Kona 3 vs Teranex box for SD to HDCam – side by side?

[Gary Adcock]

[Chad Brewer] “Some do better jobs than others on certain projects, but my only input is that the Teranex outperforms all video cards and most other stand alone converters “

I have always agreed that something dedicated will always do better.

I have access to both a VC300 and a Mini, but neither of them do what they do in real time, with the I/O delay increasing with things like noise reduction and grain removal are being done, thing that your Kona card are not able to do.

Well shot, well lit content from a uncompressed master converts better than VHS or DV does, take into account what your original is and what your final output is.

Erik posted that he “did not have enough money to test” – well if you are talking to a facility that does this and you are considering using this technology ask if they can test a clip for you, many companies have reduced rates for this type of work.

Nothing beat seeing the differences with your own eyes, if we are talking about realtime conversion without the bells and whistles from a pristine master it will be hard to tell. If we are talking about kicking it up a notch from a less than perfect original, Teranex wins for a reason- thats all it was designed to do, so don’t try and capture content into FCP with one, thats what the Kona is for.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php

[Chad Brewer]

Gary, I’m in Chicago as well. We should talk. There could be a mutual relationship here. I’ve got every HD deck in house.

https://www.televersions.com

-chad

[Richard Dee]

This is way off topic, but here goes.

I happen to watch HD cable/DVD/Bluray on almost a 14 foot diagonal 1080P DLP projection screen, so I pretty much see each and every artifact from my close sitting position. I find that even the best HD up conversion jobs seen on the major networks looks rather poor. However, I recently got a new Oppo HD-83 upconverting DVD/bluray player. The upconverting chip is the VRS Anchor bay, and this Oppo unit supposedly has the best dvd upconversion right now. The quality of DVD’s looks quite a bit better to me than anything I’ve seen on HD cable upconversions.

I know the anamorphic content of DVD’s gives it some additional vertical resolution, but is that solely responible for a $500 dvd player looking better than an expensive professional grade upconversion?

[Chad Brewer]

Richard,
Most TV stations don’t do expensive professional grade upconversions. Some major networks might have the hardware to do so, but in the end, they want HD delivered for HD broadcast. If they will accept SD content and will upconvert it for you which is rare, they probably don’t have the time or hardware to do a really good upconversion. Nor do most stations care at that point. They are very stringent about what you give them for broadcast. Plus, in the end, most TV signals are MPEG2 transport streams of some sort as ingested into the TV station’s internal system and what the satellites and fiber channels can handle. Some TV stations are notorious for “stepping on” content as it’s ingested into their own systems.
I say, as long as the pictures keep moving and the sound is in sync, we can all “get the picture.”

chad