AJA Kona 3 – Mac Pro – PAL Land

[Rpfloyd]

Try capturing and playing back at 8-bit. Does the problem still persist?

[Bob Zelin]

Rory –
you are going to do this test, or I will kill you.

Your Kona has analog Y Pb Pr outputs. Take the Y output of your Kona, and stick it into a TV monitor. It can be a consumer TV you have at home, it can be a security monitor you have for your office. Tell the AJA Kona Control Panel in the Control Tab to DOWNCONVERT to NTSC (composite or component – I don’t care – if it’s component, you will get a nice B+W signal, which is fine for this test.). Make sure that in the FORMAT tab, you have selected 625, and not 1080i.

OK, playback your video. We are now BYPASSING the Blackmagic HDLink. You are watching your video without the HD Link.
Do you see the “sparklies”, or is it clean ?

(in all these tests, we never bypassed the HDLink).

Bob Zelin

[Tom Sojer]

I’m working all the time with Aja Kona3 HD 1080 50i and there’s not a single problem.
I’m 99% sure that’s your problem is HDLink.
Try to rent some monitor with HDSDI input and you’ll get the answer.

Sorry, my english is bad 🙁

[Simon Blackledge]

Rory, Didn’t you say over on redusr that you unhooked everything and just fed sdi into the deck, no HDLINK and it still dropped? :-/

Bob sounds like a man who wants to find the answer 😉

S

[Rory Hinds]

My GEN10 arrived this morning and I’ve replaced my old Black&Burst.
I also ordered the K3 breakout box which should hopefully help matters.

Okay I’ve just connected the HD Analog from the Kona3 to my 34″ LCD TV and it doesn’t show any Sparkles.

I’m now watching the HDLink and the LCD TV and the HDLink is dropping and sparkling like mad while the Analog LCD TV is fine…

So this must mean I have a faulty HDLink… surely!!!

Well its the only thing I have not replaced… will sort this out now.

I was so convinced it was not the HDlink as when I feed it a signal from the VRT it was fine.
I’ll be so happy to find out it is the HDLink and I can have my life back 🙂

Rory Hinds
mine
http://www.minefilms.com

[Bob Zelin]

Rory – your problem is solved, and you have your life back right now. You have taken the AJA Kona analog HD output and put it into your 34″ LCD TV, and there is no problem.

You have already purchased the Blackmagic HD Pro, which you can now return. You now have extra money. This is what I suggest now, now that everything is working –

1) do nothing, and keep using the 34″ LCD TV via analog HD and the Kona analog HD output.
2) buy an AJA HDP, which is AJA’s version of the Blackmagic HD-Link
3) buy a Dell 2407WFP for $600 US, that has analog HD inputs. This will make a fine cheap HD monitor with analog component HD inputs.

You have no more problems – problem solved.

Bob Zelin

[Rory Hinds]

Thanks Bob

I’ve returned the HDLink and will have a replacement on Monday/Tuesday.

Hopefully it will just work or I’ll have to purchase a AJA version.

Will let you know once the new HDLink is back and the problem is gone.

Many thanks
Rory

Rory Hinds
mine
http://www.minefilms.com

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’m in PAL land too and I’ve seen sparkles and drops.

But I don’t use a Kona3 not yet. I’m glad your problem is solved by by-passing the HD-link. But I don’t think its your HD-link. Nor is it anything to do with ref. Though I’m glad all this made you get one, which is really what you should have always had.

Also, you should have tried all this with an NTSC project and an NTSC movie before surmising the ‘only-PAL’ thing.

Anyway, I’ve seen sparkles and drops in plenty of LCDs (never on CRTs) connected via DVI-D. Its a DVI-D thing. It happens with…

1. bad cables of short length.
2. average cables but of long length.
3. bad cables of long length.
4. bad connectors on LCDs.

And I’ve seen this problem on LCDs connected to…
FCP
Avid Media Composer
Discreet smoke/flame (linux and Irix)
Quantel eQ/iQ

I’ve even seen an issue where we saw sparkles only when working on a movie in Shake but that same movie lookes fine in QT player outside Shake.

It almost always goes away with either cable change, LCD change, length change, and in our case, extender change.

I saw this post only now else I’d have warned you to focus on the LCD and things near it first before changing your MacPro, Kona3, maybe even your house and car if Bob hadn’t come along.

Incidentally I work in a facility with almost a hundred Macs – FCP, Avid, Shake, PixelFarm…like quantity of PCs – Avid, 3DsMax, smoke, flame, lustre, Quantel eQ, iQ. And I’ve seen a ton of sparkles. Happens all the time.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.