[Wolf Austad]

To Kevin:
If you browse further back in this forum you will find that contributors much more respected and knowledgeable than me (i.e. real post people) are saying the compatibility problems between Kona 3 and FCS2 in 4:4:4 is a “known bug”.

Gary wrote:
…render back out as AJA 10bit RGB and output the rendered files in FCP or AJA TV via your Kona Card and to the deck…

The question is: Would this output work if there is still a bug in FCS2 and/or the Kona3 4.0 drivers that prevent the Kona card from working in 4:4:4 with FCS2? (presuming this does not affect AJA TV, so that would work…?)

I would like to reiterate that my experience with this is that there WAS a bug preventing 4:4:4 from working with FCS2/Kona3. I don’t know if it still exists. If it is gone, or there is a workaround, it would be great if somebody could confirm.

Wolf Austad
DP, Los Angeles based

[Wolf Austad]

All RGB is rendered to 8-bit in FCP. One can apparently assemble in FCS2 Color with a float renderer, BUT as far as I know, there is still a bug in Final Cut Studio 2 and/or AJA Kona 3 drivers preventing the use of 4:4:4. That was the case last time I had a project needing this workflow. I have not seen nor heard of AJA posting a fix.

To work in 4:4:4 you have to revert back to FCP 5.1, but then you are stuck with 8-bit rendering which I think is clearly unacceptable for a film out…

Oh, and I am not really a post guy. Just a DP who care about my images… I know this because I had a few projects that we tried to put through this pipeline, and it didn’t work.

P.S. IF there is a fix from AJA, I would love to know about it!

Wolf Austad
DP
Los Angeles based

[Wolf Austad]

Thank you for a very informative answer! I guess I attended the Varicamp before you started lecturing there… Otherwise I would have known better.

>Note that FCP does not accept master Timecode over HD/SDI so you will need to deal with that drawback in a live capture scenario.

Now, if this VITC reading problem is located to Final Cut Pro, would I be able to use f.ex. AJA VTR Exchange to capture and by that be able to use just one HD-SDI cable from the camera? Running an extra cable out of the camera for TC is a major PITA for onset work, so I would really like to avoid it.

Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based

[Wolf Austad]

Thanks for the suggestions. However, I am not entirely sure how that would work. When I read the FAQ at f.ex. AJA’s web site I find the following:

If you are deliberately over/under cranking the shooting rate in order to get a slow/fast motion effect (for example: shooting a clip at 48 fps with the intent to play it back at 1/2 speed in a 24 fps sequence), then you should use the “AJA Kona2: 720p 59.94 DVCProHD” Easy Setup to capture ALL of the frames (active + duplicates) – then process the resulting clip using the software Frame Rate Converter with a target frame rate of 23.98. The KONA 2 board extracts the VariCam flags from the RP-188 stream during capture and inserts them into the captured DVCProHD stream where the FRC can find them. Note that this ONLY works if you are capturing using DVCProHD compression. The KONA 2 board doesn’t do the slow/fast motion processing – this can only be done by the Frame Rate Converter using the VariCam flag bits inside the DVCProHD-compressed clips.

Now, even if I use a Sony SRW-1 or a Panasonic D5 deck in 720/59.94, which would be good enough for this job, post would still need to digitize this footage and if they can’t ditch the non-flagged frames without going through the DVCPRO HD codec, then I am back to square one. And also, as far as I know, the Panasonic hardware Frame Rate Converter box also uses the DVCPRO HD codec.

Am I missing something here?
Is there a workaround I can recommend for post?

Aasulv Wolf Austad, fnf
Director of Photography
Los Angeles based