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Should I buy the Kona? Please help!
Hi there evryone in Cow Land.
My name is Ricky a Final Cut Pro editor/sound man/ 2D animator.
I need advice, input and your general thoughts and experiences on the Aja products Kona Cards & I/O interface.I’m one of the many editors out there that got left in the dirt after Avid bought out Pinnacle Systems Cinewave. Now its time to update and I’m considering one of the AJA products. Now that’s the problem, Which one do I get? KONA 3, KONA LH or Io?
From the research that I’ve done they all seem like great products on paper. I’ve never seen them in action.
1st off here is my current set up: Mac G5 Dual 2.5GHZ, 2.8 TB X Serve Raid, Final Cut Pro 4.5 HD, After FX 6.5, Motion, Pro Tools with Cinewave 4.6 Pro Digital SDI & Analog Breakout Box. All the footage I capture comes in via digital beta or Beta Sp tapes being played back from the Digi beta deck I also capture from the Sony DSR 1500A deck.
One editor friend of mine says to get the Io he says quick easy & painless. But with Io I believe I cant preview my after FX comp. preview on my NTSC Broadcast Monitor outputs. I’m I right about that? Now an Enginer friend of mine says go with the Kona cards because the card does the procesing job unlike the Io wich he says the Mac will be doing the procesing.
Now with the Kona Cards.
I know Kona 3 does not do analog video, but I guess I wont have problems digitizing my Beta Sp tapes as long its being feed thru my digi beta. Right? When it comes to output If I need to go directly to a beta sp deck, can I do that via the component video out of the K3 Box. Right?. Is this what the downconverting is all about?
The reason i’m considering the Kona 3 is because there is talk in the Future of doing HD work in my company. Where not there yet but will get there.
Question what is the diference between – PCI X bus interface of Kona VS. PCIe of the Kona 3?
Well before this post gets longer that it already is any & I mean any input is greatly apreciated. If it rocks let me know, if you think they suck let me know.
Thanks
Ricky Gomez -
8 Replies
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I made the switch from CineWave to the Kona 2 and it was a very painless and very rewarding switch.
Kona 2 vs. Kona 3 just depends on what machine you’re running. PCI-X then it’s the Kona 2. PCI-e and it’s the Kona 3. I’m still running K2’s but will switch to K3’s as soon as the Intel boxes are released.
To handle any Analog I/O just pick up the Io LA. I have one of those here and it just moves to whichever suite needs the analog input. It works hand in hand with the K2’s.
If you’re switching from CineWave, Kona is definitely the way to go and I personally like having the SD to HD Upconvert which is only available on the K2 / K3 and not on the LH. I use it quite a bit and it’s just a great thing to have.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Ricky,
Yes I want you to know that they suck well actually the other guys do not AJA. AJA’s tech support has set an example of customer service that cannot nor will ever be matched by the big guys like Sony etc.
So if that sucks I guess AJA rules.
Tony Salgado
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Thanks 4 your input guys.
Walter, that means I would need to get one of the K Cards plus additionaly an IoLa to capture analog?
The only analog I really work with is beta Sp tapes. Can’t I just digitize that comming in SDI signal with the K2 or K3 playing the SP beta from my digi beta deck wich handles both tapes. And forget about getting the IoLA. (I’m on a strict budget) Also if I need to output directly to a beta sp deck from FCP can I do that via the component video out of the K2 or K3 Box?
Thanks Agian
Ricky Gomez -
Don’t forget the Kona LH. The Kona LH has analog and digital inputs in both SD and HD. The only thing the Kona LH does not get you is upconversion. It does have downconversion. If you need an SD only card, you can get yourself a Kona LS.
So, Kona 2/3 will get you hardware upconverion and downconversion. SD/HD Digital input, and SD/HD analog/digital output.
Kona LH or LHe will get you hardware downconversion only. SD/HD, analog/digital, input/output.
Kona LS or LSe will get you SD only, digital/analog, input/output.
AJA io will get you the same as a Kona LS, except it’s not a PCI card, it’s a stand alone box tethered to your computer by a firewire cable, very handy if you need to move it around or take it on the road with you with a Powerbook.
The AJA io LA will get you analog SD in/out only. It’s operates with the same firewire based system.
Hope this helps.
Jeremy
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We just bought a Kona 3 largely based information Walter and others have posted here. We’re very happy with this card and extremely appreciative of the advice we got from this forum. Which ever card you get, make sure that you get the breakout box (KBox) for it, they are worth their price in gold to get rid of what would be an unmanageable rats nest of cables. Go to the Kona site and click on the small KBox images for both cards and you can see all of the connectors for yourself. Those marked SDI can do either SD or HD depending on software as can the component in/outs.
To bring analog into our setup we do exactly what you are proposing, running component video and analog audio into a deck with SDI and AES/EBU connections which we then run to the KBox for the Kona 3. it works fine. Like Jeremy said the LH does everything but upconvert and is about $1000 less. The main difference is if you need more that 2 channels of AES/EBU, the LH has only 2, the Kona 3 has 8. The LH will bring in 8 channels of embedded audio in the SDI/HDSDI signal if your decks support it.
Personally, I’m not quite satisfied with the upconversion done by the Kona 3. Take this all with a grain of salt as I’m no expert on upconversion and we are still trying to figure out how to upconvert our SD stock footage. Anyway, a different option would be to save the extra $1000 and put it toward a Terranex mini upconverter, which has been discussed on this forum too.
I would also add that the Kona software for running these cards is very, very nice. We came over to the Mac from a PC and were able to figure everything out in about 15-20 minutes playing with the very nice visual interface. There are a number of combinations and a few different places to change things, but it’s very intuitive and you don’t even have to look at the documentation. Really nice job.
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Everybody thanks for your help. Greatly apreciated. I’m still a little
confused about the PCI-X=K2 & PCI-e = Kona 3. How do I know wich one
Goes with my Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5GHZ? And if the K2 is the one for my
Mac will it become absolete when the Intel boxes come along and then
have to upgrade again to K3 if I get a new machine?Thanks again
Ricky -
You do not have a dual core machine, correct? If you do then you need PCIe, if you don’t then you need PCI-X. If you are planning to upgrade to a Intel box when they come out, I would suggest going with the AJA io as it is platform independent. It runs with a firewire connection and therefore does not care whether or not you have a PCIe or PCI-X machine. If you need to upgrade to HD in the near future, you can then buy the appropriate KONA card at that time. Most likely, the intel macs will have a PCIe infrastructure so you would need the Kona 3 or LHe, but if you got a Kona now, you would need a Kona 2 or a Kona LH. Make sense?
Jeremy
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I forget to add that you can preview out of AE with the io. The only real humdinger is the sound is a bit off sync since the video is output, but not the audio. The audio is run out of your G5. Supposedly that can be fixed by running the light pipe out of your G5 into the io, but I haven’t tried at as it doesn’t bother me.
Jeremy
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