[Dan Riley]

Not an HD expert, let someone else tell you that part.
But as someone who does the uprez process on my DV offline to
SD finishing, ANYTHING you can do to stay away from the Media Manager
I would do. It’s a train-wreck. I wish Apple would get an understanding
of how important this area is to pros who uprez, but they seem to be
deaf on this aspect of FCP. It should be one click, load up my tapes,
ingest, and have a new timeline where EVERYTHING JUST WORKS.
Believe me, it’s far from that experience with FCP.

Probably I’d just let the KONA output it however you need it,
but like I said, I don’t have the HD gear yet.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

That’s why we have two units in the suite. We put everything
on the two units. When we have power glitches, which happens
about once a week and lasts a second or two, we just get a notice on the desktop that says
“you are on backup power”. We have absolutely no impact on our editing
or monitoring. We only know there was a glitch because the lights
flicked off and on (and the desktop notice).

dr

[Dan Riley]

We really like the APC SUA1500 Smart UPS. $550 approx.
(they also make a rack mount version.)
We have four of them in your facility.
OS X has a native driver for it. You don’t have to install software.
Just connect the USB cable to your Mac Pro and it tells you when
the power goes out and your percentage left, etc. The unit itself
works like a charm. For what you described, one unit would be fine
but two would give you more time before you have to shut down.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

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

Dan

[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]

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.

[Dan Riley]

The thing that’s worrisome about all you guys saying AJA ONLY is
you are promoting a one-card-situation. You are actually going to get a
less functional product at more cost down the road, because competition
has been limited by Apple’s approach of favoring one over the other.
They killed Aurora by doing this and others as well.
Just remember, progress in product development does not happen without
competition.

When talking down Black Magic, I very seldom see stated
an example of what it is that makes AJA better. 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. Plus the cost is much higher for AJA once you do all that.
If people are going to purchase AJA KONA 3 over the Black Magic products,
let’s hear some solid reasons why you promote spending more.
The explanation “everybody uses it” sounds like why people use WIndows.

dr

[Dan Riley]

Walter,

So if your Sony PVM is getting the same feed as your Plasma,
and you are setting an offset of 2 to make the Plasma look correct,
doesn’t that mean your PVM is off?

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Wayne and Ben,
Are you seeing speeds and number of streams available for editing
close to what Facilis was marketing the unit to do?

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Thanks Ben.
I’m just gathering info today and your input was helpful.

Dan