[Paul Ramsbottom]

>>> Perhaps more telling, I just checked the ‘Info’ panel in the Kona control panel and I see I have an error, saying the card is running in PCI mode and that only PCI-X cards should be installed in that bus. Everything I read, including material from AJA suggested that my Fibre card should go in the very uppermost slot (the 133mhz) and the Kona card should go in the next one down (working toward the GPU of course)

>>>> Yep, this was it. Found the answer in another post from the inestimable Mr Zelin. Two years ago no less.

Arcane as this may seem, in this set-up, you must leave slot #2 unused (I had a 4 port USB card in there). Upon removal and restart, all is well and I can now switch between audio sources to my heart’s content.

Thanks Bob, senility aside, you live up to your reputation 🙂

[Paul Ramsbottom]

>>> Thanks Bob

> Using a Kona 2 in a Dual 2.7ghz PowerMac G5. 10.4.11, 8GB last Kona drivers. Yea, I know I’m not exactly on the cutting edge here 😉

>> REPLY – I am so old and senile, I don’t even remember what a Kona2 is – it’s the Kona 3, but for PCI-X (the old MAC G5), right ?

>>> Correct.

> Can’t seem to get the audio inputs working. Have a reliable mic plugged into the first XLR of the BOB, the Kona control panel settings are at default. When I open audio system preferences, audio input is set with the Kona as a default input device but no audio input is being detected on the System Preferences level meter.

>> REPLY – OK, Mr. Altzhemimers responding here. The Kona 2 is a HD-SDI or SD-SDI input only. Those XLR’s are AES/EBU digital audio only, NOT analog audio inputs. And even if they were analog audio inputs (which they are not – only the Kona LH series has analog XLR audio inputs), you CANNOT plug a low level microphone into a line level input – even if it is an analog input. A Mic is a -60dB signal at least – you need a PREAMP (like a mixer) to boost up the level. Even if you have a mixer or preamp to boost up your mic signal to line level (+4dBu), you aint’ getting this singal into a digital AES/EBU XLR input – you need to convert your analog signal to AES/EBU. There are tons of mic preamps that are sold today with AES/EBU outputs on them.

>>> That’s it. Forgive my ignorance, which is clearly extensive.

> Anyone have any thoughts. I’m a novice at using the Kona card and I expect there might be a couple of ‘wiring’ steps in the Kona control panel that I should be doing before then heading into System Preferences (if at all).

>> REPLY – these last few paragraphs confuse me. System Preferences is refered to for the MAC OS settings, which have nothing to do with the AJA Control Panel, AJA Kona Control Panel, or FCP. When you open the AJA Control Panel, the input tab selects between AES/EBU and embedded SDI audio – not analog audio. In FCP, even if you had an old AJA I/O or Kona LH (which both have anlaog inputs), the selection is done in EASY SETUPS, or Audio/Video settings, not System Preferences. When you say “System Preferences” – are you refering to the SOUND control panel ? You don’t make your selections here.

>>> Yes, when I say *Kona* control panel, I mean just that. When I say System preferences, I do indeed mean the sound portion of the Mac OS X control panel.

>> Either way, you ain’t getting a MIC into ANY AJA product (or blackamgic, or MOTU, or Matrox) – you need to boost up the level with a pre amp or mixer, and for your Kona 2, you need to convert this to AES/EBU.

>>> Understood, and thanks for the patient response. However, I am still getting a hang on my system, even with no input sources plugged-in at all. This happens when I change my audio I/O setting in the Mac OS X System Preferences audio control panel, or in FCP’s Audio//video settings. If I select the Kona, the system hangs, badly.

>>> My rather colloquially-phrased question about needing to do any ‘wiring’ in the *Kona* control panel application first was probing whether there are any settings that must be changed here in a ‘normal’ set-up. For example, I have no idea what ‘Lock audio gain to Unity means’ and if it should be checked or not.

>>> Perhaps more telling, I just checked the ‘Info’ panel in the Kona control panel and I see I have an error, saying the card is running in PCI mode and that only PCI-X cards should be installed in that bus. Everything I read, including material from AJA suggested that my Fibre card should go in the very uppermost slot (the 133mhz) and the Kona card should go in the next one down (working toward the GPU of course).

>>> Perhaps this might be the culprit, I’d love to hear some further feedback – thanks all.

[Paul Ramsbottom]

I went ahead and bought the Kona 2 card and installed it with the latest drivers alongside my Matrox MXO which I still use to display. Two observations. Jeremy is absolutely correct, I do not see any speed improvements when rendering the timeline. However, and apologies for the largely anecdotal analysis of this but it definitely feels as if my system has had a performance increase in general use, and I noticed that FCP re-profiled for RT Extreme upon first launch after this install.

Overall the system has a definite extra snap when quickly scrubbing through large HDV timelines. I know that sounds terribly subjective but it’s definitely there. I’ll see if I can find some way to benchmark it, although I probably can’t be bothered to do an uninstall for that. It’s not much but definitely worth the $270 with shipping that I paid for this card, BOB and cables.

I’m pretty impressed with the quality of this [now somewhat old] AJA product. They definitely live up to their reputation of quality.

A final question if anyone feels like indulging me. When I finally drag my giant Sony 34″ 1080i HD TV into my studio, and start using it as a client monitor for my ProRes422 24P projects, will the 1080 23.98 psf output selection be the correct setting. Based on everything I have read here it is but I wanted to check. I suppose it must be that ‘progressive segmented format” that my PS3 uses to send a 24P image from my Bluray disks to my 1080i TV.

[Paul Ramsbottom]

Thanks Noah,

Yes, my originally instincts told me to stick with the ProRes route, and that’s also behind all my discussion of the grading workflow. Uncompressed is also an option for me in Color but the data there gets unmanageable very quickly, and there’s no real way I can play even short uncompressed QTs on my current set-up, so previewing gets tricky

Looking at the ProRes master file again last night, there’s some artifacting in those clips but nothing like I see in the iDVD-authored SD disk. Presumably the ProRes > MPEG2 encode that happens within iDVD is creating those visual glicthes.

I’ve heard that with high-end encoding systems (I’ve seen mention of a company called Terranex) the hardware-based encoders can do a much better job generally, and also it is possible for an operator to manually tweak the data-rates, increasing them temporarily in data-intensive sequences.

When I play my mixed HDV/ProRes FCP project out over the Matrox box it looks absolutely beautiful, my thought was to dump this onto a high-end HDCam or HDCAM SR tape, and hand that off to the good duplicator/encoding house, and be done with software-based encoding altogether.

Really trying to understand if there are any gotchas here (aside from the cost of renting the desk and the tapes).