XDCAM Transfer and XDCAM Browser with Snow Leopard.
 

Anybody brave enough to test it and report if XDCAM Transfer and XDCAM Browser are compatible with the new MAC OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Shipping will all new Macintosh.

Also with version of them is working , i know about XDCAM Browser 2.5 and XDCAM Transfer 2.9 but maybe other versions exist so be specific please ....

Well, I have a little window of opportunity to make the switch, otherwise it's back to back until late November.

Tomorrow is Snow Leopard day. I am picking it up in the morning UK time and installing it on my backup MacBook Pro (which means today is Time Machine Day).

Will report back as soon as I can.

I'm going to try it on my Macbook along with FCS2. I'm sure we'll all need a couple of point updates to the OS before it is really ready for prime time, as per any other OS release.

If I had to guess about this, I'd say that the XDCAM Transfer and Clip Browser main apps will probably be fine. What worries me are the things where Sony made kernel extensions (kext - device drivers) like the SxS driver, the FAM driver, and I think the PDWU1 needs a kext as well.

My plan is to throw Snow Leopard on my "daily driver" machines, but leave my production environments on 10.5 until I see vendors like Sony, AJA, Matrox, etc. issue statements of support, or enough people here verify that there are no problems.

There's that old saying: "You can tell the pioneers because they're the ones with the arrows sticking out their backs."

Perhaps I'm overly cautious - still testing FCS3 - but I've got work to do. (and speaking of which ... must get back to it ;-)

snow leopard
 

just installed snow leopard and the xdcam and browser software are not working properly - the driver is missing in clip browser. checking it out some more.

And that's not half of it.

In another thread, I've been whining about how loading an SxS card in the MacBook Pro PCIe slot causes a Kernel Panic. May soon be time to concatenate threads...

Fcs3
 

FCS# works great with leopard - absolutely no problems.
heinrich dahms
www.buzzmedia.net

After having talk with Sony Support i can report this to you..
 

In my conversation with Sony support they advised me that unfortunately
Snow Leopard is not currently supported by the current versions of XDCAM
related software's from Sony.

Since this is a very recent release from Apple that involves significant
change to the Mac OS it may take several months, perhaps winter or
spring for full Snow Leopard support from Sony. The exact schedule is
still TBD.

It is therefore recommended to continue using the most recent release of
Leopard to maintain smooth operation of the XDCAM software within the
Mac environment.

For your reference the latest Sony software release versions are as
below:

As of August 26th 2009


PDW-U1 v 2.420

PDW-U1 Utility for PC or Mac v 2.21

FAM Driver 2.20 comes with the PDZ-1 software or XDT for Mac

PDZ-1 v 2.60

XDCAM Viewer 2.30 PC only separate from PDZ-1

XDCAM TRANSFER for FCP v 2.10.0

EX Browser 2.5.1


Thanks for your continued support of XDCAM!

Thanks everyone - this info saves me a bundle of serious headaches as some important corporate video project deadlines loom!

I, and I'm sure many others, very much appreciate the quick and informative assessment from you DVinfo members that Sony XDCAM, SxS etc. software and Snow Leopard don't (yet) work together, at all. I guess I'll just have to sit on the sidelines and await further developments - this is one upgrade I'll pass on for a while. A shame - but sensible.

Sony certainly NEED to react sooner than some of the predictions to resolve this if they want to keep their Apple centric XDCAM EX customer base loyal and happy...

Over to you Sony.

Sony's UK web page shows these versions as available, but when hitting the link to download them you end up with a blank page. Sony Canada currently shows no indication of these new versions. Are there any other sites where these new versions can be downloaded?

Update: Safari ends up going through endless redirects then displays a blank page. I had to fire up Parallels and use Explorer to download the Mac files. Is this what Sony's software support has come to?

I pulled down version 2.10.xxx this morning from the UK site, though IIRC there was nothing helpful like a 'download now' button, just a succession of screens from which I clicked the most likely thing until I got something downloading - which was helpfully called 'S03DH_1.ZIP' (!) but did eventually create a XDCAM Transfer and driver install disk.

Everything is fine
 

Using the U1 with 23GB disks from my 350, like nothing changed at all. If I do run into a problem, and it does take Sony till Winter to fix it, that may mean an end to future Sony purchases for me. They are already on thin ice with the late U1 for Mac update. Is that RED I see standing over there in the shadows?

Experimented with it on an old machine.

It will recognize a Sony SxS card via the Sony reader hooked up to a MacPro via USB.

It will not generate thumbnail files and, in fact, spits out this message, along with a box that let's you cancel all tasks: "the clip thumbnail could not be saved to the cache as it was an unrecognized format"

It *will*, though, let you import clips and they appear to be fine aside from that.

Called Sony in Jersey and got someone with a less-than-stellar attitude, who also gave me the line of "this just came out, right?" to which I gave him the "you're a developer; you've had it for a while" line, to which he said "XDCAM is very popular. I don't see how we can't fix this quickly," to which he then added "you're on a mac, though. Windows people come first, the mac people always get fixed last."

