#PAR problems
11 messages in this thread
Sorry if this messages pops up twice, we seem to have some trouble with
compuserve as well. So here it is (again?).
Help: my PAR is malfunctioning.
I have it for a week now and the first few days it worked fine. We put the card
and disk in another computer, even connected it to a Lantastic network and it
still worked fine.
Suddenly we got bad frames while importing or duplicating. It looks like there
are two frames mixed in one picture and the sync seems lost. In a few days the
problem got worse and we now have 10 faulty frames in 80 total !
We reinstalled the software (1.25B Pal version), upgraded to 1,29B Pal,
optimized the disk etc. but nothing works.
If we play old animations recorded before the problems started they still look
oke.
Another strange thing is that repeatedly while importing TGA's the PAR stops
and complains about "file …… could not be converted; aborting import".
After this happens the PAR software stops and complains about a fatal error
"communication time out". (I thought this was solved after the release of
1.27).
When we check with PARCHECK it mostly tests oke, but sometimes it complains
about missing ACK's and reports errors while testing PIO mode.
Last strange phenomenon is that sometimes even when booting we get an error.
We checked temperature of the drive, but after some hours off it gives the same
problems.
We sent standard PAL frames of 768×576, which is more than the 752×576 the
manual specifies.
Any idea ? We have to shoot a production commercial in two days so we are
desperate !
Michiel,
>> Par problems …. Any idea ? We have to shoot a production commercial in two
days so we are desperate ! <<
I'm no expert in this area, but I could suggest a couple of quick ideas to try.
You could try them with just a small sample of maybe 100 frames. Try cropping
your .tga files down to the maximum size the PAR wants (752×576). You could do
this with Video Post and center the image rather than resize it. Save a 100
frame sequence under a new name for the test.
Also, you could try lowering the Block limit (BLF), say down to 240 and try
again. Clear off any unnecessary files from the PAR drive, back it up, reformat
it, and only copy your project to it for now – all things you could try. Other
than that I'm not sure what to suggest.
Martin
Thanks for the hints Martin, We tried all that but without succes. We
reformatted the whole disk and put only the necessary ani back. Still
bad frames in between and at random.
PMJI, but if formatting and placing the .ANI file at the outer tracks
of the PAR disk doesn't fix it, delete the .ANI and re-compile with
the original TGAs and an appropriate Block Limit. If this doesn't do
it, then there's gotta be a problem with the hardware, I'd imagine.
Alan, we did reformat the drive etc. Nothing helps, I agree there must
be a hardware problem. Will try to get if fixed. Too bad we miss our
deadline, sigh … Thanks for your input
Hi Alan,
I am experiencing similar problems as Michiel and maybe can throw out
a few more details about my situation and shed a little more light as
to what is happening.
I recently added a 2nd drive to my PAR setup and things started
getting weird.
When I first installed the 2nd drive, a Micropolis 2217A, somehow the
data on my other drive became unreadable. After trying some of DPS's
suggestions for restoring the data, I ended up formatting both drives
and starting from scratch.
Since then things have not been right and have gradually gotten
worse.
At first whenever I would do any of the commands that would manipulate
the PAR data, i.e. join, duplicate, or even optimize, the process
would destroy a few frames in the animation. Not like when your disk
is really full and needs to be optimized (My drives were pratically
empty), but I could step frame by frame through the animation and
some frames that were fine before the data manipulation were now
corrupt.
Since then the problem has escalated. I get more bad frames and now
have had the computer lock when doing various operations in the PAR
interface, including deleting, stopping an animation, etc. Maybe
this sheds some new light.
Hi Jim,
If your drives are both pretty empty, and the Block Limit values appropriate
for the drive, and you are still having trouble with basic operations such as
join, duplicate, etc, it sounds like a pretty sticky situation.
I've always been able to fix stuff like this by formatting the drive and
re-compiling the animation at lower a BL to keep it in line with the PAR drive
performance limits.
I think the latest software is still actually Beta. Maybe you could try going
back to the original version and see if that is more stable for you.
I'm sorry I cannot help you much more than this, Jim. I'd really need to sit
down at a system to really trouble-shoot it properly with a particular project.
Just keep in mind that anything you can do to minimize the load on the drive
will always help these problems.
Good luck,
-Alan
Hi Alan,
Thanks for getting back to me. You don't have to apologize for not being able
to give me more information. I am currently trying to hunt down the problem.
I was really posting to maybe give some more information to what Michiel had
posted, since we are both having a similar problem. I thought there were a few
things that needed to be clarified, since on the surface the problem sounds
like the drive just needs to be optimized or is full.
Again I appreciate the response and will post as soon as I got this puppy
figured out.
Jim G.
James,
I am also getting the same problems now. With me the problems always starts,
after i have optimised my PAR-drive, the filenames are mixed up.
ARUB0000.ANI is suddenly called CURA0000.ANI, which is the next in line
in the directory. and the last in the directory has the same name as the first.
QUIT and RESTART the PAR-software brings me back the right names but always
deleting one of the double/same named files. When i QUIT and
RESTART again i got very short the message "Verify error [2] file of project
ROOT has illegal type 0" before the PAR-software starts, and then the
PAR-drive is empty. I posted this problem on the DPS bulletin board and
they are very helpfull, so i will keep you informed.
Theo
We had similar problems to James and you. We got a new PAR board and
everything seemed to be solved. We were able to import, duplicate,
join etc. No problems, no complaints and wow what a perfect product
when it works……………
But after a few days we got a new problem: now the software won't
start up; Partest complains about a controller handshake problem.
This time everything indicated Disk problems as opposed to the PAR
controller. We checked it out by connecting our disk to a customer's
PAR (with his drive cable to exclude that factor) and indeed: same
problem.
So we will try to get a new disk this time, but it seems weird that we
started with a faulty PAR board and now seem to have a faulty disk.
What's going on ?
Could there be some problem with the PAL version which exceeds some
limits in the PAR to Disk interface ?? Just guessing.
I keep my fingers crossed, but i decided not to put anything in the
ROOT of the PAR-drive anymore, and it runs ok now for 3-days. I don't
hope that this is by coincidence but maybe it solved my problems. I
will keep you informed !