[Ramona Howard]

Richard,

Walter has a very good point. Building a system is possible but is not for everyone. SATA can be a excellent option if you know what your doing, otherwise turn to the experts if you don’t want the headaches.

Our systems are good and do everything we need them to, but only after about 6 months of development and working closley with all of the component manufactures. Do you have the time to spare is what you should be asking yourself.

Cheers,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Today, SDI (SMPTE 259M) is in widespread use as the method to transfer uncompressed digital audio and video signals between digital devices in broadcast and post-production facilities. The advent of compressed video formats such as DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50, Betacam SX, Digital-S, DVCAM, and MPEG-2 brought about the need to transfer compressed audio and video streams between devices. SDI has been used to meet this need, but signals must be uncompressed at the output of a device and recompressed at the input of the target device. Repeated compression/ decompression passes degrade the signal unnecessarily. SDTI was built on the SDI base to provide a mechanism for exchanging digital audio and video signals in their native compressed formats.

SDTI was built on the SDI base to provide a mechanism for exchanging digital audio and video signals in their native compressed formats.

Hope this helps,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Bob,

You and I seem to always be in trouble.

Without comparing to the Mac, because I can’t, let’s start.

I think we both agree, this is not for the meek.

The connectors are an issue, MLI is better than the standard connector and I can’t go into details (under NDA) but there are some changes coming out with at least one particular manufacture, I’m sure the others will follow.

We have tested a slew of manufactures and have gone with well, you will figure it out(the NDA thing) because of the changes we knew about many months ago.

It is stable if it’s done right. We suggest anytime a box is moved several items are checked that include cables, CPU’s, boards, etc. This is a given.

Our systems have NO cables exposed so once they are in, they are in. Not sure how the Mac set-up is.

Actually the only issue we have had with drives not mounting has been spinning up all the drives at once, and that we solved with staggering them. Also with drives unmounting for no reason, turned out to be a bad backplane(go figure).

Now one thing to remember is we are not doing an external array, it’s an all in one system so this may make a difference BUT again I can’t compare because we are not doing this on the Mac.

We have these systems running at several large studios, in addition to ours in-house and they are getting pounded hard. One by a 22 node render farm and it’s still able to play out (that is the render farm is hitting it without cache over bonded gigabit, all 22 nodes at once.

So yes SATA works, yes it was a pain to get it right, but it works great.

Love stirring it up with you,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Walter,

Yes the Kona2 is considered a Mac product but has worked well for us on the Linux side. Now that AJA has announced the new Xena2, which is the OEM version of the (Mac)Kona2 but for the PC, we will begin using this and really only because it offers more features geared towards the high-end studios(we have been very, very happy using the Kona 2). From our perspective we really don’t look at the boards as Mac or PC, since we wrote the driver we can use both sucessfully, in fact switching from Kona to Xena without having to do anything.

I try to only jump in when I feel it necessary since MOST of what is discussed is on the Mac OS but every now and then issues do arise that it is important to point out that it is not hardware and possibly an OS or software issue. We wouldn’t want people getting the wrong idea about how the hardware actually works or how good it works and that it’s up to the software to take advantage of it.

Cheers,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

I’m going to jump in . Let me first say that I respect both of you guys very much and I’m not here to stir it up BUT I wanted to clarify that SATA under the right circumstances has proven to be very stable.

We have been doing it for sometime now and it works great for every format. Sata has been used in the storage industry for awhile(it’s not something that just appeared 6 months ago) and it has moved over to the video I/O side of things very well. Let me add that it’s not for the meek as is most of the stuff we deal with in this industry and you guys are 100% correct in that even though it’s less expensive than SCSI and Fiber, it’s not $4000. Be prepared to spend some money if your looking to online your entire feature at once!

The nice thing is that in order to get the thru-put with SATA for 4:4:4, you need drives, and with drives you get the space so it really is a good choice if those are your needs. If you are needing thruput but less storage, SCSI and Fiber would be a better choice(less heads spinning).

We have done 4:4:4 on SCSI, SATA, Fiber and certified both Medea and Huge(not all models will do 4:4:4),and honestly it all works, it just depends on how much you want to spend and what your specific needs are.

I know you guys are big Mac users but this industry is not all Mac. It’s a happy mix of Windows, Mac and us over here on the Linux side. Not a single studio that I know of is 100% on one OS(well unless your Dreamworks), and many of them are using SATA succesfully. A statement that SATA is unstable is unfair, maybe SATA on Mac is unstable would have been better, but I bet there are some that would argue with that one also.

I think this guy simply needs to be made aware that $4,000 isn’t going to come close and given options to check into, and there are alot of options!

Cheers to all,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Cool, It’s nice when I understand this crazy stuff….

I will give you a call Monday, off for a weekend of fun.

Chow,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Thought I would mix it up a bit more….

One thing to check out is: Do all Sony decks only pass psf, I think the answer is yes, and it may be worth the research to check out the other manufactures also.

It seems to have been a standard that has been passed down for generations that in order to display to a monitor psf was how it was to be done, that is until the SR and 4:4:4 came along.

I’m digging thru all of my deck information to see if the answer can reveal itself, although this may be one of those topics that is hard to get to the bottom of.

Cheers to all,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Gary,

I’ll try not to boch this up, forgive me if I do. This in laymans terms is how I understand it.

1080i(interlaced) the stream is passed down the wire at different rates, thus when it reaches the end and is displayed we see the offset or interlacing.

1080psf(progressive segmented)is passed down at the same rate but at different times, kinda like a pulse so that when it reaches the end you have segmented parts of the image but no offset, thus no visable interlacing.

1080p(progressive)The entire image is passed down the wire at the same time. As in the case of Dual Link, the Red and part of the green(I believe) is down one wire and the rest of the green and blue down the other.

Hope this helps a bit,

Cheers,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Fred,

I found the information in the OEM products, under Xena2, which is the equivalent to the Kona2. (Xena is for the PC, Kona is for the Mac)

We have been doing 24p for quite awhile and up until the Kona2, used the Xena line of boards. Our latest systems used the K2 because the Xena2 was not out yet.(Our driver supports both Xena and Kona). Let me add that most of our clients are doing 24p and this would be an issue if the board/s were not capable.

I would suggest a call to AJA to confirm as I will do the same because your right the brochure does not have that information on it. We have seen no difference in what the two lines support and it may be just an oversight.

Life is never dull……….

Cheers,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Thought I would jump in.

The Kona cards have/do support both 24p and 24psf.

Here is the format info right off the AJA website.
HD Formats: 1080i 50.00/59.94/60.00, 720p 59.94/60.00, 1080p sf 23.98/24.00, 1080p 23.98/24.00/29.97/30.00

We do have studios using both p and psf that’s why I was a bit confused when this came up.

The issue of psf vs p is for another day……

Hey Gary, drop me an email, I’m working on some Varicam info for our website and could use some input.

Cheers,
Ramona Howard