Have a nice day, Sony, again, for taking my tens of thousands over the years and treating me like dirt.

Have a nice day.

curiouser and curiouser
 

Interestingly enough, I just updated the 13" MBPro and Transfer works perfectly. Thumbnails. The error I was getting on one of my Mac Pros did not happen. I'm going to do more testing.

Also interestingly, the Mac Pro with the error would NOT let me re-install the SxS driver. Did not work.

I'll post more results in a few.

Good on one of my Mac Pros, as well
 

Okay, I will have to do some more troubleshooting, but not tonight.

The XDCAM transfer and browser work fine on my main Mac Pro. Again, no error like my original post. So, two out of three machines are fine. Clearly, there's something going on with the older Mac Pro.

This is the one that also had a kernel panic on the initial restart after Snow Leopard, which I solved by booting into Safe Mode and ditching a few extensions, including SxS.

When I get a chance, I'll put a version of Snow Leopard on a clean drive in that machine, install the XDCAM software, and see what happens then. That would eliminate hardware as an issue. It's been a long day, though.

Just curious, but why would you install the SxS driver on a MacPro?

Hell, I just assumed I needed it for the card, whether or not I used the reader.

Hi Paul. I got the exact same thing on MacPro I just update to Snow Leopard
XDCAM Transfer 2.10.
I even tossed prefs, cache, thumbnails and reinstalled.
I also created a New User and same issue. That means it's a system level issue, not user file corruption or conflict.
Here's screenshot.

it's quite strange, but it's happening on only one of my three systems.

Nah. The SxS driver only needs to be installed on systems with a built-in ExpressCard slot.

From the Sony docs:

Phil Bloom having problems with XDCAM Transfer too
Philip Bloom Blog Archive Beware XDCAM users upgrading to Snow Leopard

"I have been trying to import pro disc footage on my Snow Leopard install 13″ MBP using XDCAM transfer and be having all sorts of problems. Cache not working, unable to relabel disc."

The transfer tool still works, but you just have to put up with the silly thumbnail error message. This leads me to believe that it really should be a simple matter for Sony to sort out. Every manufacturer has had a lot of lead time on Snow Leopard so really there isn't much excuse for not having an update, if not already ready, in the works and very close to release. Snow Leopard may have made changes from Leopard, but in the case of most software I can't see why it should be such a huge issue. The change isn't as big as it was going from Tiger to Leopard. I believe Snow Leopard is an optimisation of Leopard, not a total ground up rewrite as it was from Tiger to Leopard.

The weird thing is that I don't get that thumbnail message on two of my machines.

Thanks for tipping me to not needing the SxS driver on non-ExpressCard 34 machines. At some point in my middle age, I must have stopped reading all the fine prints.

The additional frustration is if only half the machines have it, it's either some inherent incompatibility with certain models (we haven't been specific enough) or there's some silly thing to fix/trash that can fix this (although I've tried everything obvious to me) which Sony should at least publish as a workaround.

You'd think that Sony at least had the Release Candidate Builds of Snow Leopard and could have posted the issues while they update their drivers. That they didn't have the professional courtesy followed by statements that indicate no fix until as late as spring, speaks much about the situation at Sony.

BTW I hear that things are messy on the P2 side of the fence too. It'll be interesting to see how the companies handle. I wonder what nightmare will befall Windows users in October with the release of Windows 7.

Keep in mind we experienced users are coming from the position of upgraders. Imagine someone buying a new Mac and all they have is Snow Leopard installed.

It's Sony's attitude that pissed me off.

I went to BlackMagic's site to get new drivers for my Extreme card. Guess what? They were ready, they were there, they were marked "Snow Leopard Users, Click Here."

That's what it's supposed to be like. Many other apps and developers were prepared for this. Not only was Sony seemingly unprepared, but they don't seem to have an explanation or a clue.

PCI-CANADA.COM has a complete update as of Sept 1. for new software
and firmware for XDCAM,XDCAM EX.


GO to lower centre of hompage see XDCAM UPDATES.

Regards

Is it working only for editing ?
 

I usually use a PC while shooting to copy my cards on 1 EXT. HDD (usb or e-sata).

And for editing we use this drive on our Mac Pro.

Has somebody tried to edit (FinalCut or Avid MC3.5) on the SnowLeopard Updated MacPro with a drive like me (=without using SxS on the editstation) ?

Regards,

William.

It's really frustrating. Hours trying to check what was the difference between my last copy back to the cam and the recent crashed try. Thanks to this forum I found out that's not me. But it doesn't solve my and our problems. I hope Sony will publish very soon a patch.

If I would care my business like that......

Markus

Paul, can you list your various system hardware and software details (maybe a System Profiler report for each)? Did you do a full clean install on each of these machines or were they upgrades or ...?
Best
Andy

BTW the details on my system with XDCAM Transfer Thumbnail cache issue I can report the following. OS Upgrade which is now the equivalent of Archive/Install which is clean as far as the OS is concerned but "dirty" as far as the apps are concerned.

