Kona LHe – Is this claim true?

[Jared Picune]

You can work with DVCPRO HD on a firewire 400 drive with or without the Kona. The stuff isn’t even 15MB/s. I am getting 100MB/s sustained on my MacBook Pro with 2 SATA drives striped. So you can actually do a whole lot with internal SATA.

Jared Picune
Idea Spring Editing, Inc.
Denver Final Cut Pro UG
The Picune Blog | FCP Tips & Tricks

[Bob Zelin]

DVCPro50 is an excellent SD codec. DVCProHD is not a SD codec – it is for HD. It will work with one SATA drive, but you will not get reliable playback for a long show with effects, titles, etc. You need TWO SATA drives stripped RAID 0 for long term reliable playback. Lots of stuff works – but there is a big difference between working, and working reliably.

Hey, you don’t even need a second internal drive- you could use your boot drive – but who in their right minds would do this ? Internal drives are teriffic for keeping graphics files, audio, but real video projects need at least 2 SATA drives RAID 0 to work well.

I think that Blackmagic once had a press release that they had DVCPro HD playing back on an iPod (I seem to recall, I could be wrong here)- just becuase it marginally works does not mean that you should run your business this way.

Bob Zelin

[Dave Jenkins]

I am very happy with our LHe card but I haven’t noticed much of a difference before and after.

[Enzo Tedeschi]

Thanks, guys. I figured that was the case – it sounded like an outlandish claim. If true, might have made for a good “B” suite :o)

Enzo Tedeschi
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http://www.outpostpps.com
Sydney, Australia

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[John Ladle]

of course it is true. dvcproHD is 12.5 mb/sec. sata drives can do 40mb/sec.

that said, it is NEVER a good idea to work from your application drive, but i use this all the time with a second internal drive for media. keep it defragged and work with one layer–no problems.

[Mike Johnson]

I just added 2 SATA II drives into the extra bays in my new Mac Pro, giving me a total of 3 disks.

I run system / application etc. on disk 1
Made a striped RAID of disk 2 and 3.
They push over 150 MB/sec using KONAs test app.

One SATA II drive push around 70 MB/sec

[Olivier Jean]

hi,

as mentionned here, a couple of internal or extrenal SATA II drives will give you
around 120MB to 150MB throughput more than enough for DVC Pro HD which requires
around 15/16 MB per second.
Very economical solution indeed.

Regards
Olivier Jean
Video Sales Consultant
Apple Certified Trainer Final Cut Pro 5
Powermedia Systems
Sydney Australia

[Gary Adcock]

[Enzo Tedeschi] “DVCPROHD on internal SATA? Does the LHe really do that much acceleration to make this a workable option?”

DVCPROHD in 720 and 1080 are compressed enough to allow for playback on internal SATA drives, As was said you need more than a single drive to make this viable. what the Kona crad does for me is just what was quoted. “KONA LHe hardware takes a portion of the codec processing load off the CPU,allowing more RealTime (RT)effects in Final Cut Pro 5 when outputting.”

The card handles the scaling that is required for realtime playback of the material – ALL camera native HD codecs are horizontally squeezed and the Kona card frees up that scaling function from the CPU and handles the aspect correction in real time, because the scaling engine is handling the aspect correction it in hardware- not software, thereby giving more realtime (RT) functions in FCP.

The hardware based scaling functions on the Kona cards all work without delay or rendering on all scaling functions- whether that be playback of DVCPROHD or HDV codecs or when you are up or down converting your content- All are handled the same.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Bob Zelin]

Mike Johnson’s system is the typical example of an excellent second system, and it is wonderful that you can put the additional dual internal SATA drives in the Mac Pro, without the need for an additional controller card. I am sure he will make a lot of money with this new system.

Bob Zelin