Help to set up a good MAC for editing

[Jeremy Garchow]

AS of right this minute, you have two choices.

If buying a Quad you’ll need an HD PCIe card, since you’ll be working with HDV.

You can go with the Kona LHe or the Kona 3. The Kona LHe will better suit your HDV needs as it has analog component and analog inputs. The Kona 3 is a mostly digital i/o card, that has only analog component outputs.

Kona 3 also has an sd to hd upconvert function, the LHe does not. Both will down-convert. Neither card will cross-convert 720 to 1080i or 1080i to 720.

Blackmagic has a PCIe card, but it is an SD card only.

I currently have a Kona 2 with an io, and I can’t recommend aja products enough. They work and work well.

You might want to think about getting some fast storage such as a cheaper SATA RAID, or a more expensive fibre channel raid for increased reliability.

Good luck in your choices.

Jeremy

———–
G5 Dual 2Ghz <> 4GB RAM <> FCP 5.04 <> Kona 2
ATTO 42XS <> Huge Systems 4105 Fibre
OS 10.4.2 <> QT 7.0.3

[Shane Ross]

YOu have three good choices:

Aurora Fuse-X (Or Pipe Pro if you want 10-bit and SDI options)
Decklink SP (or Decklink Extreme if you want SDI options)
AJA I/O LA.

Shane Ross
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Jeremy Garchow]

Careful Shane, he’s looking for HDV capability and he’s buying a Quad which is PCIe.

The only option that will work that you suggested is the io for his SD material, but not for HDV. The io is PCI bus independent.

[Shane Ross]

HDV is captured via firewire…no card needed. If he has FCP 5.

OK…for the QUAD, I believe that the Fuse-X has a PCIe version…and there are Decklink PCIe options as well (look on their site). As for the AJA I/O…that is a firewire connection, so the PCIe architecture doesn’t come into play.

Shane Ross
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net