[Peter Fagan]

I wonder what incentive AJA would need to throw us a bone on this one little driver.

I’ve dutifully stayed down on Yosemite because I still have scores of analog tapes to push through my ioHD. Meanwhile, Apple have started trying to sneak High Sierra (and now Mojave) onto my computer by quietly including it in ‘Update All’ when notifications of software updates come.

My Apple menu now permanently contains a ‘1 update’ notice that I shan’t be attending.

Then, last week, my iPhone got an update and now refuses to speak to Yosemite. I use a third-party app now for that activity.

All credit to AJA for building a cracking piece of hardware. Yosemite may seem like the Upper Cretaceous to the body clock of a desktop app developer but surely it’s the durable gear that’s in the right?

[Peter Fagan]

Hi Aidan, the IoHD has been a great box for compressing ProRes. One caveat: the TBC in my VHS decks didn’t satisfy the thing and I ended up using a dedicated digitiser/TBC connected by SDI to the IoHD.

My system is a 2010 MacBook Pro 17 which I’ve kept peppy by maxxing the RAM and swapping in an SSD. I’m still on Yosemite plus whatever updates the App Store has offered me, short of El Capitan.

The AJA software is the the latest available, same as before. 10.3.2 with VTR Exchange 5.2 as the capture app. I can’t remember if 5.2 solves any problems but you’ll notice that the 10.3.2 package comes with VTR Exchange 5.1. The log and capture window in FCP can be used in place of VTR Exchange.

[Peter Fagan]

AJA got back to me. They too had been surprised that this end-of-life driver was still working as late as Yosemite. But as you guessed, there’s no management interest in exhuming the corpse for the benefit of El Capitan.

Eminently fair, really.

I’m back on Yosemite now and when the IoHD has finished its work I’ll just prep a compatible boot disk to mothball along with it.

Quick look was running irritatingly slow in El Capitan anyway…

[Peter Fagan]

I knew I was out in the wastelands already so I had nothing to lose seeing how far the AJA software would last. And I’m still getting value out of FCP7.

If I’d just taken it as read that the stuff wouldn’t work under Yosemite I’d have missed out on months of productivity in a nice, fresh OS.

So you’ll have to pardon me for being experimental. No smear on AJA if I’m S.O.L. and party time if they deign to tweak the installer. I’m prepared to mark my optimism wrong and downgrade. Just not right now.

[Peter Fagan]

Neither, unfortunately; I’ve been capturing a load of analog archival stuff using AJA’s own app, then doling it out afterwards to a stable of FCP projects.

I’ve got my machine rebuild routine down to a science so I’ll drop back to Yosemite if I have to. Replacing the IoHD will have to wait until it gets a certain number of projects out the door.

I’ve got mail out to AJA support.

I hope AJA won’t let this one lie as their installer serves more than just my trusty IoHD.

Apple, for example, have just built a fresh installer for legacy Java because Illustrator CS6 needs it.

[Peter Fagan]

Yeah, I’d noticed that. I busted out the calculator, zoomed screenshots and divided by 4.86 to get some on-the-pixel crop values.

My new adventure is that I occasionally have to drop 720×480 clips into a mostly 720×486 sequence. The smaller clips seem to get blurred a bit even when the motion tab says they’re not scaled or distorted. Perhaps I’m just misunderstanding an attempt to illustrate the interlacing.

Unearthing the treasures of portapak…

[Peter Fagan]

Sets my mind at rest to know for sure — thanks.

[Peter Fagan]

I popped over to AJA Support just in time to see them withdraw support for the IoHD post Mt Lion.

I decided to back off and lie low in Mt Lion for a while, especially since Mavericks left out some basic support needed for my eSATA ExpressCard.

Back now with loads of great news.

1. An SSD has added 6 months to my 2010 MBP17. Yosemite’s ticking along at new computer speed.
2. Motion is dead but FCP7, Soundtrack Pro and DVD Studio are fine.
3. IoHD is fine, but please note that I capture with VTR Exchange and edit in FCP later
4. Yosemite restored support for my eSATA card.

And lastly, a bit of googling turned up the directory /Library/LaunchAgents. In there I spotted and removed com.aja.iohdupdater.plist since no updates will be forthcoming.

A happy new year indeed.

[Peter Fagan]

I had hoped that I would get some timing help from the IoHD’s frame buffer but I suppose VHS is very much no shirt no shoes. This old gear is certainly giving me a workout 32 years down the line:

Time to make a foray to For.A…

[Peter Fagan]

I sure hope I’m misled as you suggest, but both feeds are most certainly carrying NTSC signals.

I should have been clearer, however – on the block diagram screenshot, the multiple instances of the Ref portion that are shown don’t appear simultaneously – they randomly flicker between each other. So although I’m pushing NTSC black into the IoHD, that’s only intermittently being reflected in the Ref portion of the control panel’s block diagram.

The time base fluctuates on these 30yo tapes, so feeding the NTSC black burst into Ref is intended to metronome the video into lock-step.

In any case, I tried pulling the sync gen outta Ref and let the IoHD use the poor old video as the sync source. The block diagram in the AJA control panel remains flickeringly unstable 🙁