the best capture card for HD footage?

[Gary Adcock]

[Danrnw] “When talking down Black Magic, I very seldom see stated
an example of what it is that makes AJA better”

Gee Dan I did not think anyone was talking down about BMD, I just stated most of the leaders use Kona, and listed other mfg’s that use aja’s hardware also.

But think about what you said about “what makes AJA better” we are talking about the the same hardware from AJA in Avid’s 4:4:4 solution and inside of industry leading hardware solutions like Flame, Inferno and Smoke and that hardware is available for FCP.

The bigger questionto me would be: If there is not much difference between the cards why do all of those companies use Aja’s (albeit more expensive) hardware and not BMD’s

AJA is a hardware company, and when the do something like a cross conversion it is hardware not software. Same with down conversion, and up conversion, its done in hardware. That means realtime, without processing delay or need to render, something that is not always possible with others cards.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Dan Riley]

I also appreciate the responses to my post.
We are a week away from purchases for all new HD stuff, one AVID MC suite
and one FCP suite, so I’m just asking all kinds of final questions.

Thanks,
Dan

PS I hear a rumor at AVID, because they are being killed by FCP system sales,
they will have no choice but to drop their Adrenaline box at $20K
and port their software to AJA KONA. Add to that, yesterday the CEO of AVID Resigned.
The board is now on a search for a new CEO. Should be interesting to see what happens.

[Shane Ross]

Well, the resignation is not a rumor…that is true.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Walter Biscardi]

[Danrnw] “PS I hear a rumor at AVID, because they are being killed by FCP system sales,
they will have no choice but to drop their Adrenaline box at $20K
and port their software to AJA KONA”

They already run on an AJA card. It’s been an OEM quiet type of thing for a while, but Avid announced before NAB this past year that they were now using AJA hardware on their systems. Might not be called a Kona, but I’m guessing it probably is.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Dan Riley]

AVID Liquid runs and is marketed to run on the KONA. That’s public.
But not the Media Composer. Or are you talking about it running
“in the lab” on AJA stuff?

dr

[Dan Riley]

Oops. My Bad.
AVID Liquid doesn’t run on the KONA, it runs on the XENA (PC) boards.

Dan

[Tiborius]

Hi,

I am a new editor to FCP, but have worked on all Avid systems for years.
Finally I have decide to set up an FCP system and see what all the fuss is about.
I have committed to a 4 moth multi part project on this system.

So I got the latest macpro, and Prostudio 2.
When using it I realised I needed something comparable to a MOJO, or IO hardware.
After talking to my hardware suppliers I was down to two choices, the KONA LHE, or the Blackmagic HDExtreme.

And here I ended up after a google search on comparisons.

Frankly I am not convinced that the Kona is just a more expensive peice of kit, that does no more; in fact as dr said:

“The Black Magic HD box allows
not only digital IO but also analog where you need extra boxes and converters
to do that with KONA 3.”

so far Black magic sounds better.
I have read that the customer service is better with the Kona, but then I live in New Zealand and customer service is always slow, and so I guess it will be less of an issue.

So now a blow by blow analysis os what I found here:

Shane said:
“The advantage that AJA has is: a) Tech Support is killer, b)They work VERY CLOSELY with Apple, so their products integrate very well.”
So the AJA card is solely built for FCP?
If so then I would assume that it would work smoother, although FCP is built to smoothly take other hardware and be resolution independent; that’s the main advantage of FCP?

“Decklink was BAD at one point…getting a hold of tech support impossible. They are getting better, but AJA has always been there.”
FCP was bad at one point, Avid was bad many times, most companies and software/hardware has had one or more bad times, but most get up and fix those issues.

Gary Adcock said:
I believe all Leaders in this forum all use Kona Cards for their main stations, even when other solutions are available in their edit suites. There is reason that, avid, discreet and others rely on AJA hardware to make their NLE systems better.

