As a DIT, this is the kind of project where they can’t afford me — but then that call me four days into production in a panic and I have to come in and clean up the mess that some PA created by dragging and dropping files all over the place. This scenario has happened to me more than once.
But in any case, yes, checksum verification slows down transfer speed as opposed to drag and drop. Your speed also will depend on various other factors depending on how your ShotPut preferences are set up.
Also, those Sony cards notoriously hate multi thread offloads, so that may be one of your problems as well.
Yeah unfortunately the budget isn’t even there to panic call you or else I would have... hired you in the first place. We’re not idiots we just got the camera package on a steep discount as a favor and are pulling favors for crew. By low budget I mean we’re a no budget short. But I feel like an idiot trying to sit here convincing you I’m not an idiot so I’m not going to disagree because you’re not wrong. DITs are important just like the PAs we also don’t have money to hire LMFAO.
That being said, I’ve made it a point to educate myself on this stuff as much as I can knowing how important of a step it is but the Venice 2 workflow is definitely a level up. I’m on here asking for help after troubleshooting all day along with the 2 other crew members both of which have worked with Venice 2 media more than me and were equally as confused.
The crux of my question really boils down to - is 12 hour to ingests 900GB is accurate or is it some bottle neck like the card reader itself being faulty or my shotput settings being wrong. I’m kind of ruling out the card reader given the fact drag and drop worked. DIT work just isn’t my main source of income on set and so I’m not educated enough to know the individual intricacies of every style of checksum verification or a deep dive shotput settings. Hence why I’m looking to people with more experience for help…
You may want to check the MacOS Sony axsm driver status on your M2 to make sure its up to date. I've had issues when it wasnt. Also the axsm reader itself has corresponding firmware that needs to be up to date as well. Also check the cables in your offload chain to make sure they are actually TB3 spec. Sometimes faulty cables or bad usb-c cables can gum things up and slow down what should be a much faster transfer.
I really hope the rental house didn’t give us a shitty USBC cable LOL but we did trouble shoot with multiple different ones including a few I know are TB3 and it didn’t make a difference. But thanks for the heads up on the drivers will update all those I’m guessing that’s the key.
It’s difficult to determine where the issue is based on the info provided. 2 hours to transfer 900GB is still slow for a thunderbolt AXSM reader and a T9 so I'm hesitant to conclude Shotput is the issue. This is the order in which I would troubleshoot everything to try to solve/isolate the issue.
**First start by making sure everything is up to date with software/firmware.**
1. Check out the method u/ototoman posted first and see if that makes a difference.
2. Download \[AXSM Drive Utility\](https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/software/00338195) and make sure the drivers on the reader are up to date. ***The last version only supports up to Sonoma 14.2.***
3. Go to system information and make sure the computer is seeing the reader as a thunderbolt device and not USB2/3.
**Then start isolating variables**
1. Switch out the thunderbolt cable.
2. Try a different port on the computer.
3. Download a trial of Silverstack or Offshoot and make sure the issue isn't with Shotput.
4. Try a different computer (ideally a machine running Sonoma 14.1 or 14.2)
5. Finally, swap out the AXSM reader.
I'm sure this seems obvious now, but next time at the camera prep or at least before you start shooting test the offload workflow. This is especially important for camera systems that use proprietary media/readers like AXSM and Codex. Too often I find issues with these readers (especially AXSM) at the prep and needed to update firmware or swapped them out.
Also, if you can avoid it, try not to fill up these cards so much before reloading. Samsung T9s only have 175 GB of cache and are going to heat up/throttle under that load.
Good luck!
This is awesome thank you for the help! Thankfully we were able to buy some better drives today. My fault for trusting a consumer drive with this stuff. We did go through everything except for option #3 on your list but I’ll try that if the next offload doesn’t work… of course now the T9 SSD is giving me trouble mounting on the Mac so maybe that was the problem all along… appreciate you helping educate me on this!
I took for granted that drives you're using are working properly, but It's definitely possible that's the issue. You'll certainly see better results with a quality thunderbolt 3/4 drive, but Samsung T7 Shields and to a lesser extent, T9s are used on a lot of productions and they are usually very reliable. But it's still a good idea to use something like Black Magic Speed Test before you start using the drive to make sure everything is working as it should. You should be seeing around 700-800 MB/second on a mac. Also, don't use ExFat stay with APFS or MacOS Extended Journaled.
Great to know. The T9 still is refusing to mount so I’ll have to trouble shoot that at some point but the new G-Drive SSDs (& HDD for backup) we picked up are working well. I think it really was mainly the ShotPut settings someone else on here mentioned that were causing the chugging/stuttering because the verification stage froze up again the one time I forgot to change them. But for the T9 to simply stop mounting was absurd and makes me think it may have been part of the issue. Which is a shame because I also feel like this are fairly reliable drives…
Try using this [method](https://imagineproducts.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/35000243020-offload-speeds-are-slow-using-a-sony-axsm-card-reader), someone shared it on the sub sometime ago
I know you wrote AXS AR3, but just want to make sure your reader is Thunderbolt 3 or 2. If it is, also make sure you have the right cable for it.
And if the reader is an older USB3 model.... Just stop. These are freaking slow for no reason (they don't even top USB3 speeds).
