Snow Leopard ingest problems with Lexar Reader

[djohnston]

Kirk,
Yes to IPTC, Yes to Multiple Destinations, No Rename on ingest, JPG's.
(Intel MacBook Pro, 4G RAM, PM4.6.2.1, Sandisk FW800 reader, Sandisk Extreme III and IV cards)
Danny

[Kirk Baker]

Everyone,

Forum member 'tte' has been helping me test and it's been a great help.  Anyone else willing to help track down the issue?  Please let me know.  I have logging versions of PM ready to go.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[Hydester]

Yes I'm willing to give it a go.

Best wishes

Stephen

[Kirk Baker]

Stephen,

Yes I'm willing to give it a go.

Thanks.  I've sent you a private message.

-Kirk

[Kevin M. Cox]

I experienced this for the first time today, I guess I have just been lucky until now.  I only run Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro and previously have not had any issues, cards (Sandisk Extreme IV / Lexar Pro FW800 reader) have downloaded just as fast on the MBP w/ 10.6 as they do at home on the Mac Pro with 10.5.8.

Today while covering a breaking news situation images downloaded very slowly (Ingest to a single location, applying a single field in the IPTC Stationary Pad). I'll upgrade to the 4.6.2.2 beta and report back if it happens again.

[Kirk Baker]

Everyone,

Could you please list the card reader with model numbers and the cards that you have experienced the slow Ingests.

As much detail as you can provide would be helpful.  Take pictures of the hardware and post them as JPEGs.  You can use the 'Additional Options...' link when you're writing your reply to upload JPEG images.

Thanks!

-Kirk

[soren steffen]

FW 800 Sandisk card reader. Serial no. 4005090

Sandisk Extreme IV card  no. B1061005452B

hth
-Søren

[Kirk Baker]

Søren,

FW 800 Sandisk card reader. Serial no. 4005090

Sandisk Extreme IV card  no. B1061005452B

Thanks.  I have that reader, but not that card.  I'll have to get one of them.

-Kirk

[Hydester]

FW 800 Sandisk card reader. Serial no. 4034651
Lexar Pro FW 800   Serial no 010583
Sandisk Extreme Pro 16GB 90MB/S  Serial no BL090812951B


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[Kevin M. Cox]

I have the cards that Søren posted (Sandisk Extreme IV original version), just in 2 GB and 4 GB sizes, with the Lexar FW800 reader Hydester posted.

[Kirk Baker]

Everyone,

Could you also post what system you experience the problem on?  Mac Book, iMac 24", Mac Pro 2.4GHz, etc.

Also, can you explain how you get the problem to start happening?

I know where the slow down occurs in the code, but there is no workaround that we can engineer, so we're going to have to be able to reproduce the problem, write a sample program that illustrates the problem, and then file a bug report with Apple, giving them all the details and the sample program.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[Kevin M. Cox]

Kirk, I experienced it with the following setup:

MacBook Pro (3,1), 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo, 3 GB RAM, 5400 RPM hard drive
Lexar Professional FireWire 800 CF Reader (model RW034-7000)
Sandisk Extreme IV (original version) CF cards in 2 GB and 4 GB

I updated to 4.6.2.2 Beta 2 for football today and downloads were fairly fast.  (It was not as fast as the "PM 4.6.2.1 / OS X 10.5.8 / Mac Pro / Sandisk FW800 reader" setup at home, but I don't expect it to be considering the differences in hard drive speed, RAM and processors.)

That said, I consider the speeds today acceptable, about on par with PM 4.6.1 from what I remember.

[Hydester]

Everyone,

Could you also post what system you experience the problem on?  Mac Book, iMac 24", Mac Pro 2.4GHz, etc.

Also, can you explain how you get the problem to start happening?

For me:

Apple 15 inch MacBookPro (current model) 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRM-2x2GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive@7200rpm
SuperDrive 8X DL


Usually first ingest is super fast then it gradually gets worse, Detaching reader between ingests seems to speed it up, but not to speed of first ingest

Best

Steve

[Kirk Baker]

Everyone,

I now have the SanDisk Extreme IV 45 MB/s UDMA 8GB card and a SanDisk Extreme FireWire Reader (model SDDRX4-CF) with a FireWire 800 interface.  I have spent about five hours trying to reproduce this issue on my Mac Pro (desktop) system without success.

Is this issue only happening on MacBookPros?  Has anyone had this issue on a desktop system?

Thanks,

-Kirk

[EDIT: five hours of Ingesting instead of four as I previously stated.]

[Kevin M. Cox]

Kirk, not sure how much it matters, but Søren and I both have the original Extreme IV cards, NOT the 45 MB/s edition. (That said the older original cards should still achieve speeds of about 39 MB/s.)  However I just wanted to point it out as something to keep in the back of your mind in case it starts to become a common denominator.

The only machine I have running 10.6 is a MacBook Pro and combined with the other issues (like spell check) I'm in no hurry to upgrade the desktop. As I mentioned before, PM 4.6.2.1 running on OS 10.5.8 has the fastest Ingest speeds I've ever seen and I'm loving it.

The only thing that was different about when I got the super slow speeds was when I was working out of my truck as opposed to having the laptop setup on a desk.

Not sure if this helps but I just did a very unscientific test between the two machines. I quit and reopened Photo Mechanic before each Ingest.

Sandisk Extreme IV (original) 4 GB CF card
180 JPEGs plus 30 WAVs from a Canon EOS 1D Mark II N
Finder reports: 1.04 GB on disk (1,112,789,705 bytes) for 210 items

Ingest to single location (different folder each time), applying a single field in IPTC Stationary

Mac Pro, OS 10.5.8 running PM 4.6.2.1
Sandisk FW800 Reader: 37.5 seconds
Lexar FW 800 Reader: 33.0 seconds

MacBook Pro, OS 10.6.2 running PM 4.6.2.2 beta 2
Sandisk FW800 Reader: 1 minute
Lexar FW 800 Reader: 58.9 seconds

For reference, assuming my math is correct, all of these speeds are under the 39.7 MB/s rate Rob Galbraith reports in his speed tests for the combo of my specific CF card and Sandisk reader, but they are still plenty fast.

According to Galbraith the Sandisk and Lexar readers use the same chipset which makes me think it wouldn't be a situation where one suffered from the problem but the other didn't, but I'm no expert.

SanDisk's flagship CompactFlash-only reader utilizes a speedy OXFW912 FireWire 800/400 controller from Oxford Semiconductor...

The read speeds for the Delkin Reader-39, Hoodman RAW UDMA FireWire 800, Lexar Professional UDMA FireWire 800 and Synchrotech CFFire800 Pro are effectively identical to this SanDisk reader, because all four utilize the same controller from Oxford.