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can anyone advise how best to upgrade our suite?
Hi,
We are looking to upgrade our currently basic G5/FCP edit suite. Our needs are thus… We work primarily in SD but are shooting on the HVX’s so will increasingly be looking to work with DVCPRO HD. We are unhappy with our dubbing agency and would rather rent a deck and do out own dubs so need to be able to output to beta SP and digibeta decks. Thirdly, I need the ability to monitor our work in the best quality possible on a panasonic hd monitor. Finally, we are starting to get edit jobs captured in HDV and need to get ourselves set up for capturing and outputting HDV in the best way.
I have been looking at the blackmagic and Kona cards but in all honesty I cannot get my head around which does what we need and which is the best quality. I realise these are quite big questions and any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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5 Replies
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We own a few BlackMagic cards and they do what you need and display excellent quality on our JVC 1710 tube. Those who own an AJA product will probably tell you the same. AJA claims higher quality, but I had difficulties really seeing that when we compared before buying.
Are you working in a 60 or 50 Hz area? Some things are not (yet?) fully supported in 720p for 25/50.
The advantage of Blackmagic cards: You can port them to a PC if needed (if it has the same card slots). AJA products are different on the PC side, AFAIK.
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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First off, you should be planning to upgrade your computer too. If you purchase a PCI-X card for your G5 today, it will not work in a Mac Pro when you change out the machine. So you’ll need to purchase a video card all over again. Best to purchase a new machine and get a video card that will have you set for the next two years or so.
Next, do you think you’ll ever need to up-convert SD to HD and/or cross-convert 720p material to 1080i or vice versa. I find myself doing this quite often either ingesting / editing in a 720p timeline, then mastering out to 1080i in realtime or converting 720p material to 1080i in realtime during ingest to cut with other 1080i material. I ask because the only two products I would recommend are the AJA Kona LHe and the AJA Kona 3 (both for PCIe machines).
The LHe gives you both digital and analog I/O to the card. So if you have an analog deck or an HDV deck you can run the component output directly to the LHe for capture along with SDI sources. The LHe offers down-convert of HD to SD in realtime, but no up-convert or cross-convert. The PCI-X equivalent for your current G5 is the LH.
The Kona 3 gives you digital inputs and some analog outputs. If you have an analog deck or an HDV deck, you will need something like the AJA HD10AVA converter to convert a component signal to SDI with embedded audio to feed the Kona 3. But you gain SD to HD UpConvert and 720 to 1080i Cross convert in realtime with this card. Again, both have been invaluable to us we have been expanding our HD Post work over the past two years. The Kona 3 allows us to do pretty much anything when it comes to editing in HD and bringing in multiple formats. The PCI-X equivalent for your G5 is the Kona 2, though it does not have cross-convert.
As for HDV editing, we convert all HDV material to DVCPro HD during capture through the Kona 3 as it’s a much better format to edit in. We then master directly either to our AJ-HD1200A deck in DVCPro HD or to HDCAM.
The last thing you get with AJA is the best support team in the business. AJA’s products are used in major live television events such as the World Series and SuperBowl so the products are built to last and are extremely reliable. You pay more for the AJA boards, but this is a case where you really get what you pay for. We tested multiple products when we switched from our Pinnacle CineWave a few years ago and are now running three AJA Kona suites and we also have an AJA Io LA for analog capture.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Thanks Walter and Uli,
I’m obviously going to have to look at the cards and try to get a demo to decide which is right for our needs. Your advice is much appreciated. The G5 quad is almost new and so wont be going anywhere for a while, we will have to make it pay for itself before we upgrade.
Upconverting and crossconverting could be useful but perhaps further down the line more so than now. Perhaps we will look at that facility for our next suite.
Thanks again.
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[walter biscardi] “The Kona 3 gives you digital inputs and some analog outputs. If you have an analog deck or an HDV deck, you will need something like the AJA HD10AVA converter to convert a component signal to SDI with embedded audio to feed the Kona 3.”
Walter, if you have and IO (the full or standard version) can you take analog in and then go out SDI to the Kona card? If so, this would be a valid option for SD–yes?
Thanks,
Robert
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[Robert Broussard] “Walter, if you have and IO (the full or standard version) can you take analog in and then go out SDI to the Kona card? If so, this would be a valid option for SD–yes?”
You don’t need to do this. Just capture straight via the Io. The Io and Kona work together so you can capture / output to / from either on the same system. We own an Io LA to bring in analog inputs when necessary. I simply switch to an Io LA Easy Setup and capture.
Consequently, I can capture via the Kona but playback via the Io LA in SD.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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