Color Crashing regularly with HD
by Piers McDonald
on
Oct 22, 2009 at 9:48:06 am
I've become so used to Color crashing every hour or so, I'd become used to it, but today I began to question if others also experience the same thing.
I use Color several days a week, most weeks. Generally PAL, 1080i50 or 720p50. PAL is pretty stable, but when working in HD, every hour or so when hitting play Color will either 1/ generate flashing green frames, soon followed by crash or 2/ start repeating about 1 second of footage soon followed by crash, or 3/ spinning beachball immediately followed by crash.
When I get green flash frames or repeating footage, if I'm quick, I can stop, save and restart, but occasionally it will just crash straight away.
It happens once every couple of days with PAL, probably once a day with 720p and maybe up to 5 times a day with 1080i50.
The system this used to occur on was a Quad G5 2.5Ghz, with an Nvidia 6600 (oh the pain!), AJA LHe, Highpoint 2322 RAID, happened on every version of Color from 1.0 to 1.04.
Current system is a Mac Pro Nehalem Quad 2.93Ghz with ATI 4870 and an AJA KONA 3, Highpoint 3522 RAID running 10.5.8, Color 1.04.
I just always assumed it was a general Color thing, but after doing some searches in the forums I'm not finding any other similar experiences.
The only thing that hasn't changed on the system is the JBOD sata box connected to the RAID card.
Re: Color Crashing regularly with HD by walter biscardi on Oct 22, 2009 at 9:56:37 am
[Piers McDonald]"I've become so used to Color crashing every hour or so, I'd become used to it, but today I began to question if others also experience the same thing.
"
Not here and certainly this is not normal behavior.
[Piers McDonald]"The system this used to occur on was a Quad G5 2.5Ghz, with an Nvidia 6600 (oh the pain!), AJA LHe, Highpoint 2322 RAID, happened on every version of Color from 1.0 to 1.04. "
Definitely the nVidia is a problem. ATI cards perform much better with Color. I just retired a G5 Quad that edited and color graded probably close to 100 HD broadcast projects alone with no issues and it was running the ATI 1900 card I believe. Currently we run the ATI 4870 cards in our Mac Pros and Color just performs beautifully with them.
[Piers McDonald]"I just always assumed it was a general Color thing, but after doing some searches in the forums I'm not finding any other similar experiences.
The only thing that hasn't changed on the system is the JBOD sata box connected to the RAID card.
"
Well Color historically has had issues with PAL for whatever reason. If you search PAL on this forum you'll find more issues relating to that format than anything else. Why, I have no idea, but Apple has historically had issues with PAL in FCP as well, especially with each new release.
But I'm thinking the nVidia card could be an issue and depending on which codec of HD you're working in, the RAID could be an issue as well if it's not fast enough for the format.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
HD Post and Production Biscardi Creative Media
Re: Color Crashing regularly with HD by Piers McDonald on Oct 22, 2009 at 10:14:03 am
Thanks for the prompt response Walter.
It's good to know it's not a common problem. Living in PAL land I've become rather used to products sometimes not working quite as advertised.
Well I have to admit the old machine was a dog using Color but I thought I'd mention it to point out that it has occurred on more than one system.
I've been working with ATI cards for over a year now, (first a 3870, now a 4870) and the problem definitely still occurs.
The RAID is a 4 drive RAID 5 configuration that happily plays uncompressed 1080i50 so drive speed shouldn't be an issue, and I'll regularly go hours in a session without problems.
But I am going to experiment with different storage options, as that is the only commonality between the systems this occurs on.
Re: Color Crashing regularly with HD by walter biscardi on Oct 22, 2009 at 10:18:10 am
[Piers McDonald]"Well I have to admit the old machine was a dog using Color but I thought I'd mention it to point out that it has occurred on more than one system.
I've been working with ATI cards for over a year now, (first a 3870, now a 4870) and the problem definitely still occurs. "
Definitely should not be happening. Color 1.0.4 was very stable here.
Ensure you're not running anything in the background while running Color, including Final Cut Pro. All screen savers should be disabled, etc... Your computer should not be doing anything but running Color when you're using it.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
HD Post and Production Biscardi Creative Media
