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Kona 3 and uncompressed HD problems…
A couple of months ago some friends of mine checked out the latest MacPro with best configuration you could get.
Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
16GB Ram
Fibre channel raid card with external harddrives
Kona 3 and FCP
The value of it was around 50 000 dollars.They wanted to check if the computer was good enough to edit uncompressed HD 1080 25p. The minimum requirement in FCP was 2 videotracks in realtime.
So they captured uncompressed HD 1080 25p into Kona 3 (HD-sdi).
They put some clips on the timeline on two videotracks and dissolves between the tracks and after 5 minutes editing the computer had problems playing the timeline. They told me it was like the computer did not have the power to run the uncompressed videotracks or the harddrives could not deliver enough MB/s. Hard to say, they said. But there were some serious problems editing. The Kona3-reseller did not have a clue either. They told my friends that this system was the best you could get if you wanted to work with a MacPro and FCP.
The story ended with that they bought an Avid Nitris editing system and they have no problems editing uncompressed HD. All working perfectly.I just bought my first Mac 2 months ago so I am not an expert on Mac but when my friends told me this story it sounded really strange.
I think it must have been something wrong with the MacPro or Kona3-card or raid-card. Wrong drivers or anything…
Is is impossible to run uncompressed HD 1080 25p on a MacPro???
Anyone here having the same problems or do you have a system that are working without any problems? -
12 Replies
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NO, it is VERY possible to do this. One BIG bottleneck to this is the hard drive RAID array. Which one did they have? How fast was it? You need at least 300MB/s to deal with uncompressed 10-bit 1080i HD.
I have never had an issue. Heck, I was able to playback 1080p24 uncompressed 10-bit with my Dual 2.0Ghz G5 running a Kona LH card, and that packs a LOT LESS muscle than the current MacPros.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
http://www.LFHD.net
Read my blog! -
Seriously. 50 grand? Wow. That seems a bit steep. Possible, I guess, but steep.
For 50 grand you should be able to edit uncompressed 1080p and more.
I would chalk it up to inexperince with FCP and, like Shane has mentioned, slow hard drives.
But for $50,000 their drives should have been fast enough.
FCP requires a bit of ownership to setup and configure.
Jeremy
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for 50k they should fly to your house, install the other system and hook up the rest of that SAN! oh yeah, and get you running!
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Then I know I was right! 🙂
I don’t know what kind of diskarray they tested. But I think it was at least possible to run at a speed of 300MB/s. So maybe it was not the diskarray then. But as the reseller said. It was “top of the line”.
I think the big problem was the reseller. They seem to not have the knowledge to build a great editing system.
And they also lost the deal because of that!!! -
so the raid was what, $40,000? hope it was at least 32 terabytes. sounds more like they wanted to sell Avids.
Paul Provost
http://www.postandbeam.tv -
Well, the reseller was not selling Avid. My friends talked to Avid about their requirements and Avid offered Nitris through one of the resellers and my friends tried it out and finally bought the system.
My opinion is that they first should have called another Aja-reseller and talked to them.
But they are happy with their Avid system now, even though they probably paid 2-3 times more than a complete MacPro-system. -
well, if they were able to take advantage of the new avid price drops they got their money’s worth
Paul Provost
http://www.postandbeam.tv -
Well it sounds like the problem should not have been narrowed down the the Kona (which is a very good piece of hardware) but to the reseller who obviously doesn’t know what it takes to put the whole package together (everybody has jumped into selling solutions like this). The AJA board is just part of the equation. Computer, controller, disk array, which slot for what, etc….are all just as equally important as to what I/O board is used. It’s even more important to go to someone who knows what they are doing not just the local store at the strip mall…..
Just because it’s the top of the line doesn’t make it less of a need for a pro to understand it all.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Hi Fredric^
Which of codec do You use for Your uncompressed video? If You use AJA RGB codecs it seems unpossible to playback 2 steams transition in FCP for now. If You use 4:2:2 Uncompressed – I thing 5 minutess transition is good for FCP and Apple. I always check with no more 1 minutes.best regards
ruslan_3d -
Ruslan, my friends never told me what settings the resellers used in FCP. But it sounds more and more that the resellers did not know how to configure to a fully working system.
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