Red Rocket & AJA Kona 3 still gives me dropped frames in FCP

[Nook Kim]

Hi,

I wonder if anyone now has a solution to this issue that arose when we started using the RR card with Kona 3 in the same Mac Pro.
I've been pulling out the RR for video out from FCP, and it's been a year and a half. I hated doing it, but there was no solution when
I called Red and AJA. About a month ago, one of my RR cards stopped working (giving me very weired pictures), and it turned out that
the main board on the card is busted when I sent it back to Red for repair. The RR is not fixable, and I'm very hesitent to buy another
RR card before I can find a solution to this. I have a feeling that too many times of "pulling" the card must have done the damage.

So.. it appears that there's no solution from either Red or Kona. There's no way to turn off the RR in the hardware level for video playback in FCP.
I've also searched for a way to disable a PCI-E slot on a boot, but it is not possible on OS X. It can only be done in BIOS on Windows at the boot.

I know that some people have no issue using the two cards on the same machine, but some do. I've tried different slot orders as some suggested, but
that didn't help for me.

I know that I can set the video playback to 720p OR I can set the audio playback to "built-in", but these don't help when I do HDCAM print-out.

I'm at a loss on this as I have two Mac Pro's showing the same issue. Now my first RR is gone, I think it's just a matter of time for my second one
to be toasted.

My config:
Slot 4 (x04) - ATTO h680 for FC RAID 6
Slot 3 (x04) - Kona 3
Slot 2 (x16) - RED Rocket™
Slot 1 (x16) - ATI 5870


I'd love to hear if there's been any solutions to this you have found.

Thanks for reading,

 

[Kaku Ito]

Hi Nook,

For your RR toasting issue, are you running SMC Fan to make the fans going faster? I do this because usually ATTO cards start to have problems from over heating.
But can't believe you are still having this issue. I don't seem to have similar issues with Blackmagic. If you are thinking of adopting Resolve (just saying), what about selling the Kona 3 and switch to Blackmagic cards?

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

I was going to suggest BlackMagic cards as well ... at least for the machine you use primarily for the Rocket.

On another note ... how does it behave for you in Premiere Pro CS5.5? (There is a free trial - definitely worth checking out!)

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

I also swotched from KONA to Black Magic card and the problem went away. Although I MUCH PREFER the KONA card... its just not worth the stress on the Rocket Card.

Mine actually fried my MAC motherboard from too much removal and insertion of the card. (yes, thats what she said)