AJA IO HD ProRes G5 or Intel

[Mark Beazley]

This is quite disappointing news. I really find it hard to believe Apple can’t get a G5 able to handle the ProRes 422 format, using a IoHD. If a MacBook Pro (2.33 Core 2), which by all measures is basically as fast as a dual 2Ghz G5, what gives? I have both, and the G5 is actually faster at most things video wise.

I understand progress, but this looks to be like shooting one’s self in the foot. If the IoHD handles the codec encode/decode in hardware, a fairly low end machine should be able to shove the footage back and forth provided it has the disk i/o.

If Apple is somehow scanning the machine config (like how it scans for RT Extreme) and forcing the codec not to work on G5 machines I am going to be very pissed. This is almost what it sounds like.

-mark

[Szumlins]

The ioHD WILL likely allow you to use a G5 for ProRes. The tipping point is for realtime capture which is far more processor intensive than playback. The idea is that the Kona cards are going to be limited to MacPros and newer for ProRes422 ingest, but the ioHD will bring ProRes to legacy systems.

So for all intents and purposes, you have it right, the ioHD will be the ONLY device that will enable legacy hardware to work with ProRes422 on output as well as ingest.

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-Mike

[Garth Annetts]

Assuming that the iOHD does work with the G5 and that the G5 three ports are all on the same FireWire bus – would one be able to use the 800 port for the iOHD and still use the other three for external storage drives, Sony HVR-M15 etc or would one need to another Firewire card to support those?

[Mark Beazley]

Even with the IoLA, you need (or should) use an PCI-X Firewire card for your storage, as the IoLA takes over the internal FW bus as well. It really isn’t a problem until you start doing uncompressed 8bit and 10bit SD; which ProRes 422 data rates easily match.

Given the IoHD can encode and decode in hardware; I don’t see why the host machine needs to be *that* powerful; although you’ll likely want a powerful machine anyway. I don’t see why any dual G5 2Ghz or better should have a problem with this.

H.264 takes a lot of processing power to decode, and Apple always had the requirements a lot more steep for x86 machines; granted they did not have the new Core chips out yet, but it still seems fishy regarding ProRes, which actually should be easier to encode and decode since it is a I-frame full raster format.

If a laptop can do it (which has slower memory, a slower FSB, etc etc), then I see no reason why the G5 machines would have problems.

-mark

[Gary Adcock]

[Garth Annetts] “Assuming that the iOHD does work with the G5 and that the G5 three ports are all on the same FireWire bus – would one be able to use the 800 port for the iOHD and still use the other three for external storage drives, Sony HVR-M15 etc or would one need to another Firewire card to support those?”

The IoHD is the only device that will allow the older machines to CAPTURE into prores.

Never use more than one device on a FW Bus when working in HD, and with best practices you should not do it with SD materials either.

Devices working over FW at this level need EVERY SINGLE “BIT” AVAILABLE on the Bus, geez it is 10bit full raster HD from the IoHD, at what looks to be about the same data rate as uncompressed SD content was. WE are not talking about 5 or 10 megs as second, for ProRes we are talking more in the 20-30 mgs a second for the bandwidth.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Mark Beazley]

Yeah I understand that.

So the consensus is that the IoHD is going to allow G5 machines to capture ProRes 422?

If the answer is yes, then I am not going to worry much, since the IoHD makes a whole lot more sense than a Kona card. At least the IoHD will continue to work on future machines until they faze FW800 out.

Sorry if I sound a bit jaded, as I imagine there are tons of G5 owners salivating over the release of AJA’s new product.

-mark

[John Ryan]

The kona 3 allows us to capture full 1 hour tapes into our G5 using Kona ProRes. It works great and looks great.

John

[Gary Adcock]

[john] “The kona 3 allows us to capture full 1 hour tapes into our G5 using Kona ProRes. It works great and looks great”

John we are assuming that you mean SD, it has been well documented that you cannot capture HD into prores on anything other than an intel machine.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[John Ryan]

No Not SD but HD 23.98 1080p.

We have been capturing full 40 – 50 min tapes all week for a Sony HD show and it is working great. We are using a G5 Quad last version with a Kona 3 card and are using the KONA PRORES 23.98 1080P easy setup that came with the latest 4.0 Kona drivers that are needed for FCPS2.

We are capturing directly to 500gb Que drives through FW800. A 45 min HDCAM tape is taking aprox 40gb of space. And it looks amazing. It blows away our last workflow of capturing to DVCPro HD and takes about the same space.

I think the Kona card is doing the heavy lifting with the ProRes.

John
E3

[Rene Borroto]

Hi eyad.hh:

I’m not sure what you mean by: “Right now QA Engineering is testing the Io HD on Mac Pro G5 computers only.” A Mac Pro uses the Intel processor, the G5 uses the G5 processor(s). It’s one or the other.