[Richard Thornton]

This didn’t work for me – I followed your instructions. But, does it make a difference to make the time (clip length) change AFTER the audio and video have been transcoded? Do I have to go back and un-transcode them somehow, so they’ll be re-transcoded with the proper (matching) clip lengths? Why is it that the clip lengths are different to begin with? When I check in my PP project timeline, they are the same length – what happened to them in Encore?

Thanks in advance for any help you can be –

[Richard Thornton]

Thanks for the prompt reply. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help. I’ve followed the steps as best I can (from your reply, and some of the others); but, I’m still missing something very basic – notwithstanding that I’m still missing a damn manual for Encore). I’ve set my chapter markers in my PP project window, then used the dynamic link to open it up in Encore. Now what?

[Richard Thornton]

Oh yeah – I now think most of my problems have been with the actual Encore portion of the CS4 package. Where is the (similar) .pdf file of the “Using Encore..” (or whatever) document that you pointed me to for CS4 previously? It seems to be even better hidden..

Thanks in advance –

[Richard Thornton]

Thank You very much for taking the time to reply, and especially for pointing out the link to the actual .pdf of the user’s guide. That’s a lot easier for me to refer to than the scattered help files from within the actual CS4 program(s), and it’s more of what I’m accustomed to in learning new hardware and software.
At 500+ pages, I can see why they wouldn’t send a print copy with the software. And, at that size, it trumps both the manuals for the Yamaha PM5D digital mixing console (360+ pages) and the Barco Encore Presentation System (230+ pages) that I’ve been through to learn successfully over the years. But, what I am still missing (and what those two other manufacturers do provide) is a comprehensive “quick start guide” (laminated, even). The tutorials are nice, and highlight specific features, but I’m still looking for a more straightforward HDV-to-DVD workflow procedure for quickly and easily getting the event DVDs to the customers.

[Richard Thornton]

Hi Tim – Thanks for your continued interest. I’m on the phone with the Kona PC tech support guy(s) now.
Your post did remind me that I didn’t include my PC’s case and PSU configuration – it’s an Antec 900 case with a PCPower&Cooling 750 Silencer. Both are more than adquate for this video editing setup. Regarding bandwidth, this motherboard has 30-something PCI-Express lanes available, and we’re using 16 for the graphics card, and 4 for the Kona card. For the FSX flight sim testing, I used two PCIExpress-16 cards in an SLI configuration, so we’re not taxing it compared to that. I tested my hard drive array read/write, and it’s more than three times the data rates AJA specs for HD work.
I changed the 8800GTS to a Quadro FX4600 (same G80 GPU used for both), and installed a newer Quadro driver, but no difference. We’ve narrowed the problem down (we believe) to a driver conflict – the PC will startup with the software installed, but the Windows Device Manager shows the card as having a problem; i.e., the driver isn’t really installed properly. If I manually disable and enable the card (via Device Manager), the correct driver will show installed (the message balloon that pops up from the task bar says so); but, the whole rig then freezes completely within a second or two. I’ll keep you posted – we may simply try a new card first.

[Richard Thornton]

Hi Tim – Thank You for your detailed reply.

As you can imagine, I left out some of the details of the story for brevity in my initial post. A couple of those important details: 1) before I purchased the card, I sent my PC’s specific hardware and software configuration details to AJA for a “will it run in this?”; the reply was, although we haven’t specifically tested it, yes it should. I would not have purchased the card otherwise. 2) I’ve worked with computers since the mainframe days of the late 70s, so I’m a quick study with all those important technical details about drivers, resources, etc. Not too long ago, for example, I was a beta tester for Microsoft’s FSX flight simulator product (the multiple-monitor graphics capabilities, specifically), and made that product work with more wide-screen monitors than most thought possible. That was more raw graphics bandwidth than video editing requires. I (we, including AJA) know enough to be confident that the fundamental requirements of data bandwidth, processing power and storage are available in my PC. What really worries me is the long list of bugs and complaints about AJA’s drivers and software I’m reading about in the various forum posts.

However, I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt initially. I’m willing to study the potential motherboard resource conflicts (PCIExpress bus, specifically) between the graphics card and the Kona LHi card – but all cards these days should be Plug’n’Play compatible; and, if not, then why not? Similarly, all modern device drivers should behave and cooperate with each other. And, first thing tomorrow, I will soft-mod my 8800GTS-512 video card to its Quadro equivalent (i.e., they use the same GPUs), and I’ll try it first with the “tested” driver, to see if that’s the conflict. I’m skeptical, because the obvious question is, why would it make a difference? Is there a 3D routine in the Quadro driver that AJA is using? Baloney. I won’t accept speculation – if it won’t work, then there is a definitive answer, which will lead to a workaround.

I do agree with you that the firmware update failure could be a hardware issue. It won’t be the first time I’ve received a defective electronics device “new in the box”. I plan to ask for a replacement, regardless – no one should ship a new product that requires a firmware update to work with their most recent software – especially when that software is already several weeks old.

It’s OK to bust my chops – I hold myself to the highest standards first, then I expect my vendors to keep up.

Thanks again – appreciate any other suggestions that come to mind.

[Richard Thornton]

Greetings – I’m a long time reader, first time poster. I’ve been trying for a couple of days to get my new LHi card to install, and would very much appreciate assistance from the Forum.

AJA Tech Support told me on Friday the card’s software wouldn’t install onto my PC’s RAID0 array, so I added a third drive (my new C: ) and established the existing array as subsequent logical spaces for recording. However, that didn’t really make any difference, as the software and drivers (both the 4.2.1 and 4.2) failed repeatedly during install, causing my PC to freeze each time. I tried numerous combinations of installing with and without the actual card in the PC, using Windows Device Manager to discover, etc etc. Sometimes I could see the card listed properly there, other times not. Several times I had to physically pull the card to get the PC to reboot.

The furthest I got was for Machina to actually boot up, recognize the card, and I saw one (count’em, 1) frame of HD/SDI from an attached camera, then again the whole rig froze. I saw the AJA capture options within my installed Premiere Pro CS4.2, but that never actually recognized the capture card (said “capture device offline”). Several times I got a message about, “the card needs a firmware update to work with this version of the software”; but, when I clicked OK, again the PC froze within a few seconds. WTF!?!

My AV company has used the various little AJA converter boxes successfuly for years. Needless to say, however, my initial impression of their software product with this capture card is not positive. The Tech Support guys I’ve talked to so far seem to be reading from whatever script their “QA” guys give them, and don’t really have the system-level hardware knowlege to be any real help.

My PC’s specifics:
– XFX 680iLT motherboard, Intel Q9400 quad-core CPU, latest drivers
– 8GB physical RAM
– 320GB C:, 1TB RAID0 (twin 500GB) F: and G: drives
– LG Blu-Ray DVD reader/writer (all drives are SATA)
– 8800GTS PCIex16 graphics card (in primary PCIex16 slot, LHi is in
the secondarday PCIex16 slot
– Windows 7 64-bit Professional

Thank You very much in advance for any assistance and suggestions.