SxS Card Drivers & Snow Leopard Revisited at DVinfo.net

Andrew Stone · April 11th, 2010, 11:47 AM

I have several Macs that I use for production work, 2 of which are used working with XDCAM EX files. One is a MacPro running 10.5.x and the other is MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.3. My MacBook Pro has had latency issues responding to app switching usually pausing for 2 to 3 seconds before the computer properly responds. I had a sneaking suspicion the SxS driver was at fault but did nothing about it till today. After I uninstalled the Snow Leopard compatible version of the SxS card driver the latency disappeared.

How are other people finding their Snow Leopard laptops with the SxS driver? I'm asking this as I have a lot of production software on my machine that could be causing the problem in combination with the SxS driver but somehow I doubt that is the case.

Please post up if you are running a Snow Leopard MacBook Pro with the SxS drivers either negative or positive so we can get a representative sample of whether or not this is a wide spread or isolated problem.

Marcus Durham · April 11th, 2010, 12:48 PM

Both my Mac Pro tower and my Macbook Pro are fine.

Dave Morrison · April 11th, 2010, 01:49 PM

Same here. Macbook Pro and MacPro desktop both on Snow Leopard and all the latest drivers....no issues.

Brooks Graham · April 11th, 2010, 03:27 PM

MBP 15" with Snow Leopard and latest SxS driver and no issues.

MacPro with Snow Leopard is fine too, but it doesn't have the SxS driver loaded as it doesn't have an ExpressCard slot.

Malcolm Hamilton · April 11th, 2010, 04:44 PM

MacBook Pro, Snow Leopard, and yes, I discovered this morning that Clip Browser wouldn't launch. After scratching my head for a while (and re-starting, etc.) I repaired disk permissions with Disk Utility, and Clip Browser launched.
As Craig Seeman pointed out in the thread I started, Snow Leopard has permissions problems. I'd noticed this with Snow Leopard and Avid (my editing app of choice), but hadn't run into problems with Sony until this morning.
Regards, Malcolm

Malcolm Hamilton · April 11th, 2010, 05:17 PM

By the way... I just fired up Clip Browser again, and it failed to launch (same error message, which makes no sense to me, and it knows it). I repaired disk permissions, and it didn't work, so I pulled out a flash USB drive that I had plugged in, and without this in place, Clip Browser launched perfectly.
So this USB flash drive may be at fault. (I'd noticed that I'd had to try four or five times to get it to open on my desktop, so it may be broken or breaking).
Malcolm

Olof Ekbergh · April 11th, 2010, 06:15 PM

I am using MBP 10.6.2.

No problems whatsoever. Is it possible 10.6.3 is the culprit?

I always wait a month or two before updating.

Andrew Stone · April 11th, 2010, 10:45 PM

No, I had the problem with 10.6.2 as well Olof. Very strange problem. I put a fresh hard drive in the laptop a couple of months ago and reinstalled everything, no importing. As soon as I installed the snow leopard friendly SxS driver the machine became really sluggish. Even running apps in "Terminal", very simple UNIX apps, would take a second or two to respond once initiated. As soon as I performed an uninstall of the driver this morning, the machine got really snappy like it should with a freshly installed OS.

Olof Ekbergh · April 12th, 2010, 04:56 AM

Andrew,
Is this happening if all you install is FCP Studio and then the SXS drivers etc., or do you have other stuff installed as well? I would be looking at drivers for scanners still cameras or any other FW USB or Express port drivers, that may be causing this conflict.

I always try not to install any extra drivers, in most cases you don't need them.

Have you tried looking at your Console logs to see if there are problems?

Lance Librandi · April 12th, 2010, 05:26 AM

Hi Guys,
I have Clip Browser V2.6 installed and working on my MacPro 8 core Snow Leopard machine it works with SxS cards not a problem. My problem is with MXF files in XDCAM Transfere.

Oliver Neubert · May 8th, 2010, 05:14 PM

I have a 17" MBP which I bought in January. inserting SXS cards caused a kernel panic. I re-installed everything after formatting the drive, this time not installing VLC... Then it recognized my SXS cards, but "log and transfer" did not work, only XDCAM Transfer works. Trying to install 10.5.8 did not work, the Apple people told me that it is not possible to install 10.5.8 with this machine anymore. I also had Wifi issues and as a result they replaced my whole machine in March. With this new MBP I still have the same problems, cannot "log and transfer" with FCP. I also use ShotputPro to save my cards to a Glyph PortaGig drive as well as the MBP. I cannot log and capture the footage from the Glyph drive either, so the problem is not only with the SXS cards. (The Glyph drives however work perfectly with my MacPro using "log and capture" - very fast - no problem at all)

I have no clue why it seems to work for some people and why not for others. I really liked it when I could stick my SXS cards in my laptop and quickly transfer the footage - unfortunately this no longer possible.
I sometimes film a rehearsal and then, on the same day the performance. This I like to do in 720p @ 50 fps. After 2 hrs the cards (2x16 GB) are full and I need to offload them. I would love to check the footage but now all I can do is use ShotputPro and hope for the best...

