[rescue] O2's

[Robert Rose]

At 11:33 AM 15/06/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sat, Jun 15, 2002 at 12:47:22PM +1000, Robert Rose wrote:
> > Well my R5k O2 (180MHz SC, 320Mb RAM) seems to drop frames too at
> > fullscreen PAL resolution; half-size appears to be fine though.
>
>What compression ratio?  What sort of disk system do you use?  How
>much are you buffering to ram?  What applications?  What codec?

Um, lets see.  Mediarecorder, tried a few different nerd-knobs but not had 
much success.  System disk is a 4Gb barracuda, data is a CRD-5000 SCSI-SCSI 
raid controller with 6 x 4Gb 'cudas in a RAID5 stripe (not sure of stripe 
width).  I am considering ditching the system disk and running the whole 
lot off the RAID disk, maybe going to RAID0 if the RAID5 is too sluggish.

>I have no PAL O2 experience, but it should just work the same as NTSC.

Several Mediarecorder options don't seem to allow PAL to be selected.  A 
quick test with an NTSC source seems to be a little better.  Maybe time to 
ditch mediarecorder and play with dmrecord ?

>You shouldn't be suffering from dropped frames it what you have so far
>discribed.  Most likely the cause is software short comings [1] or disk
>short comings.  Potentially hardware failure.  The ICE chip will do
>compression ratios such that no matter what the disk it won't drop
>frames, so try using a slightly higher compression ratio.

Probably a combination of the software and the space between the chair and 
the keyboard.

>Many people have no trouble what so ever with dropped frames, and when
>you buy a real time video system for the O2, it is based on an R5k and
>it doesn't use proprietary add ons, unlike similar systems for PCs and
>Macs.

That is one reason why I bought it.

>Until I get my own O2 instead of relying on the reports of others and
>the experience on the school O2 (which could capture video fine
>despite having only 64megs of ram and a crappy disk, you just needed
>to crank the compression ratio), I can't help you any more than to say
>that it is possible, and you shouldn't need to buy anything to make it
>work. The people in usenet might be more helpfull.

Thanks for that, a quick search of google:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&q=o2+video+problems
shows that it's probably just a lack of clue on my behalf.

Rob.