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Kona oddities
Hi there,
Just got an Aja Kona LHe with breakout box for an Intel mac. We had to get this to interface with our Panasonic AJ-D960 Pro50 deck. (the old card was a Blackmagic in a G5).
I’m a bit new to all this so bear with me, I kinda inherited looking after the edit machines when I started my current job.So, I’ve tried to hook everything up the same as it was with the BM card. I have SDI in/outs, RS 422 lead (manufactured from a cat5e lead as described in one of Bob Zelin’s posts) and ref video going to the deck. The other ref video BNC on the breakout has a terminator on it as described in the manual.
On the other side ofcourse the SDI in/outs are hooked up correctly with the Aja lead going to the card.I can seem to get playback to the deck from Final Cut no problemo, but capture goes all wacky. As soon as you bring up the capture window, the screen starts flashing an intermittent green glitch. Playback from a tape is visible and the machine control seems to work fine, but it keeps glitching as it plays along.
I’ve tried a LOT of things and read quite a bit to get this to work. It all seems to me to be set correctly. The machine control is set to Panasonic RS 422, I have everything set to PAL 625i50 etc (I’m in Australia).
Anyone got any ideas? Sorry if I haven’t supplied enough Final Cut details – I didn’t want to make this post a short novel!
Any help would be much appreciated.Thanks,
Will -
8 Replies
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A few things.
Make sure you are using the Easy Setups in FCP. Do not try to manually change all the settings. This trips a lot of people up.
Make sure everything is set correctly in the Kona Control Panel.
Still no luck?
Download the latest Kona driver kit from the AJA website. Not the CD that may have come with your card. Use the Kona Uninstaller. Then install the new drivers.
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you need to set the ref correctly in using the kona control panel,
the Kona cards can usually get by with setting the Video Ref to Video in ( control click on the Ref icon on the bottom of the right side of the control panel)
Also
get the latest drivers from the AJA web site.
make sure you video out settings match your seq settings.gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows -
Hi guys, thanks for the responses.
I’m running version 3.4 of the Kona driver/software, which on the website says is built for ver 5.1.x of FCP. I’m running 5.1.4, we haven’t got FC Studio 2 yet 🙁I’ve double checked the problem with the AJA VTR exchange program to make sure it’s not an FCP problem. I get the same problems I get in FCP – weird green glitch that pops up every couple of seconds. I set the input and compressor settings to every combination that should work- mainly sticking to 10bit/8bit 625i PAL input settings.
I’ve also tried Gary’s suggestion of using the video in as the ref source. This is where it gets really cranky. Regardless of having FCP open or not, the screen just glitches up straight away, and doesn’t settle till i switch the Ref back to freerun.
Checked AJA control panel – everything set to 625i25. I see no other profiles that could actually work for PAL in SD.
I’ve used the Kona TV app to also play quicktimes out as well as playing back seqs from FCP and it works great. So the problem is definitely input…
Have I missed something really basic entirely?
I’ve gone over this a few times and I think my next step will be installing v.4 drivers regardless of what AJA says. It’s the only thing left I can think of. Any other ideas?If this helps – I am running FCP 5.1.4 on a Mac Pro dual 2.66, 3GB RAM, OSX 10.4.10. Kona LHe in PCI-x slot 3, (HBA in 4) running driver ver 3.4.
Thanks again,
Will -
Get yourself a blackburst generator.
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Thanks Jeremy,
I had a feeling that was coming next…
I’ve had a chat to the last guy who had my job (who I used to work with) and he always used our Pro50 deck hooked straight to the Blackmagic card for many years with no issues.
However, I’m open to any suggestions with this so I’ve hooked up a BBG. Same problem. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert by any means but I would think it’s some kind of input issue rather than genlock?So, hypothetically (please correct me if I’m wrong) if I didn’t want ANY sync, and just wanted to get video through to FCP I should be able to hook up SDI out with nothing else, select it as the video input on the Kona, hit play on the VTR and see a nice undisturbed picture in FCP?
Not sure what the next step is… any more ideas?
I appreciate the responses guys, thanks!
Will -
[WillB_82] ” if I didn’t want ANY sync, and just wanted to get video through to FCP I should be able to hook up SDI out with nothing else, select it as the video input on the Kona”
No, you’d change it to free run, not video in for no sync.
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Sorry, should’ve been clearer.
I meant select the deck as the input video source with freerun enabled.
I have done some tests using the AJA VTR exchange program.
If I hook the deck up as an analogue input device, I get video in – no problems.
Likewise if I hook up SDI in (from deck), with RS422. I can control the deck and see the pictures on the computer with no glitches.
However, as soon as I hookup the SDI output (to deck) the glitching starts again. It just doesn’t seem to like having both leads connected at the same time.
I’ve contacted Aja about this, I tried my reseller and they never got back to me…
Cheers,
Will -
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