Kona LHe, MASSIVE video drift!

Hello All!

This is my first post to the forums, but I have encountered a strange issue, and was wondering if this community might be able to offer some insight.

Suddenly, on Monday morning, one of our FCP stations started to 'drift'. The analogue video output (composite AND component) would play back in what appeared to be slow-mo. The audio played back at the proper rate, and the video seemed to get slower and slower the longer it was played. After 20 seconds of playback, the video would be a good 5 seconds behind the audio. I checked everything I could think of, and all settings and connections seemed correct / unchanged.

The solution (work-around) that I figured out involved routing the audio output of FCP through the Mac's Line-out, rather than through the Kona card. As soon as the audio is routed out the Mac, it runs perfectly, if I route the audio back out the Kona card, the drift appears immediately. It's almost as if the card 'can't handle' the effort of playing both audio and video.

FCP session timeline is DV, and there are 6 channels of audio.

The work-around seems to be fine, and the editor is able to work just with no problems, but it seems strange that routing the audio through the Kona card would upset the video playback.

Note: The preview window in FCP does not drift, only the analogue video output. I didn't have and SDI monitor available to test if the digital video was affected the same way!

Any thoughts? Hints? Tips? This one's an odd one!

Thanks

Mark Pinder, Chief Technical Engineer, Paperny Films.

[JeremyG] "Got your PCIe Expansion Slot Utility setup proper?
"

Check this. Power loss of PRAM reset can unset this. If it isn't in a 4x lane slot, you'll get what you described.

I'm relieved that someone else has the same video drift issue!
My preview monitor is connected to the SDI out of the AJA kona.

I'm all thumbs when it comes to hardware. where do I check this "PCIe Expansion Slot Utility setup"?

Thanks Jeremy.
My world is good again.

I know this has been solved but I had a similar problem with a newer mac (the new macs don't have the expansion slot utility, or they do and it's disabled)

I had a Kona LHe showing the same problem. In this case I had to change the PCIe slot from 4 to 2... this seems to have solved the problem.

Have the same issue - anyone else get this resolved?

Hey all,

I know this is a few months on, but if anyone else is having this problem on newer Mac Pros (post expansion slot utility), the Kona LHe MUST be in either PCIe slot 1 or 2.

I was having seriously annoying sync and drift issues after getting a new Mac Pro* and realized I had installed the card in slot 3. Once I swapped it into slot 2, everything is running perfectly.

I was worried that Mountain Lion killed the Kona LHe or FCP 7.03, but everything is running smooth as butter (except for banding on my 23 in cinema display, but I don't really care cause my Flanders Scientific LM-1760W looks so beautiful it hurts..)

Scott
http://www.590films.org
http://www.faithinthefiveboroughs.org

*Mid 2012
Processor 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory 13 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB
Software OS X 10.8.2 (12C60)