[Bob Zelin]

Hi Ed –
you can see my stupid answers to you on the Blackmagic forum. You just bought a VERY EXPENSIVE Panasonic HD monitor. I have to assume that ONE JOB will pay for your Kona LH card, so why lose jobs because you don’t have an HD card. The great answer (as I stupidly put on the Blackmagic forum) is the combo of the AJA I/O and the Kona 2, but the Kona LH is great if you DONT need up conversion from HD. I don’t see why this is a waste of money if you have pending HD jobs that you have to do – and you already bought a $5000 TV monitor.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

For additional storage, a very inexpensive soution is to get the Sonnet X4P SATA host card, and put it into slot 4 or 5 of your HP xw8000 or xw8200. This card costs $299. Connect this to the Sonnet Fusion 500P SATA chassis, that will hold 5 500 gig or 750 Gig SATA II drives. You will use Microsoft Disk Manager to stripe all 5 drives to RAID 0, and you will be able to do DNxHD220 with NO PROBLEMS. A complete system with 5 500 Gig Hitachi drives
(2.5 Terabytes) will cost you under $3000.

For monitoring, there are countless solutions today. A great solution is the new Panasonic BT-LH2600W 26″ LCD monitor from Panasonic, that will do everything from composite video to HD-SDI. If you dont’ want to spend that much money, a very inexpensive solution for HD is to use the analog Y Pb Pr jacks on the back of the Adreanaline HD board, and go into a HP L2335 23″ LCD monitor – this will cost you about $1100, and look great (in HD, not in SD).
You can also use these jacks on the back of the Adrenaline to feed any plasma display that is “hd ready” – it will vary depending on which model you choose.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

I have only one reply (after reading your profile) – we have the same hobbies.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

no, it does not work with the 30″ monitor. the Multibridge Extreme drives the 30″ monitor correctly. I would LOVE to see a stand alone HD Link Dual Link DVI unit that would drive the 30″ Apple Cinema from Blackmagic.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

EXCUSE ME – I AM A FOOL and I have given you incorrect information. If you get the Blackmagic HD Pro card for PCI-X, and use this in conjunction with the Multibridge Extreme (not with the PCI-e card of course), you will be able to do everything. When you eventually get your Quad or Mac Pro with PCI Express, you then use the PCI-e bridge and will be able to use the Multibridge Extreme with the 4 lane PCI Express card. This will not be a waste of money.

Sorry about that mis information.

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

get the AJA I/O, the AJA Kona 2, and the AJA K-Box. This will cost you under $5000 for everything, and you will be able to do EVERYTHING – no excuses.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Mr. Bazino –
Charlie X2 is correct. HDV is a worthless piece of junk. I have many broadcast clients that attempt to use HDV because of it’s excellent picture quality, but the VTR’s manufactured for it, including the “hi end” HVRM-25U, are worthless pieces of junk, and perform very poorly in editing situations. If you don’t even use a HDV VTR, and are using your camera to input from, I dont’ know what you do for a living, but it certainly is not a hi pressure enviornment, where someone expects you to produce. Those experienced with using everything from Beta, DVCPro, pro dv like DSR-45 and DSR1800, and of course Digi Beta find HDV to be an intolarable format to work with. OLD 3/4″ VTR’s, like the Sony VO9850 and BVU800 outperformed any HDV VTR in professional edit enviornments.

I discussed this recently SEVERAL TIMES with Sony Broadcast, and they COMPLETELY AGREE WITH ME. HDV is NOT A PROFESSIONAL FORMAT, and Sony recommends to EVERY PROFESSIONAL not to use HDV, but to use the new, superior XDCam HD format. Now, it is not my place to tell any cameraman what to purchase, and I am no fool – I understand that you can get an HDV camera from $3 – $5000, where a similar XDCamHD is closer to $15,000 for a package. But the XDCamHD VTR’s have normal I/O, and normal RS422 control, with a tape transport that does not choke and abort with every cue of the VTR during a batch capture. The only reliable way to use HDV is to either transfer the tapes to another format (like HD-Cam or DVCProHD), or to hit the CAPTURE NOW button on your FCP system and get all the material on your hard drives, so you can work like a professional.

If you are truly using HD-Cam at your facility, then I KNOW that you are suffering when you attempt to use HDV. I am active on the AVID-L2 list, with many LA pro editors that only use AVID systems, and I regularly read about their suffering trying to capture into AVID systems from HDV VTR’s.

My current professional solution to use the HVRM25 is to use an AJA HD10A or HD10AVA to convert the analog HD to HD-SDI, and to use an Addenda RS-4/L to convert the LANC to RS422 communication (and set this with the Addenda software provided by Apple native to FCP). IT STILL SUCKS as far as deck control. It’s nothing like controlling a Beta VTR, or certainly a HDW-F500, or JH-3.

Sorry Bazino – you are incorrect.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Eric –
did you ever use an AVID system ? You DISABLE any power save or sleep capability. This applies to all non linear editing systems, and this has been the case forever. Turn off energy saver, turn off any sleep functions. Keep your system ON at all times, unless you go home, then power down. When you come in tomorrow morning, turn it back on. When you go out to lunch, keep the power ON YOUR SYSTEM. Summary – don’t sleep your system.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

The HD Link is excellent quality, and is specifically designed to convert a HD-SDI signal into a DVI signal, so you can display HD-SDI on a DVI computer monitor. The Intensity is a video capture card, that can capture from an HD source that has an HDMI output. If you want to add a monitor, the HDLink is your baby. Believe me, the quality is teriffic (or as good as your LCD monitor).

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Sorry Aujom, but this kind of language is called SARCASM. The Kona LHe is excellent, and the Blackmagic Multibridge Pro is excellent. There is no “better” product. Anyone who decides to “rant on” about the HP xw8200 Win XP computer is “better” than a MAC G5 Quad, should be shot, because this is a rediculous comparison, as the HP xw8200 is excellent, as is the MAC G5 Quad. One computer is not better than the next. And by the way, when I just said “someone should be shot” – this is also called SARCASM – it does not mean that someone should pick up a weapon, and shoot someone. If your english is not very good, I deeply apologize to you. However, if you speak fluent english, and don’t like these types of expressions of speech, well, too bad. I’m from NY.

With that said, you will be happy with either product. Around here, we seem to like AJA.

Bob Zelin