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Adding
Additional Ram
Why Do I Get The "Failure To Read Video Buffer" Messages-2
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Casablanca
Recording Times Vary With Scene Complexity
Green
Error #0x36009038
How
To Remove A Stuck Y/C (S-Video) Connector
Inputting
Material From Any DV Device
Jitters
With Hi-8 Source Material
Manual
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Operation
Of The Source Deck During Casablanca Input Recording
Problems
With Fujitsu Drives Why Won't My Casablanca Get Past The
Casablanca "Flag"?
Preventing
"Can't Read Video Buffer" Errors
Reviews
Type
of RAM, which you can use:
Using
An External Hard Drive With The Casablanca
Using
An External Jaz Drive With The CasablancaUsing
Quantum Grand Prix And Atlas Ii Drives With The Casablanca
What
are the benefits of fitting more ram and what type of ram is it?
Green
Error #0x36009038
1 - First of all you should always right click on errors especially the red
ones. You might try a "Soft Reboot" - hold down the power button
until the screen flashes and release. There might be a defective piece of
audio involved here so you may want to try to find the clip responsible and
replace it. I have never run into this situation before but it is
possible.
Have you checked to see if you have available space to render in the audio
partition ? You might need to do an audio only clean up before you can
render.
2
- Did you get your audio rendered? Another option is render the audio clip
by clip to find the defective clip so you can recapture it and/or replace it
w/something else.
Why Do I Get The "Failure To Read Video Buffer" Messages-2
When I first got my Cassie, it had a bad hard drive. The green and
red errors started coming and soon my unit was unusable. Since then (they sent
me a new hard drive) I haven't had any "real" bad problems. Now I am
getting errors again and naturally I am very aware that this could be leading to
bigger problems. I do not usually click on new project- I just do a clean up. I
do this so that I don't have to reload my music. Are you saying that to click on
"new project" is a way of eliminating the potential problems that may
be coming?
After much usage, it is possible for the "pointer" system
within the Cassie (and other software files) to get corrupted which can lead to
green and eventually red panel errors. A "New Project" resets all
these files and usually returns things to normal. In extreme cases, where a New
Project doesn't solve all problems, a system software re-install is the only
solution. In both cases, of course, all "stock" material recorded in
the Cassie is lost; however, one must trade the labor of reloading it against
the labor of re-doing a lost project.
Why
Do I Get The "Failure To Read Video Buffer" Messages
This happens at various times, particularly
when the hard drive gets fragmented after doing lots of deletes, audio
rendering, and other editing ops that use various parts of the drive. If you do
a “Clean-up” operation that
should help. Sometimes making a scene of the
portion of the storyboard where that's happening and using the scene rather than
the original adjacent clips will help. More
memory might help. (see Preventing
)
Why
won't my casablanca get past the casablanca "flag"?
Check:
The power plug to the hard drive has a little ridge on it that catches
the Casablanca case when it's pulled out. Pulling the plug out of the drive.
Check: The 50 pin connector was coming loose - I can't imagine how inside that
sledge - but it was, just push it in again and all was OK.
What
does a blue panel error mean?
You may have a RAM problem. Try replacing the existing RAM.
Blue errors are very rare, and RAM is usually the first place to check.
What
does "error #27,25,49 mean?
Errors
25,27,& 49 mean essentially the same thing: There's a problem with that
clip. The problem could be as simple as a dropped frame (that could be split out
of the scene), or it may be something more complicated. If it is more
complicated than a dropped frame, you won't be able to play that scene at all
from the clip bin. If that's the case, making a copy won't help because the
Casablanca will still read from the original file. So, the worst case scenario
for Error 27 is that you'll need to re-digitize that one particular clip.
How
To Remove A Stuck Y/C (S-Video) Connector
I
have found that pushing DOWN at a point near where the barrel joins the wire
breaks it loose. Done it 10 times and no damage yet as far as I can tell. Grasp
the barrel firmly, brace the Casablanca, grit your teeth and "work" it
out, not too much side-to-side motion. That
works but we also gently push DOWN before GENTLY wiggling the connector.
Disconnecting via this GENTLE WIGGLE maneuver three or four times, usually
loosens up the connectors. However, be wary of monster cables and cables with
ridges on them. One of our clients managed to destroy the back connectors with
too much force and we had to replace the board.
How
can I use both an internal and external drive?
You
can have two separate projects going on, one on each drive. If you have both the
internal and the external drive connected, the Casablanca will default to the
internal drive. To use the external, simply slide the internal out of the
connector enough to break the connection and the Casablanca will go to the
external.
What
are the benefits of fitting more ram and what type of ram is it?
1. You will have a lot less green
error’s
2. You can work with a greater amount of scenes in the SB
3. You can do more FX and title works
4. Monument and AKABA works better
5. Casablanca does not need to save your work in short time periods in case of
shortage in memory
6. Bigger hard drives more than 18Gb needs extra buffer-space to prevent a
buffer under-run error when playing the SB
7. Especially a "zigzag" structured SB needs extra RAM to prevent
buffer under-run errors by playing the SB
8. Bigger hard drives have space for large numbers of scenes, FX, title, Akaba,
most of this work will be done in the memory first
9. More RAM doesn’t speed up the Casablanca except MT
10. Working with Casablanca slowly fills up the memory, so you have more time to
do your work in point 1 to 9 and you will not reach the limits.
11. The Casablanca can use a max. 64Mb of RAM
12. Macrosystems warns in this mail, that installing extra RAM can give you more
problems, when you are not the right person for installing RAM.
13. My experience is that I would not recommend this for everybody, but people
who can open a computer and can change things could do this,
gently by installing RAM modules.
14. Newer Casablanca cases are changed to prevent this installing of extra RAM
through the slider opening.
