SMOKE CRASHING & PEGASUS ISSUES...HELP PLEASE!!!!!!

[matt.wilmshurst]

Hi,

Im running SMOKE ext 1 on Imac I7 32GB RAM 10.8.1  & PROMISE pegasus R4. I have tried 4 Thunderbolt cables now. I have upped the ram allocation to 20,000 as opposed to automatic. (a dramatic difference in CFX)

I have now had the same problem occur twice on me.

After working with the Promise and smoke for about 3 days I start getting issues.

During a render this morning the software crashed and I was unable to get back into smoke after it says it is unable to see the media. It hangs for a long time.

I plugged in all the original disks that were attached and tried again just in case its still reffing those drives via MIO files.

NOW just operating my Imac is trouble once I boot the drive. Its like the drive or the files onbaord are causing conflicts.

When this first happened to me I was able to blat the Promise and reimport my sources. It didnt really show where the issue lies.

Now its happened again and im pretty desperate to get the files off the drive. (it wont let me copy the Autodesk Storage Media folder off and onto another drive)

Does anyone have any thoughts or encountered similar problems?????  Any help much appreciated. As it stands Im awaiting Promise to get back to me and I have a good friend who will hook the drive up to his mac popping round soon.

[Robert.Adam]

Hi Matt.

Are you able to access the Pegasus via Finder? Is it only in Smoke that it doesn't work, or anywhere else as well?

Open the Disk Utility app and try running the "Verify Disk" and "Repair Disk" tasks on your storage.

Your issues could also be due to incorrect permissions. Right click the disk, select "Get Info" and then check the "Ignore ownership on this volume".

I recommend copying the Autodesk Media Folder out of there as soon as you get a chance. If you manage to move that folder to another drive, you can simply update the storate path in Smoke's Smoke Setup app and Smoke will use the existing media storage folder as before.

Please let me know what Pegasus tells you.

Regards,

robert.

[matt.wilmshurst]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your help. I think it has really helped checking the ignore ownership permissions box. Smoke now all ws me in and the drive doesnt give me issues in finder aswell.

The everyone read/write box was set to read only. Ive now changed it to read write but do I need to include changing the contents inside the folder.

Now im in the project however Im faced with an auto save option and a spinny ball of doom. Any suggestions? Let it hang. 

Thanks Robert,

Matt

[Robert.Adam · Accepted solution]

I would recommend applying permissions on contents as well. That ensures that all the subfolders in the Media Storage folder are wide open so that Smoke can properly access the frames.

Regarding the auto-save beachball... do you have lots of Libraries (top-level folders) in your project? If so, you might want to right-click the ones you don't use and select "close" from the context menu. See if closing some of those folders helps with the autosave time.

Or do you have a "Recovered Media" folder? Delete it and see if that helps too.

I also recommend archiving your projects, just to be safe in case the Pegasus issue is hardware related and not just permissions-related.

Regards,

Robert.

[matt.wilmshurst]

You my man have made my day. Thanks so much for your help robert. Im rendering now and will archive overnight.

Great tip to close some libraries.

Matt Wilmshurst

[Robert.Adam]

My pleasure.

I've set my answer as the accepted solution, in case anyone else runs into this issue.

Did you manage to identify a specific library that causes a significant increase in save time? Does it contain lots of clips? Does it contain your main sequence?

Thanks,

Robert.

[matt.wilmshurst]

I had six libraries. I closed all of them accept the one I was working from. I had duplicated alot of masters in the other libraries and locked some of them (pretty sure that wont affect things) as Im from a flame background and Ive just come onto the smoke platform and Im pretty paranoid.

Thanks Again,

Matt

[matt.wilmshurst]

Hey Robert,

It would seem I spoke a little too soon. Although the machine now lets me in it crashed first thing this morning and has since been giving me the same issues. Here is the my chain of events.

Load project all ok. Render out changes too cfx - crashes. From this moment on the whole system becomes unstable. Inc accessing the drive via finder.

Its a certain clip that seems to crash the machine which seems to draw me to ask the question of whether I need to still have the source drives attached when I open that particular project. ie are the imo files looking to ref a clip on the source drive rather than the intermediate media within the Autodesk media storage.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Matt

[Robert.Adam]

Hi.

If the clip's source media is not cached, then yes, you need to have the source available even if you have renders.

If you want to disconnect the source drive, first right-click the clip and select Media > Cache source media. 

Since the drive itself seems flaky, I strongly recommend creating a project archive as soon as possible. If you have enough time and disk space, you could even archive all your projects, then reformat the troublesome drive and restore your projects.

Regards,

Robert.

[matt.wilmshurst]

HI robert.

Thanks for getting back to me. I always work with cached media (why else would I have a super fast drive system) and I always work uncompressed. I believe the intermediate files are always written as dpx anyway (apart from 16bit which seem to be exr) so I would never see the point of working at anything lower.

My point was do the IMO files need to still have the orignal source material attached. And are these files likely to be causing the system issues do you think. What causes a render to crash? In this case I believe its an IO error after checking the logs.

I have been promised (no pun inteneded) that I can have a new drive as the guys at promise believe I have a faulty chassis.

I am reformatting the drive now to test it once more while I await a new drive system.

[mike]

Matt, is the Promise utility that comes with the drives reporting any issues?

[matt.wilmshurst]

Hi mike, the promise utility is not showing any errors ( when im allowed to access it). The drive needs to be attached to view the util and yhats when my system becomes flakey. As soon as i pull the power on the pegasus everything on the mac resumes to normal/perfect running conditions.

[mikeparsons]

Do you live in a country without an earth line on your power? If so try flipping the power lead on either the promise or the mac. I fixed a bunch of problems for a client here recently where he had out of phase power to the two devices. 

Mike