[Ken Hon]

Aloha Jamie,

Ok this is going to sound dumb, but try taking the DVI cable that is used to connect the K-Box to the card and reverse it (attach the end that is now on the computer to the K-Box and vice versa). I recall having the same issue and this fixed it.

Ken

[Ken Hon]

Thanks, I guess that clears that up. Actually the guys that want this are scientists and they need the video clocked to other instruments. Trouble is that we need to make both Time Stamped and then non time stamped video for them. We would have preferred to have both edited, but it appears that would take a lot of work. We actually can ingest the analog video via a Kona 3 and send it out to a hardware Mpeg encoder on another machine and capture it real time, then burn a DVD. I was just trying to find a way to cut down work and add a timestamp to the edited video as this will be an ongoing project. Anyway, thanks and back to plan A 🙂

Aloha,

Ken

[Ken Hon]

Bob’s advice is correct, you don’t want to downconvert until you have finished the edit and you do want to monitor directly from your Kona card. An alternative workflow that we use sometimes is to bring in the HDV footage as 1080i via firewire. Edit as HDV, then set your output on the Kona card to 525i. You can monitor what the SD output will look like as you edit on a standard monitor. You can then lay out the SD project to Digibeta using SDI or to something else with the component out. The nice thing is the Kona card will let you choose aspect ratio and type of trim during the downconvert. You can also conform the HDV project at the end (takes some time) and lay an HDV version back to tape. If you are doing lots of graphics though, your probably better using Bob’s workflow.

Aloha,

Ken

[Ken Hon]

Aloha David,

I don’t have much to add beyond what Bob’s advice is, only that I had a nasty problem with a new Mac Quad a year ago with a SATA and Kona 3 card. It had the reboot problem and also froze during playback. I was totally focused on the SATA card, which was in fact bad, but by doing so overlooked other problems. Turned out my playback problem was the Kona 3 card. Both of these cards went bad within the first month of having this system. Anyway, the only way I figured this out was to make a smaller subset project that reliably caused the problem and then move this onto both an internal drive and a firewire drive. I then pulled all the cards and all my memory except for 1GB. I then switched the memory in and out and tried to recreate the problem. That wasn’t my problem. Then I began substituting cards 1 at a time and it was only then that I could separate the problems with both cards. I talked to the folks at AJA and they confirmed the problem with me over the phone and sent me a new card right away. Same with the SATA card. But this was a major pain in the rear. Again, I’m not saying this is your issue, but it sounds like you could be having more than one problem like I was.

Aloha,

Ken

[Ken Hon]

Aloha Mike,

These cards do a few important things for some folks, but they aren’t a necessity for everyone. So depending on what you do, they may just be expensive overkill. The long and short of it is that if you don’t have SDI or HDSDI enabled gear, and are using firewire and a computer screen to monitor, then you may not need one of these cards. Here’s a list of stuff a Kona card can do:

1 Digitize material coming in via HDSDI/SDI or analog component (LH only).

2.Upconvert or Crossconvert (720 to 1080 or reverse) during digitizing.

3.Digitized material can be captured in a bunch of codecs, including DVCPRO HD or uncompressed.

4.Some acceleration during editing (the card does some of the work)

5.Monitor output on professional grade monitors using analog or HDSDI during editing so you can do accurate color correction and monitoring of levels.

6.Output via HDSDI/SDI or analog to a variety of professional decks or other devices.

[Ken Hon]

Sure, ingesting via firewire is not a problem, but upconverting DV or downconverting HD to DV thru the Kona 3 card has to go in via HDSDI/SDI and out via SDI or component, unless I’m missing some additional magic that our Kona 3 can do (that would be great if it could do files on the fly, but I don’t think it can). If you are rendering the project from HD to DV then you don’t really need the Kona card as far as I understand it.

Aloha,

Ken

[Ken Hon]

The other thing to keep in mind is that the Kona 3 and LH have no firewire input or output. The Kona 3 is really valuable if you are using HDSDI and SDI devices. If you do not have these, then you can output analog component through the monitor outputs and analog audio monitors as well. Otherwise you will need a SDI to analog converter or SDI to firewire converter. The Kona LH has better component analog in and out, but no upconvert or cross convert. And, upconverting DV to HD and then downconverting will not improve the quality.

Aloha,

Ken

[Ken Hon]

We have a Kona 3 card and I just built a 4.5 TB Raid array using a Sonnet eSATA PCI-e card and 2 sonnet Fusion 5 bay boxes. You can get both of these directly from Sonnet and they come with eSATA cables (about $1300 for all that). Then I got 10 500 GB Hitachi from NewEgg.com for about $2400. So you can build a RAID 0 array like this for about $4000. The only thing you have to do is put the card in your Mac and screw the drives into the drive trays. The 10 drive array does R/W on the default Kona disk test of 350 MB/sec and 325 MB/sec (Read/Write). A five drive version of this array will have about 2.3 TB of formatted storage and R/W speeds of about 210/190. The only problem that I encountered was that one of the Hitachi Drives wasn’t working right. You can test them individually with the Kona Test prior to making the RAID, they should have R/W speeds in the range of 61-64 MB/sec. NewEgg exchanged the disks without a problem, but this could be a hassle from Italy!

[Ken Hon]

Aloha Bob,
I know Ron and Kathlyn, and they are not fools – they would NEVER want someone as volatile as me as a “host” on a forum that generates income for them.

But your replies make great reading, both for information and commentary, at least when they’re not directed at me:)!

And the Grateful Dead were great tech heads. My ex-wife was a sound engineer with a big concert company and I got to hang out in the Grateful Dead sound booth at one concert where their engineer showed me how they used FFT’s to do noise cancellation at each venue by setting up a network of microphones. They had all the setups on a computer. The FFT computer was classified at the time (around 1990) and they couldn’t take it to foreign countries as it was used by the Navy for noise cancellation in submarines or some such thing.

Aloha,

Ken

[Ken Hon]

Andy,

The normal cable length for eSATA (the kind of cables used with port multipliers) is 1m but the eSATA spec supports cables up to 2m evidently. I’ve never tried those though, just 1 m. We have 2 ProMax 5 drive arrays using Hitachi 500 Mb drives and our G5 quad is much noisier than the arrays. They are certainly way quieter than our older SCSI drive arrays. All 10 drives striped together as Raid 0 gives us read write speeds slightly in excess of 450 MB/sec and 370 MB/sec using the Kona Drive test. I suggest testing each drive individually and formating them individually prior to the raid as we found 1 drive that was occasionally dropping in speed and it was causing problems in the array (erratic drops in the r/w speed). You can also make yourself a 20GB or so file and copy it back and forth to the array and use the checksum utility to make sure you are getting bit for bit accuracy. These drives work very well though. Also be sure the Sonnet card only goes in a 4x slot if you have PCI-e.

Aloha,

Ken