Snow Leopard does an excellent job reporting app/OS conflicts (but obviously not between app and app).

MacPro 8 core early 2008 model OS 10.5.8 upgraded to 10.6. My system reported kext conflicts with my Canon 8400F scanner, SoundFlower, Sony PDWU1. I contacted the two companies that co-develop SoundFlower and they had a Release Candidate ready the next day. I removed the two other kext issues. That didn't solve the problem. So far the only app that I needed to reinstall was Telestream Episode. The current release of CyberDuck also resulted in a compatibility message from Snow Leopard and they already had a note on their site with a beta release made public that's Snow Leopard compatible. No other app, even my aging Adobe Photoshop CS2 reports issues.

Trouble shooting I also completely removed all Sony EX components (ClipBrowser and XDCAM Transfer), reinstalled OS 10.6, reinstalled ClipBrowser 2.5.1 (which is working fine so far) and XDCAM Transfer 2.7.1, then 2.8, then 2.10 (all exhibited the same thumbnail cache issue).

I also created an news user on the system and it exhibited the same issue so it is a system issue rather than a user issue which would be related to preferences for user caches. If you look at the XDCAM Thumbnail Cache folder you can see the cache for the thumbnail aren't being written so this is where the "block/issue" is.

I do suspect an app to app conflict (app to app's kext?) for some commonly used app or utility. Personally I don't think a clean install would resolve the issue unless one excluded reinstalling the unknown culprit (because I don't think it's an OS component) which is of course hard to do given it's unknown.

This is what I see in Console System Log when opening XDCAM Transfer pointed to a folder.

Sep 2 11:44:55 craig-seemans-mac-pro XDCAM Transfer[11241]: XDCAM Transfer 2.10.0 (Build 565) Mac OS X Version 10.6 (Build 10A432)
Sep 2 11:44:55 craig-seemans-mac-pro XDCAM Transfer[11241]: Loaded component MXFImport.component from SharedSupport
Sep 2 11:44:55 craig-seemans-mac-pro XDCAM Transfer[11241]: Loaded component EXImport.component from SharedSupport
Sep 2 11:44:55 craig-seemans-mac-pro XDCAM Transfer[11241]: Loaded component SMPTE331MAudioDecompressor.component from SharedSupport
Sep 2 11:44:56 craig-seemans-mac-pro [0x0-0x17f17f].com.sony.bprl.xdcamtransfer[11241]: objc[11241]: Class QCResource is implemented in both /System/Library/Frameworks/Quartz.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/QuartzComposer.framework/Versions/A/QuartzComposer and /Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches/ImageDownloaderBlockingPatch-10.5.plugin/Contents/MacOS/ImageDownloaderBlockingPatch-10.5. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
Sep 2 11:44:56 craig-seemans-mac-pro [0x0-0x17f17f].com.sony.bprl.xdcamtransfer[11241]: objc[11241]: Class QCCGLContext is implemented in both /System/Library/Frameworks/Quartz.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/QuartzComposer.framework/Versions/A/QuartzComposer and /Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches/ImageDownloaderBlockingPatch-10.5.plugin/Contents/MacOS/ImageDownloaderBlockingPatch-10.5. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
Sep 2 11:44:56 craig-seemans-mac-pro [0x0-0x17f17f].com.sony.bprl.xdcamtransfer[11241]: objc[11241]: Class QCImage is implemented in both /System/Library/Frameworks/Quartz.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/QuartzComposer.framework/Versions/A/QuartzComposer and /Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches/ImageDownloaderBlockingPatch-10.5.plugin/Contents/MacOS/ImageDownloaderBlockingPatch-10.5. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.

Perhaps if we can compare this to one with a system without the thumbnail issue it may provide a clue.

Might be totally unrelated but I see this being repeated endlessly in the log

Sep 2 11:53:32 craig-seemans-mac-pro com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[171] (com.epson.epw.agent[11352]): posix_spawn("/Library/Printers/EPSON/InkjetPrinter/EPW/IJEPWAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/IJEPWAgent", ...): No such file or directory
Sep 2 11:53:32 craig-seemans-mac-pro com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[171] (com.epson.epw.agent[11352]): Exited with exit code: 1
Sep 2 11:53:32 craig-seemans-mac-pro com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[171] (com.epson.epw.agent): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

Let us know if any of the system do/don't or have ever had an Epson Printer attached to it.

I'm also thinking this might be a key

Sep 2 11:59:51 craig-seemans-mac-pro [0x0-0x186186].com.sony.bprl.xdcamtransfer[11417]: objc[11417]: Class QCImage is implemented in both /System/Library/Frameworks/Quartz.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/QuartzComposer.framework/Versions/A/QuartzComposer and /Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches/ImageDownloaderBlockingPatch-10.5.plugin/Contents/MacOS/ImageDownloaderBlockingPatch-10.5. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.