P2 Dropouts

I've erased and ejected the card via P2 Genie. Waited about 20 to 30 seconds, powered down the card, waited 20-30 seconds then ejected. Still freezes.

It's happened to me from the beginning before I added P2 Log and P2 Genie to the mix.

Maybe if I rub my belly while standing on one foot during the light of a blue moon while saying a prayer to the P2 gods this will work. :)

I've started with a clean system before and it still crashes. If I had a second computer, I'd wipe the hard drive install the system only and see if it still did it.

So, if anyone at Apple that's reading this wants to send a new Mac my way, I'd be happy to do that. :)
 
Hi Kevin,

What other programs do you have on this computer or what else do you use it for? Maybe there is a conflict happening somewhere else. My G4 is used at shows and as I said it doesn't do this. But she is a simply burdened beast. She does the internet to the Apple website and then FCP. Ocassionally I will steer her to webmail if there is a wireless connection in the house and no one in the booth.

So what els do you have going on with it?

Best,

Jan
 
Just wanted to add my observations on the freezing issue, as I have spend a lot of time investigating this issue.

- The problem is definitely a driver problem with either the Apple PCMCIA driver or the Panasonic P2 driver.

- It doesn't occur when un-mounting/mounting a P2 device cennected thru firewire or usb2 (HVX200 and P2Store) only when the card is mounted in the Cardbus slot of a powerbook G4.

- It's a freeze very low level in the system as it freezes all processes: All running programs, the GUI, the Audio driver etc. This definitely points to a lowlevel driver process that hangs.

- On my Powerbook G4 it happened less frequently If I started with a reboot before offloading. If I awoke from sleep, mounted the card, ejected the card and mounted another one I was 90% sure it would freeze. Could point to an issue with the actual hardware is failiing in powering up the slot after a sleep operation or the driver leaving the slot in an erroneous state.

- Regarding P2 Genie I use the finder to eject the cards, so there is no difference from ejecting in the finder and using P2 Genie. Same operation.

- There is evidense that only certain Motherboard revisions have this problem. As Jan havent got the problem, something must be different about her system.....Could be usefull to collect exact system ifnfo about the systems affected with this problem and those that doesn't.

- What points me to the conclusion that it's an Apple issue, is that I have had some Cardbus Compact flash adapters do exactly the same thing when mounting a CF card. It was a few years ago and I filed a RADAR bug with Apple at the time, and switched to a Usb2 reader instead.
 
n8ture said:
Maybe if I rub my belly while standing on one foot during the light of a blue moon while saying a prayer to the P2 gods this will work. :)
Click to expand...

Ah, well there is your problem- you are doing it during a blue moon. That all needs to be done durring a half moon, that should fix your problem. :)

Anders Holck said:
Just wanted to add my observations on the freezing issue, as I have spend a lot of time investigating this issue ...
Click to expand...

Thanks for those thoughts Anders, it does seem like a driver problem. That is interesting that youy have had the same problem when using a CF card.

I assume that this issue has been reported to Apple, correct?
 
I did file a bug with regards t the CF adapters, but haven't done so for the P2 issue. I believe we need to nail down the problem with a solid "How to" before reporting it, as the Apple engineers will dismiss the problem if it's too vaguely described.
 
The best case evidence would be to sample the OS with a low level process sample tool while the bug is occuring. That would show with 100% certanty whats causing the problem. As I dont have a Powerbook anymore I can't do this myself, but maybe one of you guys could do it?
 
Anders Holck said:
The best case evidence would be to sample the OS with a low level process sample tool while the bug is occuring. That would show with 100% certanty whats causing the problem. As I dont have a Powerbook anymore I can't do this myself, but maybe one of you guys could do it?
Click to expand...


I would gladly do it- but 1. I don't know how to go about doing it. And 2. I have only had it happen to me once where it was not due to a mistake I made (Ejecting manually before powering off from the menu.).

Let me know what I need to do, and I'll try it out. BTW- how does that work when the computer freezes, don't you loose your info at that point?
 
You could try to open a terminal window and type a sample command right before you insert the P2 card and the computer freezes:

top -ocpu -R > ~/Desktop/Process.txt

Will monitor all active processes on the machine and write it to a file called process.txt on you desktop

sudo fs_usage -w > ~/Desktop/FSusage.txt

Will monitor your filesystem and write stats on all files read or written to FSusage.txt also on your desktop

Remember to press ctrl+c to end the processes
 
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The best method would be to trace the Panasonic P2PcCard.kext directly to see if that fails or the Apple Cardbus driver IOPCCardFamily.kext, but I don't know how to trace Kernel extensions directly...anyone?
 
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Anders, thank you for your detailed investigation into this issue. As Jan said in another thread, a massive percentage of HVX users are using Apple systems, so getting to the bottom of this will benefit a lot of people.
 
