[Bob Zelin]

Hi Scott –
I would like to address your audio distortion issue. If you simply bring up bars and tone from within FCP, and play it back, do you hear distortion on the tone signal? Is your AJA I/O plugged into the 1/4″ TRS line input of your Mackie 1202 (the correct input) or the XLR mic input (the incorrect input to use). Exactly what speakers and amplifier are you using to monitor with ?

Thanks –
Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

If you have zero money, then buy a G-Tech FW800 drive, until you can afford SATA or a SCSI/Fibre solution.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

please tell me exactly what EASY SETUP you have selected in FCP for the AJA I/O. This will help determine what you are looking at. If you have not done so, please pick something for now, like Betacam 8 bit uncompressed. Bring up internal color bars. Do you see color bars now? Are you monitoring directly out of the AJA I/O, or thru a VTR ?

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Mortimer –
you are not a bonehead – your dealer is. Your dealer should have sold you a color black generator, which is used to genlock the Decklink card and your Beta 1800. Plug the black gen into the genlock input of the card, and the Ref Video input of the Beta 1800, and your problems will be gone.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

I recommend ANYTHING except the Apple XServe RAID, which is expensive, and full of headaches, and non existant tech support. I like HUGE, Walter likes Medea, but lots of SCSI and Fibre arrays are out there from ADTX, Rorke, StorCase, and so many others. In addition, SATA drives will work for the formats you want to use, as will Firewire 800’s. These are available from Maxx Digital, Lacie, G-Tech, StorCase and so many others. Of course, the Facilis is teriffic as a shared storage product, but if you want cheap, there are lots of alternatives out there for you.

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

buy an external drive – even if it’s a cheap FW800 external drive.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Bob,
I often get in trouble on these forums for posts like this, and I am about to do it again. Your qualified engineers are certainly qualified, but just lazy – they can’t be bothered with making a simple tech support call to AJA to ask them how to set up the menus (easy setups). If the Cinewave was working, the AJA should be working identically in the same system. This is what you must do – FORCE the guy who setup the system to sit there in front of you, and call AJA tech support with him sitting there, and make him talk on the phone to AJA tech support. Now, you could have him post questions on this forum, and we could answer him, but I bet he has no interest in doing this. If he refuses to call AJA tech support, to get the menu’s setup correctly, it becomes your responsibility to go to management, and tell them that your engineering staff has no interest in properly installing the expensive equipment that the station has just purchased, and all you need is for one of these gentlemen to simply dedicate one hour to this issue, and your problem will be resolved.

Let’s see if this post gets bounced.

No offense to anyone !

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

you are simply switching all 9 pins of a db9 connector. There is no difference between a serial port (or comm port) switcher, and a RS422 switcher. They use pin to pin cabling, with no cross connectors. There is no such thing as an RS422 switcher (unless there is a marketing strategy from companies that make video routing switchers that include RS422 switching, and this is just pin to pin switching). So yes,these cheap $15 boxes will work just fine.

But like I said, if it were me, I would buy a patch panel.

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

no one has to do this. The HDV VTR has analog HD outputs (Y Pb Pr), and this goes right into the analog component inputs of the Kona LHe, which will take in analog HD signals, as well as analog standard def component.

See – look how much money you just saved !

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

If you are waiting for someone to say “oh, don’t get this or that, because it sucks”, you are in the wrong place. Both are excellent companies, both products work. All of us use AJA all the time, and the support is great.
Two good products – with personal preferences.

Bob Zelin