G5's Aja IO output freezes

[Paul E. Coleman]

I use a G5 with Final Cut Pro 6, SCSI RAID and an Aja io breakout box to output video to a SDI production switcher, however as the video in the canvas keeps rolling, the video from the box remains frozen. It does update when the clip stops. The footage is not always captured but oft times imported to a new project/sequence. I've tried changing the various "US" output settings to no avail, it all acts the same. Also I've tried various sequence settings AIC, ProRes, 8-bit, 10 bit and nothing seems to work.

It has worked in the past, but I'm not sure what's different. I have a short time to tinker before a production begins and haven't gone back to clips captured via the io to see if they still play properly. Last night I updated the driver/control panel but it changed nothing. The footage plays fine in the canvas so I doubt it's the hard drives. We've been using ProRes for sequences to save on HD space and think maybe that's the problem. Some of the imported backgrounds or clips are converted via compressor to various codecs which don't seem to work either.

Is there a preferred io sequence type, size, codec, etc. that I should look at? I noticed the manual stated to make sure the canvas window is set at "fit to window" and I'll check that tonight, but I wanted to know if there was anything else I should look at (render settings, etc...) when trying to troubleshoot this problem. Thanks.

[Craig Parkes]

Your sequence settings have to match your video playback settings exactly in terms of dimensions, frame rate, colour space and bit depth (and occassionally codec, in the case of some DVCPROHD footage and DV footage) to get correct playback.

If they don't, AJA won't be able to playback, or will either be downressing/upressing the output.

If your footage doesn't match your sequence and playback settings, then it may stop playing back in the canvas window as well, or playback with a 'stuttery' quality because your computer can't play it back in real time playback. But after a render it would play back fine.

What really matters for AJA playback is that your sequence settings match.

I am pretty confident this is where your problem lies.

[Paul E. Coleman]

Thanks... I see a few choices for NTSC US under Final Cut's: "View > Video Playback" options, (the exact list I don't have in front of me at home) and have tried to match the sequence to those choices. The AJA choices listed don't provide any detail as far as 486 or 480, PAR, Field Dominance or Editing Timebase so I'm just tweaking a sequence setting, rerendering if needed and/or transcoding the imported files to better match the sequence settings. It works fine with footage brought into FCP through the AJA and log and capture and I've even tried to match the clip settings of captured video to no avail.

[David W. Jones]

Paul, why not use one of the easy setups provided for the IO?

[Christopher Drews]

IO is a funny piece of gear.

My method of trouble shooting is always to restart the box with FCP closed (power switch on back of IO). Once it resyncs, I trash FCP prefs and relaunch FCP.

Upon first load, shift + q opens your easy setup (although you can also select this on first run after prefs are deleted). Select your AJA easy setup.

Open your capture tool and see if you get deck control (this usually is an early indicator of whether the IO is communicating properly). If you have deck control and no video, hit Apple + Option +Q - make sure you have AJA hardware selected as an output device.

When in doubt, open and close your capture tool to refresh the firewire / hardware bus. This usually will bring something up. If not, report back.

-C