HVX200 - 2MBPS Transfer Rate Through Firewire

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brianleighty

New member
Ok, so here's the situation, I have a 16GB P2 Card loaded in my HVX200 and I'm trying to use the log and transfer window in final cut. The only problem is my transfer rate is so slow that I can't even get realtime playback of the file so the only way I can capture is to just take the whole thing which takes around 30-40 minutes which is incredibly slow from what I've heard other people say. The weird thing is. I'm getting around 2MB a second with firewire vs around 4MB a second through USB. Does anybody know what I am doing wrong. I am capturing into a Dual core G5, however transfer has also been slow on a mac pro as well. Thanks for all your help.
 
Do you have any other Firewire devices connected to the computer? When using the same bus all devices are only as fast as the slowest one.

To add to that, some Decks and devices actually operate slower than Firewire 400, and run about 100mbits/second.
 
David S. said:
Are you using the front Firewire port?

Don't

Also, why not just copy the card to your desktop
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I do not have other devices plugged in via firewire 400 to the computer. I do have some hard drives plugged in through firewire 800 but I know it's not them as the mac pro I tested it on didn't have any. Even if it was operating at 100mbps I'd be getting around 10MB a sec which I'm not. As far as what port I am using, I have tried both the front and the rear with no difference. As far as just copying it to the desktop, that's what's going at around 2MB a sec. I don't know the speed is in Final Cut but it seems about the same amount of time. Thanks for your suggestions though and keep them coming.
 
I'm unclear on what you are doing.

Are you mounting the p2 card on the desktop while connected to the HVX200 is 1394 connect mode? And then trying to ingest?

Or are you just trying to copy the card to the desktop while it is mounted?
 
David S. said:
I'm unclear on what you are doing.

Are you mounting the p2 card on the desktop while connected to the HVX200 is 1394 connect mode? And then trying to ingest?

Or are you just trying to copy the card to the desktop while it is mounted?
Click to expand...
I have tried both ways with the same issue
 
jbblunck said:
Just due diligence: have you swapped out the cable?
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Yes I have tried 3 different cables. I have also captured 1080i footage from the camera live into Final Cut fine through 2 of the cables so I know they are capable of carrying the bandwidth. I am thinking it must be a driver issue but am unsure how I could test this.
 
Ok so got some more information for you guys that might help. First off, I finally did do a full copy. It appears that it goes at the 2-4 MB a second for the first 400MB of the transfer and then all of a sudden jumps up to 15MB a second. So for a full 16GB card it's taking about 18 minutes. Which isn't terrible but still seems slower than what most people are getting. Now here's another twist. If I just take one of the mxf files in the video folder and copy it, it transfers at around 15MB a second the full time.

Another thing I have noticed is that if I look under about this mac at my firewire devices, with nothing plugged in there is still an unknown device which from what I can understand is some sort port repeater or something. When I plug in the HVX200 though I get the AG-HVX200 pop as well as another unknown device. When I unplug the HVX200 this device goes away. Now when I'm not in MCR mode, only the HVX200 shows up but when I switch to MCR mode the unknown device shows up. I hope this new information helps some.
 
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One suggestion is to transfer everything but the lastclip.txt file to a folder.

Then transfer it.

Goes much faster.
 
That makes no difference. If I go one level deeper though, it does speed it up some but as I said it's still slower than it should be.
 
I'm having a similar experience. The slowness at the beginning I believe to be copying the audio files. The audio files are numerous and small. I've had similar experience when copying mp3's or lower quality jpegs. Its doesn't matter the size as it does the number of files. each file has to have a flag written and that is the same no matter the file size. So when copying numerous small files it seems to take longer than the one or two large files that equal the same size. (Does that make sense)

This has just been experience with various files.

So... When the CONTENTS folder is copied I bet it copies the AUDIO folder first as its the first one in alphabetical order, and then goes on to copy CLIP and ICON, etc. ONCE the card gets to VIDEO the transfer speeds up as it has lager amounts of data to copy between file flags.

This is just my guess. I feel the overall transfer should be a bit quicker, but its about 1 min per gig, which seems to be pretty standard on avg. for p2 cards, as well as 2.5" size HDD. (another thing that seems to slow things down when shooting in the field)

Anyways, Hope I made sense.

-CJ
 
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