Re: KONA/FCP layoff problems

Hey Mark,

Over the past few years, I've read a lot here about this problem and was very glad it had never happened to me. Until late last week, when of course, time was of the essence to deliver to a major network who I knew would not accept anything unless it was 100% frame accurate. Our other edit rooms were tied up. I knew that even 1 frame off was not going to cut it. Spending much of the day messing around with the device control offsets which to me are less than accurate because you can be two frames late, offset for the two frames, and then be one frame early!, I started to share yours and others insanity over this. I couldn't fix the problem no matter what I tried and had to result to guerilla video warfare tactics to get the masters done to ship that night. By the end of the day, I had noticeably more gray hair.

I still had this edit suite on fully updated Leopard because we got the MacPro right around the Snow Leopard drop and I didn't want to change anything as it was working fine for the last year and a half, or so I thought up until a certain point. This 1.5 year old MacPro started on FCP 7.0 and stayed there. Not updating that was probably a mistake on my part, but anyway...It was also on Kona 7.5 drivers, fully up to date...I tried going up to the 8.0 drivers and that didn't fix it either.

I was later able to move the entire project to a 3 year old MacPro to see what was going on, but one that was running Snow Leopard, FCP 7.03 and the Kona 8 drivers. Editing to SRW-5500's, HDW-1800's, DVW-A500's, everything 100% frame accurate. And on the same exact project. So I looked at everything that was different between the two.

First, I went back to the newer edit suite and got FCP up to 7.03. Still not editing frame accurate.

Second, I took the Kona drivers back down to 7.5 where they had worked before, that didn't work. I got them back up to 8.0 and then decided in all of this mix, the only major discrepancy that could be causing a muck in all of this was the OS. Once the new suite was up to Snow Leopard, it was not until it reached 10.6.4 or above (now 10.6.7) that I got back my 100% frame accurate editing to tape.

Looking back at the madness this situation and partially myself, have put myself through, I guess I was naive to think that the hardware drivers and the pro app updates alone could fix this. After something working just fine for so long, I just didn't think upgrading the OS would be part of the kicker. It's not like a fully updated Leopard MacPro is subpar. I already knew that FCP, the KONA drivers, and the OS are all in an elaborate dance together where even the slightest version discrepancies can lead to this sort of madness, but I just hadn't had the pleasure yet of the "it's worked fine for 5,000 layoffs and now it doesn't."

As of "right now," FCP 7.03, KONA 8.0, and OSX 10.6.4-7 are a recipe for 100% frame accuracy and life is back to good...

I thought I'd post this to share what solved this problem for me..

Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC - Chicago