DVCProHD to Kona via HD-SDI

[Jeremy Garchow]

this is a point that has been argued time and time again on this forum and others, but i think you’ll find more favorable results ingesting DVCPRo HD over the HD-SDI. Be aware that with the 1200A you cannot layoff a frame accurate master. you can come close using the firewire control and HD-SDI input.

My personal tests show that the signal coming off of the HD-SDI appears to be a little cleaner. people will argue technically how this is impossible, but it seems to be true. I think it has to be with some smoothing that happens coming out the HD-SDI ports that you don’t get with firewire.

2 cents.

Jeremy

[James Horak]

I’m not looking to reignite any old arguments, just curious about individual experiences. I’m well aware 🙁 of the 1200A’s limitations. Sadly, it’s my only option.

If HD-SDI in works reasonably well, that’s good enough for me. My only remaining question is what codecs other than DVCProHD does the Kona2 accelerate? From reading these forums it looks like the Qrez codec is a no-show at this point.

Thanks again.

[Jeremy Garchow]

At this time, I don’t think it accelerates anything else, except the upcoming HDV in FCP5. Qrez is (still) a no go. It seems like it might be a cool thing, but we’ll see if it even happens. I read the tight integration of the low bandwidth DVCPRO HD in FCP killed the idea, but don’t quote me on that. I’m sure if AJA deems Qrez worth it, they will release it after going through their qc. The 1200A is my only option as well, I guess we’ll both suffer.

But do use the HD-SDI input, you’ll be much happier. Also, I noticed that digitizing in uncompressed HD off of DVCPro HD tape looks a little smoother as well, but this significantly adds hardware cost to your system in the name of a fast RAID.

Hope this helps.

Jeremy

———–
AJA Kona2>HD10C2>D10A

Decklink Extreme

[Walter Biscardi]

In our tests so far, we’ve seen how the ingest of Firewire vs HD-SDI shows identical quality. It’s on the rendering and output that you need to maintain the highest quality workflow, which generally means rendering all your effects in High Precision YUV in FCP and I like the look of the HD-SDI output back to the 1200A vs. Firewire.

As for the phantom TC breaks you’re seeing during capture, Firewire vs. RS-422 doesn’t really seem to matter here. I get them both ways. What I find is that anytime I have a Batch Capture of 5 clips or more, I’ll get the phantom TC break or “FCP Cannot locate timecode” error. Generally I’ll capture that one clip, then move on and start another Batch Capture.

Machine control is definitely not as good as we have all come to expect from professional machines, but Panasonic has really really dumbed down this machine to get it into the price point that it’s at. I guess when you save $40,000+ over it’s bigger brother, you’re going to lose a lot of functionality. Kind of disappointing that RS-422 does not work on output, but what are you going to do. Firewire control for Edit To Tape works quite well actually and I haven’t really had any issues editing to tape at all.

Kona 2 is also accelerating HDV, though I don’t really like that format much compared to DVCPro HD.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

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