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Checking the storage system

The following section provides guidelines for investigating problem areas related to the storage system. Use this section if you have problems with media input and/or output that are intermittent or seem to be related to certain usage patterns.
Problem Possible Causes Corrective Actions
Symptoms can include black video recorded or at playout, frozen video, slow performance, or inconsistent media access. These symptoms can be accompanied by StatusPane messages regarding disk problems or overrun/underrun conditions for encoders, decoders, or timecode. The following causes can occur on their own or in combination to produce the problem:
  • Disk oversubscription — This occurs when requests to the media disk exceed the disk’s bandwidth capabilities. This generally occur in extreme cases when a combination of high-bandwidth operations are taking place, such as jog/shuttle, record/play on multiple channels, or streaming multiple clips.
  • High CPU activity in Windows — This occurs when activities on the Windows operating system over-tax the capabilities of the CPU. This commonly happens when unsupported software has been installed that competes with K2 Summit system applications. Virus scanners and screen savers can cause this type of problem, since they can start automatically and consume system resources.
  • Encoder overrun — This occurs when an encoder is flooded with more data than it can process within its real-time requirements for recording.
  • Decoder underrun — This occurs when a decoder is starved for data and cannot deliver enough to satisfy real-time requirements for playout.
  • Disk faults — This occurs when a media disk is severely fragmented or has a bad blocks that interfere with some, but not all, media operations. For example, a particular clip can be written on a bad block, so the problem occurs only on that clip.
Try to re-create the problem. Identify all the interactions that affected the system and run all the same operations as when the error occurred. Record/play/stream the same clips. Investigate the functions that seem to push the system into the error state. If you determine that certain simultaneous operations cause the problem, re-order your workflow to avoid those situations. If you determine that the problem is only on certain clips, investigate disk faults.

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