DV Footage

[Peter]

One more thought if it does have to go through the Kona card how are you getting dv to sdi??

[Peter]

Thanks all I got it figured out DUH@!!$ Easy.

[David Barker]

Peter, curious what the solution is. I have a Blackmagic HD Pro card (they write the software drivers for AJA Kona) and am having issues with the card playing back DV, DVCPRO 50 and DVCPro HD clips that were captured via firewire. I’d like to know of the Kona 2 can play these firewire clips without dropping frames as my Blackmagic card seems to be. I am trying to keep my workflow firewire, not SDI, but still use the video card to playback to a 23″ Apple Cinema display using an SDI to DVI converter.

David Barker
Video Propulsion, Inc.
david@video-propulsion.com

[Aja Sales department]

Hi David-

Our previous generation of cards, the Kona SD and Kona HD, had drivers that were written by BM. Last year they announced they were no longer supporting these drivers and froze their development.

Our current generation of cards, the Kona 2 and the Kona LS, have drivers developed from the ground up and fully supported by AJA. Therefore, your experiences on the BM cards will be much different than users of AJA hardware.

Thank you,

—
AJA Video Systems
(530) 274-2048 Intl.
(800) 251-4224 US
sales@aja.com

[David Barker]

Thanks for the replay. That is good to know. Now, my question to you is: Does the Kona 2 card support playback of DV, DVCPRO 50 and DVCPRO HD footage that has been captured via firewire and not through the Kona card?

I have three decks, Sony DVCAM 1800, Panasonic AJ-SD 93 and Panasonic AJ-HD 1200A – all with firewire I/O. I need to have a video card like the Kona 2 (I think), so I can monitor an HD picture on my 23″ Cinema display. The card is sending an SDI signal to an SDI to DVI converter. I also wouldn’t mind any acceleration a video board might offer for rending effects.

I had a Kona 2 board ordered back in May of 2004. But by December, I still had not received the board and we had an open house introducing our new HD suite! Push came to shove and I decided to go with a Blackmagic card which was available.

What I got was dropped frames. Not all the time, but enough to make the suite unusable for client work. Trying to track down the source of the problem has been slow and aggrevating.

Maybe I made a mistake and believed people who told me that the card (both Kona 2 and Blackmagic) would playback native Quicktime clips captured over firewire. Can you give any definitive answer to my question? Can the Kona 2 card playback footage captured via firewire from DV, DVCPRO 50 and DVCAM HD without dropping frames? Or is the only reliable way of insuring playback is to capture video using AJA’s codecs through an SDI connection?

System: Dual G5 2.5 GHz, with OS 10.3.9, Final Cut Pro 4.5, 4 Gig RAM, and 1.8T SATA array with speeds of 425 MB/sec/read and 375/MB/sec/write.

David Barker
Video Propulsion, Inc.
david@video-propulsion.com