And of course - Apple blames Sony and Sony blames Apple.
Since I have had the problem with 2 different MBPs - I think the problem is with the software, FCP and SXScards and not with the machines. (Unless I am really unlucky...)
I even reformatted the HD and did a clean install of Snow Leopard, then FCStudio and then the SXS Drivers and XDCAM Transfer / Log and Capture before installing anything else. The problem existed then as well - all the software and drivers are the most recent versions, my MBP has 8 GB Ram.

I have been using Apple computers for almost 20 years and FCP since version 3 and never before have I wished my old computer, old OS and old software back... but now I miss them... :-((

Zsolt Gordos · May 9th, 2010, 11:31 AM

Never had any issues on my custom built (from PC parts) Hackintosh quad. Using express card to USB adapter by MxM.

Joachim Hoge · May 9th, 2010, 11:56 AM

Clipbrowser seems to run fine on my MBP 15" with Express card, 10.6.3. I had problems with 10.6.2, the clipbrowser used to crash at stat up.
XDCam transfer runs OK, but seems to crash my Mac from time to time, usually when inserting a SxS card.

Oliver Neubert · May 9th, 2010, 12:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Stone

No, I had the problem with 10.6.2 as well Olof. Very strange problem. I put a fresh hard drive in the laptop a couple of months ago and reinstalled everything, no importing. As soon as I installed the snow leopard friendly SxS driver the machine became really sluggish. Even running apps in "Terminal", very simple UNIX apps, would take a second or two to respond once initiated. As soon as I performed an uninstall of the driver this morning, the machine got really snappy like it should with a freshly installed OS.

Andrew
that is very interesting. Did you use the regular uninstaller? If this works I am considering doing that after pulling footage in because the Machine (which is supposed to be the fastest Laptop currently available from Apple) is so slow, it is impossible to even do a scene selection because each play command takes a few minutes to start playing. I assumed the problem was Slow Leopard. I guess I could just reinstall it before transferring footage from a card and then uninstall if I need to check the footage.

Andrew Stone · May 9th, 2010, 05:30 PM

Oliver I believe I used the installer but performing an "uninstall" with it and rebooting the machine, as the driver loads at a very low level in the OS.

-Andrew

April 11th, 2010, 11:47 AM	#1
Andrew Stone Major Player Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 975	SxS Card Drivers & Snow Leopard Revisited I have several Macs that I use for production work, 2 of which are used working with XDCAM EX files. One is a MacPro running 10.5.x and the other is MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.3. My MacBook Pro has had latency issues responding to app switching usually pausing for 2 to 3 seconds before the computer properly responds. I had a sneaking suspicion the SxS driver was at fault but did nothing about it till today. After I uninstalled the Snow Leopard compatible version of the SxS card driver the latency disappeared. How are other people finding their Snow Leopard laptops with the SxS driver? I'm asking this as I have a lot of production software on my machine that could be causing the problem in combination with the SxS driver but somehow I doubt that is the case. Please post up if you are running a Snow Leopard MacBook Pro with the SxS drivers either negative or positive so we can get a representative sample of whether or not this is a wide spread or isolated problem.

April 11th, 2010, 12:48 PM	#2
Marcus Durham Major Player Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Hampshire, UK Posts: 693	Both my Mac Pro tower and my Macbook Pro are fine. __________________ Marcus Durham Media2u, Corporate Video Production For Your Business - http://www.media2u.co.uk

April 11th, 2010, 01:49 PM	#3
Dave Morrison Major Player Join Date: May 2002 Location: West Central Florida Posts: 762	Same here. Macbook Pro and MacPro desktop both on Snow Leopard and all the latest drivers....no issues. __________________ EX1, Nikon D750 http://www.morrisonphotographics.com http://www.heritagefilm.com

April 11th, 2010, 03:27 PM	#4
Brooks Graham Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: San Francisco, CA Posts: 121	MBP 15" with Snow Leopard and latest SxS driver and no issues. MacPro with Snow Leopard is fine too, but it doesn't have the SxS driver loaded as it doesn't have an ExpressCard slot. __________________ EX3, Z1U, FX1, D1X / NeXTstation Turbo Color / FCS3

May 9th, 2010, 11:31 AM	#12
Zsolt Gordos Major Player Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Budapest, Hungary Posts: 414	Never had any issues on my custom built (from PC parts) Hackintosh quad. Using express card to USB adapter by MxM. __________________ Sony XDCAM EX1r, Canon 5DMkII, Røde NTG2, Røde NT1000, Røde Stereo Videomic, Sachtler DV6 SB on Gitzo 1325V, Steadicam Merlin, Omnitracker, Hackintosh 3.5Ghz Quad 8Gb RAM