Type
of RAM, which you can use:
1.
PS/2 type
2.
60 ns speed
3. 72
pins
4. EDO
RAM
5. other
name: SIMM
5. Brand
names: Kingston, Siemens, Hyundai, Samsung, IBM, Toshiba, Micron, Optosys
Be very cautious!, used static precautions
Preventing
"Can't Read Video Buffer" Errors
1) I've
learned by error on repeat play. In other words, I had a scene in the holding
area. I trimmed it to meet my needs at the front section. I added the same
section a couple of times and ran into the video buffer full or can't read data,
whatever the exact verbiage is. Anyway, when I went in and made copies of the
scene, four or five to meet my needs, and inserted the scenes separately, I did
not get the error message. Of course, I re-did both ways again to confirm. I
think it's easier this way and the machine will more easily recognize a second
clip rather than just using the one over and over again. At least that's been my
experience.
2) I would suggest a Clean Up, that usually clears and read
errors. The clips are probably all over the place and it seems sometimes the
machine just can not read them quick enough.
3) As the problem is intermittent, it could
it be the old problem of overheating? I used to have this problem until I
followed this advice and always run a desk-top fan blowing onto Cassie's case.
Jitters
With Hi-8 Source Material
I have more information on the "Jitters" problem I'm having with my
Hi-8. I have now tested 3 different
units, all do the same. Sony EV-5000 VCR, Sony TR-101 Camera, & a Sony
TR-500.
Talked with Draco yesterday and they say they have a cable that is made in
Germany which has a built in resistor? I think, that will solve the
problem. It appears to be an impedance problem with some of the Sony units.
Draco has these on order & will send me one when they come in. This problem
also appears to change the color saturation. Skin tones are very red. Will let
Y'all know how I come out when I get my cable.
Inputting
Material From Any DV Device
For those inputting from ANY DV device: set AGC ON and try setting CONTRAST to
"92". DV has a different gamma and the AGC ON seems to correct it
(image will appear brighter). Moving Contrast down by "8" raises DV's
0IRE pedestal from "0" to 8IRE (which is correct in the USA). You'll
notice shadow detail that was lost will return.
Operation
Of The Source Deck During Casablanca Input Recording
We
have had a few reports of people losing audio sync with 2.X software. When it
goes, it is way out of sync.
Here's
the problem:
While digitizing video, you need to stop the recording on the Casablanca BEFORE
stopping the playback from the source deck. If you stop playing on the source
deck first, the Casablanca will not be able to maintain the sync.
Using Quantum Grand Prix And Atlas Ii Drives With The Casablanca
The Grand
Prix may not capture at the highest Casablanca "quality" setting (12),
it depends on how old it is. The Atlas II will not have any problem at any
setting.
Using
An External Hard Drive With The Casablanca
I
often use one external drive instead of the internal drive. I use a short SCSI
cable (2' or less). I have no problem capturing and playing back at the highest
settings on the external drive. There doesn't seem to be any compromise.
The Casablanca uses only one drive at a time, either internal or
external. It must be set to SCSI ID=0. The exception to this is that you can
have an internal drive and an external drive for a "mirror" backup
only.
Using
An External Jaz Drive With The Casablanca
To use an external Jaz drive you must also
remove (or partially pull out) the internal hard drive. Casablanca will then
recognize the JAZ as SCSI unit zero location.
Problems
With Fujitsu Drives
We find the Seagate Barracuda's very reliable. No problems. We also found the
Quantum Atlas II works well. MAJOR problems trying to run Fujitsu drives....
green flag errors everywhere, although according to published specs, they ought
to work.
Casablanca
Recording Times Vary With Scene Complexity
The
Casablanca using an image compression technique known as Motion JPEG (JPEG =
Joint Photographic Experts Group). This particular technique basically computes
the spatial frequency content of each frame of video and uses parameters derived
from the frequency content measurement to compress and subsequently restore the
video. Thus, the amount of compression for a particular video frame is a
function of how "busy" the scene is. For example, in a simple
experiment in which I recorded five minutes of a "black" scene and
five minutes of a "busy" scene on my PC7 DV vidcam and then sending
them to the Casablanca resulted in using the following amounts of Casablanca
recording time: Casablanca
recording time Black scene 0.4 minutes Complex scene ~5.0 minutes Thus it would
appear that the MJPEG recording time "gain" will be somewhere between
0 and 10-to-1 depending on scene complexity. Of course, most scenes would
probably be on the complex end of the scale, but not all would be. That's why
the recording times given for a given size Casablanca hard drive are
approximate. If you have a lot of blue sky in a scene, you'll get more
Casablanca recording time than if you have the viewfinder filled with flowers.
Adding
Additional Ram
We have added another SIMM to a few units.
There is no improvement in speed, but it does seem to cut down on some green
errors on projects with many layers of effects. The Germans tell us that every
machine can operate on 4Megs RAM, and each one ships with 16Megs. They say that
it's overkill, but I don't think that their users are utilising as many layers
as we are. The extra RAM can be added without opening the unit up, as long as
your hand can fit in the drive
slot. Simply loosen the clasps on the existing SIMM, tilt it upright, then slide
the new SIMM into the empty slot. After you slide it in, tilt it down until the
clasps snap shut. Then tilt the
first SIMM back into place.
I have three units with 32 meg ram in them. There is no increase in performance
whatsoever. We have found that it eliminates some errors on very extensive
projects. My studio does a lot of still picture transfers,
some as many as 2 or 3000 pics at a time. The memory wasn't sufficient for some
projects with over 1200 transitions. Its pretty rare that most people will have
1200 transitions in a project but adding the ram took care of the problem for us
but that's the only difference it made.