped frames at all, after testing a few hours of footage, so I think I'm safe!
 
In my past experience with Adobe software, mainly premiere when working with video footage you need to have 2 harddrives, one for the software and another for the footage. I am not experienced with OnLocation as yet but perhaps try capturing to an external HDD and see how it goes.. It won't matter how fast your primary drive is or your lappy specs, you probably just need to run separate drives for program/footage..
Hope this helps
 
Slinkii said:
I am not experienced with OnLocation as yet but perhaps try capturing to an external HDD and see how it goes..
Hope this helps
Click to expand...

Yes, that's exactly what I've been doing since the start.

Switching the external connection from Firewire 800 to eSata seems to have made things significantly better.
 
I could see issues perhaps occuring if you are capturing from a cam via DV firewire and dumping it to a HDD via Firewire also...
 
Also - for anyone encountering similar problems - closing all unecessary OnLocation components helps. I use the vectorscope and other scopes only to set up the shot. Then I close those, press record, and only keep the DVR and 16:9 monitor active. CPU usage drops by 10-20% and much fewerer HDD Too Slow warnings.
 
From what I've read in the hvx manual and Green's book, the firewire cable is only capable of around 50 mbits a second...regardless of hard disk speed, won't that be the limiting factor for Onlocation's aility to grab the top resolution the Hvx can produce?
 
Firewire is capable of at least 100 megabits per second. You can do full-res full-quality DVCPRO-HD at 100 megabits per second over firewire to OnLocation.
 
Yes, firewire supports 400Mbps transfers, actually, or since this is FW800, 800Mpbs transfers.
As a workflow note, I try to keep my P2 storage drives in Fat32, in the event that I want to bring a Mac into things.
 
Don't yoou worry, just check if you have dropped frames, it allmos never happends, but it is safe to defragment the HD regularly, better, do not use very big disks, use small ones (120 -250 GB)

I posted this, and reply here:

No doubt about, PC laptop, OnLocation, firewire cable (15 ft. max for DVCPro 100, 100 ft. for DV), sata PCMCIA or PCI Xpress card, Sata 2.5" (100 GB) hard disk. the best solution ever!!!


Try it, i bet you'll never work without it again!

I on it since DVrac 1.0 (DV only), 4 years ago!
 
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