Ramona Howard
Forum Replies Created
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David,
you comment:
Then there is SATA, which is cheap but unprotected.Just want to clarify this as is not entirely accurate. The Kona card can be utilized on other platforms and products other than the Mac and that do offer RAID protection using SATA.
We have been offering this(SATA) for well over a year along with SCSI and Fiber for much longer and utilizing Konas, Xenas and OEM boards while running in studios worldwide in both RAID 0 and RAID 5. SATA is stable, don’t be mislead it isn’t.
Although our particular application is agnostic as to if it’s a Kona, Xena or AJA OEM card and I do realize that most on this forum are referring to the Mac side, just though that I should interject. SATA is agnostic to the OS but does not offer the same issues on each OS and where MAC may be a bit behind the gun on this we(Linux) are not.
SATA has proven an economical way to get studios into 444 with RAID protection, where other products have failed. I can say that we were unable to achieve RAID protection on FIBER(16 drives) for Sin City, however we can with SATA (24 drives) and for far less dollars.
SATA is economical and must be utilize in a smart way (it has it’s place) but can hold it’s own with it’s SCSI and Fiber counterparts in the right workflow.
Cheers,
Ramona
http://www.spectsoft.com
RaveHD – The first uncompressed VTR/DDR solution to open it’s source code.Cheers,
Ramona -
Jeremy,
You may try contacting AJA direct to confirm delivery times to dealers. My guess is they are rather busy with these but they may be able to point you to someone who may have one.
Good luck and we will be posting our info on the new boards soon.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Jeremy,
We received the OEM version yesterday, so I would imagine the Konas to be shipping also.
Sweet card!
Cheers,
Ramona -
Tim,
Audio conforming is one of the features we are implementing into RaveHD as we speak and any insight or a list of features would be welcome (not that it’s not long already). The immediate features are just simply conforming for the different frame rates. Items like shooting at 60hz for PAL, converting to 59.94hz for NTSC. The software can be fairly flexable on what needs to happen because process time for audio is nothing compared to video and we have lots of process time available.
The AJA boards are well made components but can only perform as well as the software they sit on. Therefore, when we begin to implement a feature we step back and try to get everyones perspective so hopefully we only have to design it once.
I hope to hear your thoughts on what you would like to see included.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Garrett,
I’m not a MAC person but the drives seem to be the issue not the Kona.
In addition, check your cabels (to the drives).
The online, offline is a good indication that somethings a bit wrong here, kinda the same as if your network cuts in/out.
Best of luck,
Ramona -
I think you guys are forgetting a little piece of the puzzle. Linux.
I wanted to jump in before the thread died, sorry I’m late to the game, I hardly get time to read the Premiere forum. Let me start by saying I have used Premiere for about 5+ years and have enjoyed the growth.
Adobe products allow us to not fall into the proprietary hardware game, which is always good but do lack some of the tools needed for the high-end side of things. I think we can all agree on this.
Linux has been sneaking up on this industry for years and although I don’t think it will have the power that Apple has on us, it could very well offer the Avid solution that everyone is seeking. More and more apps are introduced yearly and it’s only a matter of time before a great NLE is in the game.
We have been addressing the high-end (Avid user) workflow for several years and RaveHD is meeting the needs of the studios as are many apps on the Linux OS. The OS plays a big role here because it allows us to develop at a much faster rate and offers the stability we can’t get from Windows or having to play the proprietary game with Apple. Now if Adobe were smart, they would port so the real fun could begin. A free stable OS with a world full of developers running Adobe products….did I mention developers.
I’m not a Linux nut, I just understand that the limitations with both Windows and Apple will not get us what we all want or at least not as fast as we want it or at a price we want to pay.
Take a look at products like RaveHD, Graphics Magic, Houdini, Cinepaint, you may be surprised, but it may surprise you even more to see that the cost is the same to do SD and 444 RGB HD on most of these apps.
The pro NLE is just around the corner for this OS and it makes sense to have it come from a company that has the reputation such as Adobe. We have been considering this as our next project since most of the foundation has been layed with RaveHD but more than likely we will just add in timeline support as the first step towards this.
Suggestions are always welcome.
The RaveHD project and products can be found at:
https://www.spectsoft.com/wiki/Website/HomePageCheers,
Ramona -
Jeremy,
If my movie or commercial were at stake I would not build it myself. Simple storage that doesn’t need the transfer rates is another thing…
Raid 5 will give you the protection needed, but you must be diligent. Loosing more than 1 drive out of the array would not be good.
Controllers in Raid 5 are more than adequate, especially the new 3ware 9550. We can do HD, Raid 5 on 8 drives (actually less but we like overhead).
RGB 444 is a different story.It’s our own app, but I know of plenty of companies doing this using Premiere as the editor.
Here is our info on the 24 drive system:
https://www.spectsoft.com/wiki/RaveManual/Products/RaveHDPrevious projects were using the same app but different systems. Everything from Fiber to SCSI to SATA. This system is being used for Ice Age 2 without issues.
Anyone doing HD is pretty much in the same league. The datarates are all the same. Our only difference is we address workflow issues that programs like Premiere and FCP don’t or can’t.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Jeremy,
You comment:
SATA offers little or no protection while Fibre arrays do. I had a drive fail in my Fibre array and I kept working while a new drive was shipped from the manufacturer overnight. I installed the new drive the next day and the array rebuilt itself in the background while I continued editing.SATA does offer this same solution, not sure where you are getting this from. If you run in RAID protection modes you can continue to work, replace the drive and rebuild without loosing any data.
You comment:
Although SATA is getting there, there’s not a ‘homebuilt’ SATA solution that I know of that can handle this type of situation.Agreed, SATA should be built and configured by companies that know what they are doing. But honestly you don’t need to be a brain surgeon here. Our systems are built be a company in Fremont that is huge, they are, or have been #1 sellers for both Intel and AMD and have been doing this for awhile. Working side by side to build and configure our systems I can say there is allot to it but once you understand the do’s and don’ts it’s rather easy.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Fiber is awesome but does have limitations in itself. HD and even 2K for that matter can be done on SATA just as easily as Fiber. It really boils down to what makes sense for the studios workflow.
Fiber has more than proved itself and in fact it was what we(the studio) used for the Sin City project BUT we are getting better performance on the 24 drive SATA solution than the 16 drive Fiber array that was used and many of our customers are using a SATA solution today vs the fiber because of cost, storage space and the flexability that can be done with SATA vs Fiber.
Within our app, we have a job system that throttles the network, we can’t throttle fiber, or at least not yet. This is a huge seller because items can run in the background and watch the buffer to throttle the network when needed. This allows you to get I/O and jobs running at the same time when the system allows.
This is not to advocate Fiber vs SATA and only to show that many considerations should be looked at when making a choice. Not an easy process by any means.
Good luck to all.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Dale,
You ask:
And so to put it out there again for dummies like me who may want to repeat your workflow, you are saying that your capture card can toss the dupe frames out on capture?The AJA board handles this BUT like I think you guys have already figured out it’s the software that is really determining what frames to keep and throw out. As Gary pointed out this feature was added into RaveHD for Troopers 2. The software can choose to capture all or just flagged. Bill Hogan and SpectSoft work very closely together to insure we can support features like this as well as others.
Cheers,
Ramona