Footage load is very slow

Mocha AE
#1

Hi there,
I’m very very impressed with mochaAE and am keen to make good use of it on my current job.
However I have big a problem that makes things awkward.

When I start a new project and select my footage file the program takes several minutes to load before the next button is available to go on a set the rest of the wizard settings. However I’ve seen the same footage load much much quicker on an XP 32 bit system.

My specs are:
MochaAE 1.2.0
Windows XP x64bit
2 x quad Xeon X5365 processors at 3GHz
16GB ram
ATI fire GL7300 display card
hardware controlled raid0 array with the footage on it

the footage is an uncompressed AVI at 720x576 pixels Pal interlaced
and is only 231 frames long

Any suggestions/help would be much appreiciated.
thanks
Jon

#2

Sure. This tripped me up for months but I just lived with it. It wasn’t until I downloaded a demo of some DV logging app that used Quicktime also and saw some strange delays… finally I made the connection between what it was doing and Monet using Quicktime for it’s AVI IO, and spent several hours trying to figure out what was going on.

#3

Interestingly, this probably has to do with your RAID controller, and the fact that Quicktime is a giant pile of trash.

I have the same issue and in my case it’s due to Quicktime not aligning it’s memory buffers correctly and causing my RAID controller to freak out (a 3ware SATA controller).

You can test this theory by copying the same clip to some other device not managed by your RAID controller - like an external USB/firewire hard drive, thumb drive, whatever. If it opens right up, you probably have the same issue.

For more information, see http://3ware.com/KB/article.aspx?id=14869

There might be a workaround for your particular RAID controller/chipset but you’ll have to search around and see.

#4

Hi Jon,

Sometimes you see a delay of a few seconds when loading a long sequence, but on one only 231 frames long the delay should be negligible. I’ll run up an XP 64 system here and check it out. Which codec are you using in the QuickTime file?

Has anyone else seen a similar problem on XP 64?

Thanks,

J-P

#5

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your insights, this makes perfect sense. Jon, the problem will also affect AVIs in Imagineer products because we use QuickTime to read them.

J-P

#6

I was using an uncompressed AVI
But this problem seems to occur with QT or AVIs and regardless of codec
thanks

#7

Hi J P,
Mocha running on a systen with a single dual xeon processor is fine. but my system with 2 quad xeons has the footage load problem.
Jon

#8

Thanks Bob!
You were right copying the clip to another non-raid drive works fine.
(Note that my problem happened with QT and AVI, so your slagging of QT might be misplaced with this issue)

Many Thanks for your help…phew, now I can do the job.
Jon U