Don't want to pile on here, but I had some issues after I loaded P2 Genie on my Toshiba PC.

After installing and loading the first few cards (actually a full P2Store), the Panasonic P2 Viewer utility would absolutely not load any clips into the preview pane, regardless of whether it was an actual or virtually-set P2 card.

I reloaded P2 Viewer and have had no issues since. I thought this to be an odd conflict, and though I resolved it with a repair installation of the Panasonic application, it did hold me up for nearly a day before trying it out of desperation.

Just adding this to Jan's good suggestion that perhaps one app has conflicted with or interfered with another.

Please keep us informed as you sort it out!

e
 
overlandfilms said:
Don't want to pile on here, but I had some issues after I loaded P2 Genie on my Toshiba PC.
Click to expand...

Please note that Mac Os X and Windows are two different beasts.
As I'm not the developer of the Windows version of P2 genie I cannot comment about your particular problem but be sure to report any problem you have with the windows version to Tony (at) P2genie.com

P2 Genie for Mac does not conflict with any software and is not causing the problem. This problem occurs with or without having P2 Genie for mac installed.
It also occurs with just a basic OS X installation.
 
Anders,

Yeah, I was just commenting more globally about how an app. can adversely affect another. My issue came about after I installed the PC version of P2 Genie, but I'm not nearly qualified to say that P2 Genie caused the temporary glich in P2 Viewer.

Anyway, I'm having full functionality (on the computer anyway). Kudos to you and Tony for getting this killer app out there for us. It's all black magic to me, but I'm loving it.

e
 
I wonder if we could compare purchase dates and see if there's something with the earlier models than the older ones.
I got my 1.67Ghz 17" G4 Laptop as soon as they announced them. I wonder if the first batches had some issues maybe?

Jan,
I'm running FCP Studio Adobe CS 2 Microsoft Office are the big ones. There's a few smaller ones I use from time to time. But, I cleared out quite a bit and reinstalled the system when I got the HVX in order to free up as much hard drive space as I could on the Powerbook.
 
P2 Genie (Windows) does not install files into any system folders AT ALL. It puts entries into the registry, but all programs do that and that wouldn't cause a program to. I won't completely exclude the possibility that the P2 Genie and the P2 Viewer can't have an affect on each other if they run at the same time, as I'm not completely away of how the P2 Viewer application handles memory management etc. The P2 Genie is developed as a .NET application and the CLR should take care of all memory management for me, so the P2 Genie (Windows) should be as safe to use as possible ;-)
 
Justyn said:
True.. but then we'd be working with the dark side
Click to expand...

Say what you will, but my PC Windows XP Pro SP2 machines have been flawless work horses when it comes to the P2/MXF workflow. :)
 
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Hi guys,


I copied my contacts at Apple. They say they have tested this extensively and do not seem to have the problems that you all are having. Keep in mind there are a handful of you here and vastly more that are happy campers with out a care in the world working Apple and HVX footage. So what I would like for each of you to do is to follow what Anders has posted as process below for the Terminal window and when you are finished, send me that text output. You may send it to me directly at crittendenj at us.panasonic.com..

Also I would like to have someone who is not in the thick of a shoot to send me your P2 card. If you cannot do that send me the serial numbers of your P2 cards.

There has to be a reason guys, cause the rest of us are a happy lot, so please do the homework and send me the stuff.
Best,

Jan

PS. Anyone in the NYC area?
 
OK, someone who is having more "reliable" problems with their PB G4 is going to have to try this out- I've been trying to get my PB to freeze while running the terminal command, but the most it will do is freeze for about 15 seconds while P2 Genie is running when the P2 card is first being mounted to the desktop. I even tried ejecting the card without turning the power off- which is what happened when I was able to get my PB to freeze- and that did not work.

So, as I said before, I've been having reliable results with my PB- it has only frozen once before when I did not power off the card before ejecting, and now it doesn't seem to matter if I power off or not.

I would be interested to hear back from someone who has been having consistent problems.

I don't know if it is of any use, since I did not get it to completely freeze, only partially for about 15 seconds, but you can view my Process log at: http://www.235studios.com/Process.txt
 
Ok, here is a way to test the Kernel extensions:

1. download the Apple CHUD tools at ftp://ftp.apple.com:21/developer/Tool_Chest/Testing_-_Debugging/Performance_tools/CHUD_4.4.2.dmg.

2. Install it (Might require a restart)

3. Open the terminal type "shark -i"

4. insert the P2 card.

The shark tool will sample all processes for 30 secs and writes to a file called session_xxx.mshark in your user directory. It will only write to the file after 30 secs have elapsed so it might not work if the computer is indeed frozen.
 
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