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Aurora Capture/Work With Kona 3
Hello all,
Its probably ackowledged that there is some slight advantage in picture quality using Aurora Codec over both BMD and Kona whilst capturing pictures in HD. In our case that would be from Varicam.
Soon we will migrate from our current G5 towers to the Intel ones when they come out and the choice of card in our post facilities MIGHT be Kona 3 with K Box.
Is the Aurora Codec seen by Kona 3 drivers/setup?
I could use my old G5 with a cheapo Aurora capture card ( discarded when Aurora moves to Intel ) as an on set/Studio capture solution. We really like the pictures straight to drives from the 10 bit spigot on the Varicam.
I am hearing good things about more RT etc with the Kona 3 but thats too much money tied up in on set/studio capture.
SO over to you guys, trying to harness the best out of old Kit.
Tim Maloney
Axis Films Australia
ti*@***********om.au -
5 Replies
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[Tim Maloney] “Its probably ackowledged that there is some slight advantage in picture quality using Aurora Codec over both BMD and Kona whilst capturing pictures in HD. In our case that would be from Varicam.”
Not sure on that one. I know that one client recently asked to know our entire workflow from top to bottom because of all the HD work they’re receiving, ours is far and away the best looking HD. It’s all Varicam material and right now we’re CC’ing it all using FCP’s own color correction tools. We’re about to switch over to Final Touch HD for all our CC.
I used to use the old Aurora PipePro and it was a great card, but I can’t really see any drop off in quality with Kona 2. We run two K2’s and the image quality is simply outstanding.
As to whether or not it can read the Aurora material, it might if you have the Aurora codecs installed, though I’m not entire sure. I never ran any Aurora material with the K2 when I still had the product.
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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There is little or no decernable difference between the Apple, Kona, BMD and Aurora Codecs when it comes to 10-bit uncompressed. I recently considered running the Aurora codecs in the KONA 2 system, but I decided to stick with the KONA easy setups.
David
Peace and Love 🙂
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Thanks Walter and David,
Got your views about the Kona 3 which is great.
Can I ( like the old days with Cinewave ) mount the Aurora drivers on the Kona 3 machine and use footage captured on an Aurora card.
Thanks
Tim Maloney
Axis Films Australia
tim@axisfilms.com.au -
I would do a test first. I think that the K2 will see the footage as uncompressed because it is basically so similar to the Apple codec that i would be hard pressed to think that it won’t see it.
I can do a test at the office tomorrow because I run both systems.
Also. If you are planning to run 10 bit UC on the KONA then you might want to take a look at the Sheer video codec. 10-bit in HD has no real time at all and by running sheer you will only be using about a third of the normal uncompressed.
I am testing this workflow and plan an upcoming article on using the Sheer Codecs as the staple for 10 bit uncompressed HD. You can capture with this codec, it is uncompressed but the algorythm results in about one third the file size.
So, let’s say you do 10 bit UC project, then you need to render all of that stuff too. so it doubles your disk space needs. It matters when dealing with the large file sizes required in HD.
Stay tuned
David
Peace and Love 🙂
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Thanks David will watch out for the news.
Tim
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