[Steven Kochones]

Brilliant. Thank you.

Steven Kochones
Arclight Productions
Hollywood, California

Kona LH/FCP 6.0.2/G5 Dual 2.0

[Steven Kochones]

Thanks Bob for the advice.

The original Decklink is certainly the closest match to the Kona SD with one glaring problem: no analog video in. If I only needed SDI in/out, it’s a no-brainer – and cheap! But I need to deal with both DigiBeta and BetaSP, the latter employing an old Promax DA-MAX converter. Of course, the trouble with the DA-MAX is that it converts analog audio to AES/EBU (doesn’t embed it in SDI). The Kona has AES/EBU in/out; the Decklink is SPDIF out only.

So unless there’s another solution, it’s looking like a Decklink Extreme, Kona LS or an IO to accomplish what I need. The benefit of the Decklink over the Kona seems to be playback/down-conversion of HD, which is a plus.

I’m not trying to be cheap (well, a little bit), but I want to either buy a throwaway (sorry Blackmagic) like the basic Decklink or invest in something that will outlive the G5. It’s the darn PCI-X/PCI-e issue that makes it problematic. If it weren’t for that, I’d just put in a Decklink HD card now.

Also, I’ve only dealt with AJA products. How does Blackmagic compare?

Steven Kochones
Arclight Productions
Hollywood, California

[Steven Kochones]

I also want to know if BM drivers will work with a Kona SD and FCP 6. In my case, I’m using Tiger. I have installed different versions of the BM drivers but none gives me perfect results. Even though the card is recognized, it doesn’t work all that well. The main problem is a delay when capturing and outputting video.

If anyone can chime in on this (Luke?) it would be appreciated.

Steven Kochones
Arclight Productions
Hollywood, California

[Steven Kochones]

Brian,

At one time we had the same setup as yours: a Kona SD in a QuickSilver G4. After a lot of research on Creative Cow, we discovered that the QuickSilver (just that specific model) was the culprit. This was with FCP 4.5 (not FCP 5.x.x) and our only stable setup was running OS 10.3.4 and the v4 BM driver (I believe the last BM driver that AJA “approved” for their card). We couldn’t upgrade the OS even one point without terrible problems.

It’s interesting to hear that you got it to work at all with FCP 5.

Steven Kochones
Arclight Productions
Hollywood, California

[Steven Kochones]

Thanks for the advice, Kristian.

We uninstalled all other BM drivers and installed v5.6 which seems to be the only driver that works with our Kona SD card. Even still, we’re experiencing the following occasional problem: during capture, the video will freeze in the capture window (while the tape keeps rolling) and then we get the spinning beach ball, requiring a force quit. The error creates one of those -av QuickTime files in the capture scratch folder, which we promptly delete.

So v5.6 is “sort of” working. And timecode capture seems okay.

At some point we can try v5.9 again, but we just started a new project, and I’m hesitant to mess with things too much.

One other comment about v5.9: when we had this driver installed, the editing workflow was okay except HDV-to-SD conversion did not work. A still image appeared on the NTSC monitor but would not play. Audio played and, strangely, we could scrub video and see it advance in the monitor. With v5.6 the HDV-to-SD works as advertised.

Steven Kochones
Arclight Productions
Hollywood, California

[Steven Kochones]

Question for Luke: what’s the hardware (computer) minimum for running BM driver 4.8 under OS 10.3.8 with the Kona SD? Thanks.

[Steven Kochones]

Thanks for the reply, AJA. Yes, last year’s Kona 2 upgrade may be considered generous, but when an HD upgrade isn’t necessary to a facility, some users may feel abandoned when support seemingly ends. I don’t think we’re asking for new features for an old card but at least some compatability with new OS’s and NLE versions. At the very least, how about a statement from AJA that says, “We no longer support the original Kona’s?” Or provide some guidelines that tell us which combination of Kona, operating system and NLE remains stable. It is the lack of information that leaves original users in limbo.

[Steven Kochones]

Please someone chime in here. I’m also in Kona SD limbo and looking for info regarding current drivers, compatability with FCP 5, etc. Kona SD users were promised drivers from AJA (which I don’t believe materialized) and were caught in the middle when the AJA/Blackmagic rift occurred. You look at the AJA site, and it’s as though the original Kona SD and HD cards never existed. What’s one to do?