April 11th, 2010, 04:44 PM	#5
Malcolm Hamilton Major Player Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Ottawa, Canada Posts: 844	MacBook Pro, Snow Leopard, and yes, I discovered this morning that Clip Browser wouldn't launch. After scratching my head for a while (and re-starting, etc.) I repaired disk permissions with Disk Utility, and Clip Browser launched. As Craig Seeman pointed out in the thread I started, Snow Leopard has permissions problems. I'd noticed this with Snow Leopard and Avid (my editing app of choice), but hadn't run into problems with Sony until this morning. Regards, Malcolm

April 11th, 2010, 05:17 PM	#6
Malcolm Hamilton Major Player Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Ottawa, Canada Posts: 844	By the way... I just fired up Clip Browser again, and it failed to launch (same error message, which makes no sense to me, and it knows it). I repaired disk permissions, and it didn't work, so I pulled out a flash USB drive that I had plugged in, and without this in place, Clip Browser launched perfectly. So this USB flash drive may be at fault. (I'd noticed that I'd had to try four or five times to get it to open on my desktop, so it may be broken or breaking). Malcolm

April 11th, 2010, 06:15 PM	#7
Olof Ekbergh Sponsor: Westside AV Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Mount Washington Valley, NH, USA Posts: 1,365	I am using MBP 10.6.2. No problems whatsoever. Is it possible 10.6.3 is the culprit? I always wait a month or two before updating.

April 11th, 2010, 10:45 PM	#8
Andrew Stone Major Player Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 975	No, I had the problem with 10.6.2 as well Olof. Very strange problem. I put a fresh hard drive in the laptop a couple of months ago and reinstalled everything, no importing. As soon as I installed the snow leopard friendly SxS driver the machine became really sluggish. Even running apps in "Terminal", very simple UNIX apps, would take a second or two to respond once initiated. As soon as I performed an uninstall of the driver this morning, the machine got really snappy like it should with a freshly installed OS.

April 12th, 2010, 04:56 AM	#9
Olof Ekbergh Sponsor: Westside AV Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Mount Washington Valley, NH, USA Posts: 1,365	Andrew, Is this happening if all you install is FCP Studio and then the SXS drivers etc., or do you have other stuff installed as well? I would be looking at drivers for scanners still cameras or any other FW USB or Express port drivers, that may be causing this conflict. I always try not to install any extra drivers, in most cases you don't need them. Have you tried looking at your Console logs to see if there are problems?

April 12th, 2010, 05:26 AM	#10
Lance Librandi Major Player Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: South Australia Posts: 374	Hi Guys, I have Clip Browser V2.6 installed and working on my MacPro 8 core Snow Leopard machine it works with SxS cards not a problem. My problem is with MXF files in XDCAM Transfere.

May 8th, 2010, 05:14 PM	#11
Oliver Neubert Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Zurich, Switzerland Posts: 101	I have a 17" MBP which I bought in January. inserting SXS cards caused a kernel panic. I re-installed everything after formatting the drive, this time not installing VLC... Then it recognized my SXS cards, but "log and transfer" did not work, only XDCAM Transfer works. Trying to install 10.5.8 did not work, the Apple people told me that it is not possible to install 10.5.8 with this machine anymore. I also had Wifi issues and as a result they replaced my whole machine in March. With this new MBP I still have the same problems, cannot "log and transfer" with FCP. I also use ShotputPro to save my cards to a Glyph PortaGig drive as well as the MBP. I cannot log and capture the footage from the Glyph drive either, so the problem is not only with the SXS cards. (The Glyph drives however work perfectly with my MacPro using "log and capture" - very fast - no problem at all) I have no clue why it seems to work for some people and why not for others. I really liked it when I could stick my SXS cards in my laptop and quickly transfer the footage - unfortunately this no longer possible. I sometimes film a rehearsal and then, on the same day the performance. This I like to do in 720p @ 50 fps. After 2 hrs the cards (2x16 GB) are full and I need to offload them. I would love to check the footage but now all I can do is use ShotputPro and hope for the best... And of course - Apple blames Sony and Sony blames Apple. Since I have had the problem with 2 different MBPs - I think the problem is with the software, FCP and SXScards and not with the machines. (Unless I am really unlucky...) I even reformatted the HD and did a clean install of Snow Leopard, then FCStudio and then the SXS Drivers and XDCAM Transfer / Log and Capture before installing anything else. The problem existed then as well - all the software and drivers are the most recent versions, my MBP has 8 GB Ram. I have been using Apple computers for almost 20 years and FCP since version 3 and never before have I wished my old computer, old OS and old software back... but now I miss them... :-((

May 9th, 2010, 11:56 AM	#13
Joachim Hoge Major Player Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 402	Clipbrowser seems to run fine on my MBP 15" with Express card, 10.6.3. I had problems with 10.6.2, the clipbrowser used to crash at stat up. XDCam transfer runs OK, but seems to crash my Mac from time to time, usually when inserting a SxS card.

May 9th, 2010, 05:30 PM	#15
Andrew Stone Major Player Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 975	Oliver I believe I used the installer but performing an "uninstall" with it and rebooting the machine, as the driver loads at a very low level in the OS. -Andrew