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How does Kona handle non-video sources, ie scanned graphics?
I’m about to start editing a 3D animated feature on a Mac Pro system using a Kona 3 and an Xserve raid. The project will be HD.
Here’s what’s keeping me up at night:
Although we’ll ultimately be cutting full HD, the first thinig I’ll get are scanned storyboards. Should I import 1920×1080 stills and assemble in full HD resolution? How will the Kona respond to that? How does the Kona handle things that don’t come into the system as video? ie, TIFFs? What if I set the storyboard project up at some fraction of 1920×1080? Does the Kona only work at certain set resolutions or frame sizes?
Thank you.
(Thanks also to JeremyG who answered another part of this question in a previous post.)
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9 Replies
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Tom,
If you are coming from avid land you are going to find the FCP-KONA comba a dream. It’s all based on the QT architecture so when you import a folder of stills, they just appear. NO WAITING to create media suitable for the NLE.
You can prepare these scans as 1920×1080 at a maximum rez of about 150 DPI. If you go with higher DPI’s (don’t be fooled by this) then all you are asking FCP to do is crunch more numbers. It will only slow you down with no increase in quality. If you dont believe me then do some simple tests of the same file at 72, 150, 300, 600, etc, and you will see that the quality in the timeline does not improve.
You can double the frame size of teh HD material if you want to do some major moves. Doble it both horizontally and vertically. I think you can go to 4000×4000. I have done this on contact sheets and produced some nice looking stuff.
Hope this helps,
David
Peace and Love 🙂
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Ditto to what David says. We only create our HD graphics in 72dpi and anything higher is just a waste of space. As David notes, if you need to zoom or pan around the graphic, make the frame size larger so the graphic doesn’t break up. For instance, for some animations we create here, some of our graphics are 3200 x 3200 or larger depending on how far in I plan to zoom in.
Graphics are no issue with FCP.
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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Pinging this thread again…
So I’m in the bay working on this project now and I’m disappointed to find that with a very small percentage of these panels in the timeline, I’m already getting dropped frames and a general sluggishness when I move boards around, etc. No red render bars, which is good, but this kind of sluggishness this early on does not bode well for a project that will have upwards of 500 panels per reel.
System: 2×2.66 Dual Core Intel, FCP 5.1.1, 8 GB RAM, Kona 3 card, Xserve Raid.
Sequence settings, using preset: AJA Kona3, 1080 psf 24, 8 bit
Timeline setting: 1920×1080, square, 24 fps, uncompressed 8 bitAny idea what I could be doing wrong? I’m thinking about just doing the storyboard cut in SD, although on principle (and to allow us to transition gradually to final renders as the project goes on) I wanted to do the whole project in HD. I don’t even see a Kona preset for SD; would it simply not be involved?
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Why not do your storyboard cuts in DVCPRO HD. It’s a much smaller file size. It is in an HD frame size. It looks great and the Kona has specific acceleration for this codec. When you are done recpature the video portions in 8 or 10 bit and re render the gfx at that time.
THis is a much speedier workflow.
David
Peace and Love 🙂
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That sounds good. But when I look at the Kona presets, I see one for DVCPRO HD at 25 fps but not at 24. That seems odd; I’ve previously cut DVCPRO HD projects (without a Kona card) and worked in 23.98, if not 24. Obviously, I can choose the 25 preset and change the fps setting, but does the fact that there’s no preset mean the Kona doesn’t support it? It also doesn’t seem to want to play out to the monitor at this setting.
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[Tom Sanders] “That sounds good. But when I look at the Kona presets, I see one for DVCPRO HD at 25 fps but not at 24.”
24 is 23.98 and you’ll see a Kona DVCPro HD 23.98 preset.
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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No, despite the fact that many people use the terms interchangably, they are not in fact the same thing. If they were, then there wouldn’t be seperate 24 and 23.98 settings.
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Regardless, the suggestion to go to DVCPROHD seems to be helping, so thanks to you both.
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I find them to be highly effiencient and high picture quality codecs.
David
Peace and Love 🙂
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