karavite
Registered
Hello all - forgive this one, but some of you seem to know just about everything, so think of this as a brain teaser to test your savvyness! 
The quick and easy question is this - can Tiger have an effect on the speed in which my mac can write files to the drive? More than likely it won't slow it down, but can it speed it up?
If you want the whole complicated story, here it is:
I am using a telecine machine to transfer movie film to digital video. Here is the device: http://www.moviestuff.tv/dv8_sniper.html This think works in the following way:
The telecine camera is analog and goes to a Canopus ADVC AD converter which has a firwire out to the Mac. The telecine projector has a port with a special mouse that hooks to the USB port of the Mac. The Mac has special software that captures each frame of film as a frame of video - all at 6 frames per second synced via a signal from this special mouse which responds to a mechanical-electrical signal from the projector each time a frame is clicked through. For the Mac, it really isn't video capture in the normal sense - in effect it is more like writing an image file from a still camera once every 1/6th of a second. With any computer and AD converter, there is a slight (and impossible to know) delay between when the projector displays a frame and what the computer "sees" from the camera. So, when you set up this machine with any computer you have to go through this amazingly aganozing process of getting them in sync by adjusting a cam shaft on the projector so it can tell the Mac, via the special USB mouse, exactly when to capture the frame. I literally had to run a whole reel (24 minutes), watch the capture (4 minutes), and if there was a blurred frame, adjust this little cam shaft 1/10 of an inch and do it all again and again and again... until there were no blurred frames (a blurred frame is captured while the projector is advancing to the next frame).
Again, here is the question. Would upgrading to Tiger alter the speed in which my Mac can write these files to the HD (1 GHz DP G4) and thereby put my telecine system out of sync with the mac? I seriously doubt it, it seems like this is largely dependent on hardware, but I just can't go through this calibration again! We arte talking hours and hours. I mean it is sunny outside now, spring is calling me... Also please note that if I use a different AD (like a Dazzle) I would have to recailbrate for that too.
P.S. The man who makes these machines is a fantastic guy. He tells me only Mac users never have issues with keeping up to the 6 fps capture rate. PC's often can't handle it and need to use a RAID drive which writes files faster. What are Macs doing right here? Again, don't think of this as normal video capturing - the mac, in effect, is having to write each frame as a file to the HD 6 times a second. It's all about the ability to write files quickly while running some process(es).
The quick and easy question is this - can Tiger have an effect on the speed in which my mac can write files to the drive? More than likely it won't slow it down, but can it speed it up?
If you want the whole complicated story, here it is:
I am using a telecine machine to transfer movie film to digital video. Here is the device: http://www.moviestuff.tv/dv8_sniper.html This think works in the following way:
The telecine camera is analog and goes to a Canopus ADVC AD converter which has a firwire out to the Mac. The telecine projector has a port with a special mouse that hooks to the USB port of the Mac. The Mac has special software that captures each frame of film as a frame of video - all at 6 frames per second synced via a signal from this special mouse which responds to a mechanical-electrical signal from the projector each time a frame is clicked through. For the Mac, it really isn't video capture in the normal sense - in effect it is more like writing an image file from a still camera once every 1/6th of a second. With any computer and AD converter, there is a slight (and impossible to know) delay between when the projector displays a frame and what the computer "sees" from the camera. So, when you set up this machine with any computer you have to go through this amazingly aganozing process of getting them in sync by adjusting a cam shaft on the projector so it can tell the Mac, via the special USB mouse, exactly when to capture the frame. I literally had to run a whole reel (24 minutes), watch the capture (4 minutes), and if there was a blurred frame, adjust this little cam shaft 1/10 of an inch and do it all again and again and again... until there were no blurred frames (a blurred frame is captured while the projector is advancing to the next frame).
Again, here is the question. Would upgrading to Tiger alter the speed in which my Mac can write these files to the HD (1 GHz DP G4) and thereby put my telecine system out of sync with the mac? I seriously doubt it, it seems like this is largely dependent on hardware, but I just can't go through this calibration again! We arte talking hours and hours. I mean it is sunny outside now, spring is calling me...
Also please note that if I use a different AD (like a Dazzle) I would have to recailbrate for that too.P.S. The man who makes these machines is a fantastic guy. He tells me only Mac users never have issues with keeping up to the 6 fps capture rate. PC's often can't handle it and need to use a RAID drive which writes files faster. What are Macs doing right here? Again, don't think of this as normal video capturing - the mac, in effect, is having to write each frame as a file to the HD 6 times a second. It's all about the ability to write files quickly while running some process(es).