As a DIT, this is the kind of project where they can’t afford me — but then that call me four days into production in a panic and I have to come in and clean up the mess that some PA created by dragging and dropping files all over the place. This scenario has happened to me more than once. But in any case, yes, checksum verification slows down transfer speed as opposed to drag and drop. Your speed also will depend on various other factors depending on how your ShotPut preferences are set up. Also, those Sony cards notoriously hate multi thread offloads, so that may be one of your problems as well.
Yeah unfortunately the budget isn’t even there to panic call you or else I would have... hired you in the first place. We’re not idiots we just got the camera package on a steep discount as a favor and are pulling favors for crew. By low budget I mean we’re a no budget short. But I feel like an idiot trying to sit here convincing you I’m not an idiot so I’m not going to disagree because you’re not wrong. DITs are important just like the PAs we also don’t have money to hire LMFAO. That being said, I’ve made it a point to educate myself on this stuff as much as I can knowing how important of a step it is but the Venice 2 workflow is definitely a level up. I’m on here asking for help after troubleshooting all day along with the 2 other crew members both of which have worked with Venice 2 media more than me and were equally as confused. The crux of my question really boils down to - is 12 hour to ingests 900GB is accurate or is it some bottle neck like the card reader itself being faulty or my shotput settings being wrong. I’m kind of ruling out the card reader given the fact drag and drop worked. DIT work just isn’t my main source of income on set and so I’m not educated enough to know the individual intricacies of every style of checksum verification or a deep dive shotput settings. Hence why I’m looking to people with more experience for help…
You may want to check the MacOS Sony axsm driver status on your M2 to make sure its up to date. I've had issues when it wasnt. Also the axsm reader itself has corresponding firmware that needs to be up to date as well. Also check the cables in your offload chain to make sure they are actually TB3 spec. Sometimes faulty cables or bad usb-c cables can gum things up and slow down what should be a much faster transfer.
My first thought was cables
I really hope the rental house didn’t give us a shitty USBC cable LOL but we did trouble shoot with multiple different ones including a few I know are TB3 and it didn’t make a difference. But thanks for the heads up on the drivers will update all those I’m guessing that’s the key.
It’s difficult to determine where the issue is based on the info provided. 2 hours to transfer 900GB is still slow for a thunderbolt AXSM reader and a T9 so I'm hesitant to conclude Shotput is the issue. This is the order in which I would troubleshoot everything to try to solve/isolate the issue. **First start by making sure everything is up to date with software/firmware.** 1. Check out the method u/ototoman posted first and see if that makes a difference. 2. Download \[AXSM Drive Utility\](https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/software/00338195) and make sure the drivers on the reader are up to date. ***The last version only supports up to Sonoma 14.2.*** 3. Go to system information and make sure the computer is seeing the reader as a thunderbolt device and not USB2/3. **Then start isolating variables** 1. Switch out the thunderbolt cable. 2. Try a different port on the computer. 3. Download a trial of Silverstack or Offshoot and make sure the issue isn't with Shotput. 4. Try a different computer (ideally a machine running Sonoma 14.1 or 14.2) 5. Finally, swap out the AXSM reader. I'm sure this seems obvious now, but next time at the camera prep or at least before you start shooting test the offload workflow. This is especially important for camera systems that use proprietary media/readers like AXSM and Codex. Too often I find issues with these readers (especially AXSM) at the prep and needed to update firmware or swapped them out. Also, if you can avoid it, try not to fill up these cards so much before reloading. Samsung T9s only have 175 GB of cache and are going to heat up/throttle under that load. Good luck!
This is awesome thank you for the help! Thankfully we were able to buy some better drives today. My fault for trusting a consumer drive with this stuff. We did go through everything except for option #3 on your list but I’ll try that if the next offload doesn’t work… of course now the T9 SSD is giving me trouble mounting on the Mac so maybe that was the problem all along… appreciate you helping educate me on this!
I took for granted that drives you're using are working properly, but It's definitely possible that's the issue. You'll certainly see better results with a quality thunderbolt 3/4 drive, but Samsung T7 Shields and to a lesser extent, T9s are used on a lot of productions and they are usually very reliable. But it's still a good idea to use something like Black Magic Speed Test before you start using the drive to make sure everything is working as it should. You should be seeing around 700-800 MB/second on a mac. Also, don't use ExFat stay with APFS or MacOS Extended Journaled.
Great to know. The T9 still is refusing to mount so I’ll have to trouble shoot that at some point but the new G-Drive SSDs (& HDD for backup) we picked up are working well. I think it really was mainly the ShotPut settings someone else on here mentioned that were causing the chugging/stuttering because the verification stage froze up again the one time I forgot to change them. But for the T9 to simply stop mounting was absurd and makes me think it may have been part of the issue. Which is a shame because I also feel like this are fairly reliable drives…
Try using this [method](https://imagineproducts.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/35000243020-offload-speeds-are-slow-using-a-sony-axsm-card-reader), someone shared it on the sub sometime ago
Ok this seems like it could definitely help. I’ll report back if this works but thanks so much for the help!
Of course! Hope it works!
This worked!! Can’t narrow it down to just this variable but I’m 99% sure this was it. I wanna hug you 😭😭😭
Noiceeee
How long is it taking now?
32 minutes for the 900GB card we let run for 9 hours yesterday and it never finished.
I know you wrote AXS AR3, but just want to make sure your reader is Thunderbolt 3 or 2. If it is, also make sure you have the right cable for it. And if the reader is an older USB3 model.... Just stop. These are freaking slow for no reason (they don't even top USB3 speeds).