-
Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card??
I just wanted to get some advice. I’m looking to purchase an HD capture card and I wanted to know people’s thoughts on the Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme versus the Aja Kona card. I know a lot of people use the Kona card but I was on Blackmagic’s website last night looking at the Decklink HD Extreme card and it looks pretty sweet and the price is really amazing!
Any who…any advice??
Thanks in advance!
bE
-
21 Replies
-
AJA Kona. Broadcast centric company. Better quality output. Better conversions.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
-
I know a lot of people have their own stories and opinions about this stuff. For me its simple: I have a list of bad experiences with Decklink and, so far, I’ve never been let down by AJA.
So its an easy choice for me – I’d recommend the Kona. -
[RIchard Trier] “I know a lot of people have their own stories and opinions about this stuff. For me its simple: I have a list of bad experiences with Decklink and, so far, I’ve never been let down by AJA.
So its an easy choice for me – I’d recommend the Kona.”My experience is the opposite.
I have 2 AJA IO’s and 3 MultiBridge Extreme’s conneted to a 16TB via Fiber optics.The AJA’s would drop frames on capture while the BlackMagic’s capture just fine. Spent a year and a half trying to trouble shoot this.
My engineers kept saying it was this or that, finally I just switched them for a week and watched the results.Needless to say as I type this we are pulling out the 2 AJA’s and replacing them with BlackMagic’s.
Just my opinion.
Steve Cohen
Editor
O2 Media Inc. -
Sorry you’re having so much trouble, Steve. I have been through aja io, Kona 2, Kona 3X, Kona 3 and ioHD. I have never had any serious issues that weren’t operator error and the one time I did have to swap a board it was handled in a very timely and professional manner. AJA is very timely with helpful responses when you pick up the phone and call them. They are all very nice folks who care about us end users. Back in my Blackmagic days the problems were numerous and every driver update seemed to break something else. I am not trying to start a flame war, but I do call it like I see it.
As far as dropping frames, that is most likely a config issue for whatever that’s worth. What were you trying to do?
Benjamin, what are you planning on using your Kona for and what formats do you work in? The Kona does some very important things that the Blackmagic does not, 720p24 hardware downconversion being one of them.
Jeremy
-
Jeremy;
I know AJA has great support and I really don;t have a problem with AJA, but Benjamin was asking for opinions, so I gave mine.
I actually just got a call from someone who is the AJA distributor for Florida and he was asking to come down and troubleshoot the issue with AJA.
I don;t think it is a config issue with the AJA because all we are doing is capturing 8 bit uncompressed or DV quality video to a 16TB San connected by a 4GB Fiber connection.
We have 6 raids and only have problems digitizing to Raids 1 and 2, we can digitize to raids 3, 4, 5 & 6 with no problem.
It will happen with video coming thru the AJA or coming from the firewire connection of the Mini DV.
Believe me we have gone thru everything possible including backing up all of the media and projects, reformatting the 2 raids and re-digitizing new footage and starting projects from scratch.
Any thing you can think of is a welcome suggestion.
Steve Cohen
Editor
O2 Media Inc. -
Benjamin –
I have 2 Decklink HD cards, one 4 years old, the other 3. Never had any porblems with either, quality is excellent. Many people prefer the Kona cards, citing quality and tech support, I’m not qualified to compare the 2, just giving my experience with Blackmagic.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
The Decklink Extreme takes two slots if you use the HDMI component, kinda retarded. To the point though, I liked my Decklink card just fine but I like my Kona LH way more. There tech support is superb.
Have a wonderful day.
-
[Steve Cohen] “We have 6 raids and only have problems digitizing to Raids 1 and 2, we can digitize to raids 3, 4, 5 & 6 with no problem.”
Hmm. At first, I’d suspect that it’d be related to your SAN. What are you using software wise on your SAN?
Also, if you capture to another drive that’s not your SAN, does it drop frames then?
Jeremy
-
The San is a Rourke Data San with FibreJet for the software.
No it is fine on any other drive. The internal HD, a G-Raid, or any of the other Raids. it only has problems on Raid 1 and 2.
Yes it probably is a SAN issue.
All the raids were installed at the same time, using the same controllers, switches and everything is identical on all 6 raids.
Raids 1 and 2 are on 1 box. Raid 3 and 4 are on a second and raids 5 & 6 are on a third, but we will only drop frames on Raids 1 and 2 nothing else.
My point the AJA and the BlackMagic is that it will drop frames with the AJA IO (a Firewire device) and the Mini DV (another firewire device) both are on seperate busses. We installed a Firewire card for the Mini DV and the AJA is on the compute Buss.
STRANGE.
Steve Cohen
Editor
O2 Media Inc. -
[Steve Cohen] “Any thing you can think of is a welcome suggestion. “
With Io’s and IoHD’s, the first question I ask is what else do you have connected to the system via Firewire? More than anything, any other device connected via Firewire can cause issues with the Io and Io HD’s.
That’s one of the main reason we run with the Kona’s as we use a lot of various Firewire drives for various projects.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up