[Bob Zelin]

even if it were true, you could pick up a Sonnet or Firmtek SATA host card, use your exact same drives, and be back in business for $150 – $290.
These HBA’s don’t conflict with Blackmagic products.

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Good morning. I guess you don’t read any of these forums.

That’s right Gregg. Your Kona 2 WILL NOT fit into a new G5 Quad. But guess what – neither will any card from Blackmagic, Aurora, Pinnacle – or any storage PCI card from ATTO, Adaptec, Firmtek, Highpoint, Sonnet, or ANY OTHER CARD THAT YOU CURRENTLY OWN. Your screwed Gregg – screwed – now what will you do.

Here is what you will do Gregg – you will continue to make money with your EXCELLENT Kona 2 card, as will most of us, and enjoy making excellent hi quality videos, while you make lots of money. Of course, you can fly out to Cupertino, and go yell at Steve Jobs, but unless you get a PCI-EXPRESS card (like the new AJA Kona LHe), you AIN’T gonna get ANY old PCI or PCI-X card to fit in ANY of the new MAC PCI Express computers. Most people will worry about the vast amount of money they have invested in their storage products, and suffer over having to wait for ATTO, etc. to develop PCI Express host adaptors like the UL5D for their disk drives. MAC AVID owners, that must use ATTO cards, will simply WAIT until the UL5D is ready, before they even think of getting a Quad G5.

Shall I send you a box of tissues ? I’m not the smart ass – Steve Jobs is.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

easy – call Maxx Digital in Calif. (714) 374 4944. Speak to Ron Amborn.
I get all my stuff from him – he sells the Hitachi and Seagate SATA drives, the Firmtek enclosures, and the Sonnet SATA host if you want as well. It’s all real cheap. He was my source for SCSI until I started using SATA so much.

I usually use 2 400 gig or 2 500 Gig Hitachi SATA drives, giving me 800 Gig or 1 Terabyte, in a RAID 0 configuration. I have not had one failure yet (although it’s only been since April 05 since I have been using SATA, so I am sure that they will start to fail once the year is up !). You will have no problems doing 10 bit SDI uncompressed with this configuration. There are other, safer ways to do this (HUGE and Medea with RAID 3 protection), but they are much more expensive.

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

I agree – this ain’t an AVID with Mediadabase issues. Make it one big mama partition, make sure to RAID it, and go to work.

bob zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Andy and Joel are both correct – you can use a small mixer, you can use a patch bay. But if you want to spend zero money, you can simply drop the record levels on the front of the Beta machine all the way down, so it won’t feedback into the VTR. Only turn them up, when you want to dump back out to your VTR. But this is a sloppy way to work. Put a mixer in line, and you will have no more issues (but you have to know how to use a mixer – not hard, but it’s not brainless).

All audio and video products are prone to this – not just AJA. If you hooked up two VTRs to each other, or any 2 devices that can record to each other, you will get the same “feedback” effect. This is the nature of these products. You learn how to deal with it. The mixer is your cheap “correct” solution – but like I said – you can just drop your record levels on the VTR for right now, to get you going.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Buy SATA, and be done with it. 2 SATA drives from any manufacturer – G-Tech, Lacie, Firmtek, ProMax, etc. will do 10 bit SDI flawlessly. If you want cheap, you can get a Terabyte of SATA storage from Firmtek, and use the 2 port SATA card that comes with the bundle, all for about $1000.

Walter has used the G-Tech FW800 for 10 bit, but I am sure that he does his “real jobs” with his Fibre Medea. You certainly can use FW800 drives, and I can assure you that 8 bit with a single FW800 drive will do exactly what you want. With 10 bit – what you describe will probably work, but if it was me, I would go SATA. Cheap, and no aggrivation.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Rick –
you are asking for a lot on a forum like this. May I suggest that you look for a systems engineer to help you. There are many many issues to consider. Building a facility is not easy.

You have A LOT OF SOURCES AND DESTINATIONS to deal with. The problem with many of the small routers (like Knox, Sigma, Kramer, etc.) is that they max out at 16×16, and are usually “one level” – which means composite video and stereo audio only. You have to deal with composite video, analog component video, SDI (and now HD-SDI), analog audio (possibly 4 channels), possibly AES audio, and Time Code, in addition to RS422. All of these need to be reassignable. There are a lot more than 16 source/destination combos in your facility. Patching may be “messier” than a router, but a large router is EXPENSIVE.

As for the monitors, the PVM-20L5/1 has been discontinued by Sony, as have most of their CRT monitors. Even the PVM-20L2 is discontinued, but they are still in stock at B_H photo, and other places (but not the 20L5). Most of us love that monitor, but you can’t get it anymore. The LCD monitors, that have been discussed over and over on this forum, look TERRIBLE with Standard Def video. This includes the Sony Luma Series
Like the LMD2020, and LMD232. They are teriffic for HD, but not for standard def (like SDI). You can do just as well for HD work with countless cheaper options from Apple, Dell, Sony, and HP.

To answer your question “what do you like for a router” – I believe that every brand on the market is better, more reliable, and easier to use than Knox. Sigma Electronics is teriffic, but because everyone wants low low cost – Kramer (or Ocean Matrix – same product) are very good and reliable.
Of course, more expensive companies, like Leitch, Pesa, Grass Valley, Utah Scientifc, Sierra (now owned by Kramer), BTS, are fantastic, but these products are very expensive.

The fact that the Blackmagic Videohub (SDI/HDSDI and RS422 only) is 12×24
and is only $4995 is an absolute miracle, compared to anything else on the market. But as you keep adding D/A converters, this “cheap price” does not become cheap for long.

A project like this is often not a “do it yourself” kind of job. You might like to think about hiring a local engineer who does this all the time to help you.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

as a general overview, as your shop is facing growing pains, you must start thinking about doing the “infrastructure” stuff required for this type of growth. It is my GENERAL advice that you run a million wires into each room, bringing EVERYTHING up to patch bays – all composite, component, and SDI (or HD-SDI if the jacks are shared). Throw out that horrible Knox router, and if you like (and can afford it), get the Blackmagic VideoHub as a HD-SDI/SDI router for these HD-SDI/SDI sources and destinations. The videohub itself will normal on the bays to the various I/O’s for your Kona 2 and SDI or HD SDI VTR’s. Becuase you have run ALL WIRES up to patch bays, you normal your existing analog monitoring (TV’s, mixers, etc.) to the VTR’s and AJA products that you wish to have normally connected, and then you can patch the “non normal” situation. You don’t need the AJA HD10C2’s – you already have analog outputs on everything – just run enough cables.

Your expense will be your central rack, audio, and video patch bays, and the cable and labor required to do this job. This is the typical installation that everyone from the mid size shop to the huge TV network has to do. Patch bays, and cabling is a fact of life. There are stil too many things that you have to deal with (Beta VTR’s, VHS, etc.) that require analog to just think about a small SDI router – even if it’s 12×24 – that is still small (but teriffic for routing your existing SDI and HDSDI). Get the patch bays.

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Shane – the delay is about 4 frames (3-5 frames) and can be “solved” with a Rane AVA-22d, which is about $600 US. Your plasma will now have “sync audio” but will be out of sync with the MAC computer monitors. Stick with LCD, unless you put the Plasma in a conference room.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

I cannot begin to tell you how many people ask me if there is a DVI-D version of the HD Link for the 30″ cinema display. This should DEFINATELY become a product for you guys.

Bob Zelin