Decklink HD Extreme vs AJA Kona 3

[Chris Poisson]

You really should just read the specs on each carefully, I see the Decklink card as capable of cross conversion of HD formats, while I believe the Kona can do full blown upconversion. Don’t know if you need that, but Blackmagic make great products, I’ve owned both, and I prefer AJA products. The support is unbelievable. Plus, the HDMI scheme on the BM card is ridiculous, takes up an extra slot FCOL.

Have a wonderful day.

[Herb Sevush]

Greg –

You want cheaper AND better? How abuot cheaper and it does a good job as what it does. The Kona3 has more features – in this case you get what you pay for – you just have to figure out what it is you need.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Lu Nelson]

From what I’ve read, editors seem to also like the AJA boards better because they have a faster response time. Blackmagic has a 4 frame response lag that is very annoying during editing, when you are shuttling around — although it must be said that most cards have *some* lag.

Also Blackmagic has a history of unfortunate long-standing software issues, like when certain cards would cause systems with more than 2GB of RAM to crash, or the persistent system slow-down that happened with the Decklink Extreme (you can search this on the BM forum), and these took many months, even more than a year to be resolved, and were rarely properly acknowledged or documented.

Lu Nelson
Berlin, Germany

[Walter Biscardi]

First do a search on this forum for Kona 3 and for Decklink. There have been a ton of questions just like this in the past.

I tested BlackMagic products in the past and they simply didn’t deliver. We own three Kona 3’s and an Io LA. They cost more, but they work and they work as promised.

Not sure on the Decklink, but the Kona boards can also be set up as a stand alone converter to work independently of the computer. this is an awesome feature when you want to make dubs or do some sort of deck to deck or deck to DVD recorder transfer.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Gary Adcock]

greg

the big differences depend on your workflow, at IBC for AJA, I had maybe 25 people come up and ask about switching to Kona 3’s due to limited functionality for DPX, 444, and RED workflows when working with the Decklink cards.

Mainly due to the Kona’s handling all conversions in hardware as opposed to BMD’s use of CPU power for the many of those same conversions, but I was really surprised how many people were willing to tear apart their systems to put Kona’s in them so they would work.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Inside look at the IoHD

[Greg Verspohl]

Thank you all for the info.

–Greg

[John Magin]

Personally and professionally, I skew towards Aja. Primarily it’s their ease of use, intuitive control panels ( you can see when a signal is active, upconverting, etc) Their driver development s on-point and their tech support has been a boon to me when I have been on site. I have yet to RMA-check an AJA card. I have done 3 for Blackmagic within the past year.
I think BMD is good, but Aja is better, fwiw.
Go for the LHe if you’re not planning Dual link/massive rez projects.

[Jason Porthouse]

Just to redress the balance a little – I have a Multibridge Pro 2 from BM and it’s so far been great. I’m not sure where Lu got his info on the lag from – I certainly haven’t experienced it from any BM products and I wouldn’t tolerate it if it did. It’s a very snappy editing experience in SD and HD. IQ is excellent too.

I’m not a BM fanboy, I just happen to think their products offer good value and (so far) good reliability. I like AJA too – for me it came down to cost. I’m happy with my decision, and I think you’d be happy with either – as long as they fulfil your needs.

Jason

_________________________________

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[Mark Raudonis]

[walter biscardi] “the Kona boards can also be set up as a stand alone converter to work independently of the computer. this is an awesome feature when you want to make dubs or do some sort of deck to deck or deck to DVD recorder transfer.”

This feature recently saved us twenty THOUSAND dollars!

The comparable “conversion” board set for a SONY HDCAMsr deck is around $10k. Two decks? $20K.

We had to convert from 23.97 (on tape) to 29.97(on DVD) and just used the Kona 3 as a stand alone converter. In my mind, this feature alone justifies the cost of the Kona 3.

I agree with everyone else on feature set, company service, and reliability.

mark

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I would agree with Jason. At our post facility in we have 3 BM HD Pro cards working about 12-16 hours a day in FCP systems since Jan 2005. We had HDPlus cards which BM swapped out for free when we had some issues with genlock.

We also have BM Extreme and HD Extreme cards, MBridge Pros, BM HDLinks, about 15 BM products in operation here.

Check in your area who’s support is better. That might be a deal-breaker.

There have been opinions expressed about why AJA is better quality than BM – AJA are more expensive – but ask to see a comparison that proves this in a quantitative and repeatable way.

BM cards and converters are not cheap, but they cost less than AJA. But they deliver what they are supposed to. Their up/down conversions aren’t too good, though, and maybe AJA’s are better in this respect. If this feature matters to you, check for a side by side to take a fair decision.

And yes, I haven’t come across the ‘4 frame lag’. I have however, come across bad 24-25 conversion when playing 24@25 timelines as PAL.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.