Shane said:
“All the leaders just happen to own AJA products, so that is what we have more experience with, so that is the first recommendation out of our mouth. ”

Walter ads:
“I think every single NLE except Quantel uses AJA now and it’s possible they use it as well. Obviously there’s a reason why these companies have all gone to AJA for their capture boards. They’re reliable and a proven broadcast quality product.”

Gary said:
“But think about what you said about “what makes AJA better” we are talking about the the same hardware from AJA in Avid’s 4:4:4 solution and inside of industry leading hardware solutions like Flame, Inferno and Smoke and that hardware is available for FCP.

The bigger questionto me would be: If there is not much difference between the cards why do all of those companies use Aja’s (albeit more expensive) hardware and not BMD’s”

Maybe they are more flexible to big companies, or make cheap deals and charge more to direct consumers?
Maybe they make better hardware solely for those companies?
Maybe they spend all their real Development money on those systems and then strip it down and make a quick digital only version for FCP?

Personally I am seeing Avid hardware get worse (well anything is better then their meridian hardware I must admit). One of the main reasons I am testing FCP is exactly because I have heard and experienced Avids not working well with HD, and having lots of hardware issues. So In that light I am not so sold on a “well Avid uses them so they must be good”; in that case buy an avid if you want to spend up large and get snobbish over which is most used.

Walter said:
“Look at high profile events like the Super Bowl, World Series, Nascar and look at which card is being used to cut at those events.”

It seams to me that there is some kind of snobbery of systems. As if ALL the top editors use a Kona, ALL the best productions use a Kona.
Well in that case we should all go to Avid systems to edit, and inferno to composite as they have done MUCH more and used by many more.
It isn’t an issue of who loves who the most, it should be what ACTUAL experience people have.

It sounds like some need to justify the expense, like buying a European car and saying that just because it is “European” and you paid more.
I don’t mean to get anyone up in arms, but it’s O.K to say “I only have a KONA and am totally happy”, it is just ignorant to say “well everyone else has one, so it must be good”; in that case buy a PC, by an Avid, shoot DVCAM or maybe VHS?

So on to the only real comparison:

jeremy said:
I have used both and for me, my Kona2 and Kona3X has been invisible, which is good. If the card becomes visible, there’s something wrong.

Well my old Avid XpressPro is a different beast, and tells me so, when it has a MOJO attached. I believe visibility of a card isn’t something wrong. How do you define it as being wrong?
Does it slow the system, or demand a new workflow (that is to say a dramatically different workflow?).

David said:
Warmer, audio, better support, faster driver updates are just a few of the reason that I prefer Kona.

Faster driver updates sounds like a good point!
How often do they update?
I know that in the past on systems I have owned they get stuck with a particular OS, and can never be updated at at all or change as the edit ware and hardware don’t update.
If Kona keeps up drivers with the latest software and OS updates that sounds really good.
Anyone know of how BM goes with updates?

How is the audio warmer?
Is this a monitor thing? Or is it actually capturing audio better?

I send all my work out to get audio mixed so monitoring doesn’t need to be perfect.

Now, are there any BM users out there who haven’t been scared off by the “Big Editors” who sound like they look down on those who don’t follow them.

Tibor

[Walter Biscardi]

[Tiborius] “So the AJA card is solely built for FCP?”

No. AJA cards run Premiere, Avid, Media 100, Autodesk and FCP. Shortly you’ll be able to run FCP and Premiere off a Kona card in the Mac.

[Tiborius] “Maybe they are more flexible to big companies, or make cheap deals and charge more to direct consumers?
Maybe they make better hardware solely for those companies?
Maybe they spend all their real Development money on those systems and then strip it down and make a quick digital only version for FCP?”

All of these would make for poor business sense. AJA’s hardware is top notch no matter which version you purchase. Look at all of their hardware converters. AJA’s product line goes well beyond just a capture card for the Mac and one thing the company does is integrate features from the hardware converters into the capture cards. the HD CrossConversion is a great example of that.

[Tiborius] “It isn’t an issue of who loves who the most, it should be what ACTUAL experience people have.”

