New AJA owner outputting to digibeta

[Bob Zelin]

you should become familiar with using the EASY SETUPS of the AJA
Kona LHe, and RIGHT NOW, you should start playing with the AJA Kona Control Panel. If you are familiar with these, particularly the Kona Control Panel, you will have no issues outputting to Digi Beta (with embedded audio), as this is all selectable in the AJA Kona Control Panel. You become familiar with this stuff, by sitting there, and clicking on the different tabs, in every menu, and seeing what the diffent settings will give you. You DONT wait until the Digi Beta rental deck comes into house, and then try to start figuring it out.

Bob Zelin

[Bruce Greene]

I just came to this forum to ask the same question.

In particular, my project is dv 23.98fps 720×480 pixels.

Is there anything I need to do regarding the pixel dimentions? Is digibeta 640×480?

Can I just plug in the SDI out to the digibeta deck and get audio and video?

If I want to make a PAL version of this project, what must I do?

Thanks!

-bruce

[Stuart Ferreyra]

There are many things to set up. Starting by using the right Easy Set up in FCP and selecting
the appropriate setting is the first step.

For a DV project going to Digibeta you should select the “Kona 8 bit to DV” setting. That will
set up the right output options for you; but remember that it won’t go to tape as 23.98.
Digibetas only work at 29.97.

You can use the SDI out of the Kona and plug it to the SDI embedded input on the deck.
But you must select the deck’s input panel for digital audio.

To do a PAL version, well…. you must sent your tape to a professional NTSC to PAL
conversion house with a GOOD formats conversion. We don’t even try to do it ourservels.
Here in L.A., these dubs do not come cheap if you want great quality.

It cost us about $230 dollars for 1/2 hour of NTSC to PAL, but the place we use has an
$80,000 conversion box and the results are MAGNIFICENT!

Stuart Ferreyra
Timecode Multimedia
President
Santa Monica, CA 90025
https://www.timecodemultimedia.com

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Thanks bob and all. I’m fairly familiar with the control panel now but its quite daunting.

I’m outputting a project shot on DVCPRO50 to digibeta. I guess I’m not familiar with what to output, is it always best to output 10bit or should I output lower res for certain applications?

Do I output SDI to the digibeta or component? I will download the manual for the beta deck and have a look at the inputs.

[Bruce Greene]

Thanks Stuart,

We got it all working and everything was looking great until….the tape would not eject from the machine (error-20).

I do have one more question: Is it possible to output the timecode from FCP to the tape? If so, how?

Thanks again,
-bruce

[Ron Thompson]

I deliver DVCPRO50 shows for network all the time.
Do what Bob says. Learn the AJA software, and the rest will be painless. Some other things to consider:

2ch Audio, 4ch Audio? That will need to be set up.

Reference should be hooked up– I go from a Horita, to Kona Box, to Digibeta.

Machine control should be setup and tested for frame accuracy within FCP setup menus.

Besides that, I would STRONGLY suggest renting the deck an extra day, perhaps on the weekend, so you can spend a day testing and writing down your final setup. Its a simple setup once you’re use to it.

Also…the AJA DVCPRO50 timeline will go right out to the digi with no problems. No need to turn the timeline into uncompressed or any other codec setting.

Good Luck
Ron

[Ron Thompson]

[bruce alan greene] “Is it possible to output the timecode from FCP to the tape? If so, how?”

NO…but I’m hopeful the new IOHD will FINALLY give us this feature since it has LTC TC I/O. For now you stripe the tape using “Black and Code” in edit-to-tape window.

Ron

[Stuart Ferreyra]

We ususally code the tape starting at 00:57:50:00 and set up our timeline to start at 00:58:00:00.

Add a minute of bars, a slate and the remaining seconds of black all the way to your fist show frame at 01:00:00:00

Then, we edit to tape (with machine control & assemble) starting at 00:58:00:00 (just like
your output timeline) and your FCP timeline’s timecode should exactly match your tape’s.

Hope it works….

Stuart Ferreyra
Timecode Multimedia
President
Santa Monica, CA 90025
https://www.timecodemultimedia.com