XDCAM-EX playback slow and strobes and leads to crash

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XDCAM-EX playback slow and strobes and leads to crash
by Patrick Wright on Aug 1, 2012 at 2:08:45 pm

I'm editing XDCAM-EX footage on a new 2.4 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB memory tethered to a thunderbolt display. My hard drives are on 800 firewire. My playback consistantly strobes and as the day winds on it gets slower until I have to reboot at which point when powering down the system always crashes and I have to do a hard restart. Playback is fine for about 15 minutes after start up.

I'm really enjoying the CS6 interface but considering returning to FCP7 or AVID with this project so I can SEE and HEAR what I'm cutting!

Anyone having similar issues?

Patrick

ps Mercury playback is on & 6GB are set aside for Premiere.

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Re: XDCAM-EX playback slow and strobes and leads to crash
by Samuel Neff on Aug 1, 2012 at 5:58:27 pm

I just dealt with a similar issue for the past couple days. Client handed me XDCAM footage wrapped in .movs--Premiere doesn't like that. Imported all the media (about 5 different formats total) but Premiere would hang on generating thumbnails for most of the XDCAM footage. I have the Calibrated codec installed on my PC (i7, GTX570, 16GB Ram) which enables playback, but not so much in Premiere. Sometimes only audio will play, sometimes nothing. It's a cascading effect, because 'Media Pending' shows up for the trouble footage, then everything else too, from R3D to GoPro, etc. which totally acts fine if I don't import the XDCAM. I can't edit, and trying to quit the program results in hangup and hard restart.
After a whole day of trying things and searching forums, I gave up, threw the footage into MPEG Streamclip, and batch transcoded to the free version of Cineform. Went back to Premiere, imported, and only video showed up now. No audio track. Played fine on media players, again only in Premiere was there a problem.
I almost gave up, but I tried again in AME creating AVI Cineform files. Footage finally imported fine. What a headache.

Samuel Neff

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