Actual experience for me is:
60+ HD Broadcast masters delivered via a Kona 2 and Kona 3 over the past two years, zero Network QC rejections.

55 SD Broadcast Masters delivered this year alone, zero rejections from Network QC.

Pristine downconversion in realtime from HD timelines to BetaSP masters for Network distribution. Zero Network QC rejections.

Pristine cross-conversion in realtime from 720-1080i for edit.

A business increase of almost 500% in three years since we delivered our first HD Broadcast master because our systems deliver very clean masters and are incredibly flexible with all the conversions we can perform.

We’ve run the Kona boards almost three years now.

[Tiborius] ”
I don’t mean to get anyone up in arms, but it’s O.K to say “I only have a KONA and am totally happy”, it is just ignorant to say “well everyone else has one, so it must be good”; in that case buy a PC, by an Avid, shoot DVCAM or maybe VHS?”

When so many people are using this, especially in high profile live broadcast events, that catches my attention because I worked in broadcast for so long. Any product that’s put into a live situation must work at all times. That’s a lot of faith in the system that is being used and speaks highly of both FCP and AJA Kona. Quite honestly I don’t know of an example where BMD has been used in a major live situation. I’m sure there is one out there, I’ve just never heard of it.

[Tiborius] “Faster driver updates sounds like a good point!
How often do they update?”

For FCP, the new drivers are generally released the day of or the day after an FCP release.

[Tiborius] “Now, are there any BM users out there who haven’t been scared off by the “Big Editors” who sound like they look down on those who don’t follow them.”

We don’t look down on anybody, there are choices to be made and when people ask what we use or “what is the best capture card for HD” we’re going to tell them. When I made the switch from my Pinnacle CineWave I first went to Aurora who had developed just incredible codecs for editing. Then when it appeared they were not going to deliver their HD card, I brought in a BlackMagic HD card and a Kona 2 card. There was no comparison for me as to which one was better. The Kona far outperformed the BMD in terms of realtime conversions and the quality of the final image on the screen.

David Ross Weiss was a longtime BMD user who made the switch to the Kona series. So we know about the product line.

So if you want an honest answer from me, the answer is AJA hands down and don’t forget the Io HD coming out shortly which eliminates the need for an actual card.

If you want some advice from BMD users, then I would suggest the BlackMagic forum right here on the Cow. You’ll find a lot of BMD owners in there happy to share their stories. You can also go into the AJA Kona forum to find a lot more users of the AJA Kona series.

Every one of the leaders is passionate about this industry and when people ask us what is the best thing to use, we will tell you. It won’t always be the cheapest thing, but I have three AJA Kona boards in my shop and that is what I will recommend anyone else consider for a purchase when you ask me what is the best capture card.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Tiborius] “I believe visibility of a card isn’t something wrong. How do you define it as being wrong?”

When I say the card is invisible, what I mean is that when I tell it to do something such as down convert, up convert, cross convert, add setup, no setup, XLR audio in BNC audio in, pause on full frame, single field pause, SD to SD letterbox conversion, Beta Component put, SPMTE component out, whatever, the Kona does it no fuss no frills no problems, it’s like it’s not even there. When I had Blackmagic products, it was like pulling teeth to try and get things to work if you could get it to work at all. I knew the cards where there all the time, because they weren’t working like I wanted them to. Also, The AJA control panel makes the card extremely easy to operate as you have a modular visual reference of everything that your card is doing. The Blackmagic control panel is a little less intuitive. Does Blackmagic have upconvert, have they fixed 720p24 down convert? Also as Gary mentioned, AJA does all conversions in hardware and not software like most Blackmagic products.

There, I said it.

Jeremy

[Anders Haavie]

I am managing a 12 suite system with only decklink cars. We are getting so tired of problem with accurate edit to tape problems, and other stuff, so I have bought my first Aja. I guess the decklink might be better if you just look at techspecs, but for us it is MUCH more important to know that the product works without any hickups.

Anders