2k equipment- kona or blackmagic

[nek]

Hi,
I am new in this forum. Planing to buy a red. Actually we want to upgrade
our editing facilities. I searched a few days looking for answers for the following questions but only found parts.
So, if some parts here are solved in other threads, pls pass me the links.
We basically want to finish edits in 2k or 1080p for high quality broadcasting.
Maybe prepare blow ups in 2k. (here in Argentina 2k exporting to a tga sequence is fine...)
So having in mind the future red, what is the best 4:4:4 editing choice.
Kona 3, Blackmagic Multibridge eclipse or bluefish?
The idea is finish with this editing systems and not going back to the original 4k raw files.
I guess the three editing systems works with their own codecs.
Do I have to export from red in some standart 2k formats and for editing import them again in the blackmagic (for example) projects. Or can red make an output to this codecs when they are installed in mac os? Or is there any solution announced from red, blackmagic or Kona.

Thx
Christoph

Subterranea Films / Buenos Aires
www.subterraneafilms.com.ar

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Kona.

 

[martinnoweck]

i second that - i heard the blackmagic has jitter problems, so i have the choice i would choose AJA.

martin

 

[SashkaMish]

My vote for Kona, too.
It is not just because only Kona has hardware accelerated effects in HD and 2k but also about their perfect customer support. Had to call them once for as they made a big mistake in PAL settings for FCP and they sent me a fix in about 20min via mail. Really great support!

 

[laguun]

using both, i suppose i can give a fair opinion.
if we are talking about the boards:

koona
+better up/down conversion
-not crossplaform (xena windows/koona osx)
-price

blackmagic
+price
+crossplatform
-up/downconversion lesser quality, lesser features

qualitywise both are identical. on digital. never measured analogue.
blackmagic jitter is a myth - attach a decent genlock and the vcr is just fine.

the aja products seem a little bit better in resonse speed to me.
the blackmagic have (via filelink) a virtual filesystem to turn mov/avi into framesequences and vice versa, without using diskspace.

however, you should specify what particular card/system you are comparing. If you are using windows with Adobe cs3, blackmagic is ahead right now, fcp i am not competent enough to recommend.

 

[Rocket]

My vote is for Bluefish Catalyst.

 

[MikeCurtis]

The BMD jitter problem I have heard of, asked the BMD reps, and said that's an old problem on old boards, they say it is fixed.

The bigger question is support/cooperation - since Ted used to work at AJA, and Red & AJA have stated they'll work together on solutions, I'd say that alone is the reason to go AJA as the easy choice for a Red workflow. At present the Kona3 is the top end card, I'd go with that. If you only needed HD & 4:2:2 capabilities, the LHe works well, but lacks many of the other features of Kona3.

I have, like, and use both, and there are times and clients and jobs I'd prefer one over the other - horses for courses.

But a Kona3 is going in my Octo Mac.

 

[Rocket]

Does no-one else use Bluefish cards here?

 

[MikeCurtis]

bluefish???

bluefish???

4K hub - why?

 

[MikeCurtis]

4K hub - Please correct me if I'm missing something here, but my perception of the bluefish cards is that they don't offer meaningful features to Final Cut/Adobe Premiere users over the AJA/BMD offerings, yet cost substantially more.

Am I missing something?

 

[roryhinds]

Bluefish are the old Digital Voodoo guys...

I remember when they send out a broadcast saying the Mac is Dead. I guess they were pretty pissed with Grant with the release of Decklink.

 

[Rocket]

Ah! I wasn't aware of that fact. Ok, that makes perfect sense now. Our Scratch will come with the Catalyst, but it seems all to often that what others are discussing is never what I have just spent money on. It makes me second guess myself most of the time.

I wasn't aware that the different cards have feature sets that work with some software better than others. I assumed the Bluefish Lust and Catalyst cards were comparable and in the line up with the BMG and AJA cards.

This will be my first experience with any of them.

 

[Pierce Cook]

Wanting to learn a few things, could someone briefly explain which particular Kona card you're referring too and what exactly the benefit of having one of these devices is?

I assume the card is preferred over the IO devices for the 4:4:4?

Also, is there a 4k option here? If not is that reason for concern?

Thanks!

 

[martinnoweck]

using both, i suppose i can give a fair opinion.
if we are talking about the boards:

koona
+better up/down conversion
-not crossplaform (xena windows/koona osx)
-price

blackmagic
+price
+crossplatform
-up/downconversion lesser quality, lesser features

qualitywise both are identical. on digital. never measured analogue.
blackmagic jitter is a myth - attach a decent genlock and the vcr is just fine.

the aja products seem a little bit better in resonse speed to me.
the blackmagic have (via filelink) a virtual filesystem to turn mov/avi into framesequences and vice versa, without using diskspace.

however, you should specify what particular card/system you are comparing. If you are using windows with Adobe cs3, blackmagic is ahead right now, fcp i am not competent enough to recommend.

hi laguun,

thanks for your feedback - what kind of genlock do you use / recommend: rosendahl?

kind regards,
martin

 

[Rocket]

Wanting to learn a few things, could someone briefly explain which particular Kona card you're referring too and what exactly the benefit of having one of these devices is?

I assume the card is preferred over the IO devices for the 4:4:4?

Also, is there a 4k option here? If not is that reason for concern?

Thanks!

There is no 4K output option from any manufacturer at this time. This makes 4K monitoring impossible, but I don't think it's a major concern. Our Scratch will be able to grade real-time uncompressed 10-bit 4K, but we will only be able to monitor at 2K. We're using a Christie CP2000 for monitoring. I think with any system that has been discussed here, 2K is going to be your highest monitoring output.

At any stage of conform, grading and finishing we will be able to export 4K to our playout box and view it on the Sony SXRD at 4K, that's as close as you can come now, there is nothing currently that will output 4K from your workstation.

 

[Stokestack]

I'm curious as to why anyone would use these devices (except perhaps for playback). If you can extract 2K images from the 4K raw files "live" through the QuickTime codec, why would you pipe them through a hardware device and bloat the data payload (and your drive-performance requirements) immensely by capturing uncompressed 4:4:4? Or you'd have to recompress, something you certainly don't want to do.

At a data rate of under 30MBps, there seems to be no reason to convert the original files to anything else until you render your finished work onto the final delivery medium, with the exception of effects shots (which you'll render out uncompressed).

 

[Rocket]

It just depends what you want. If you are going the route that most on this forum seem to be, and that means shooting 4K compressed, editing compressed without a conform to uncompressed media for grading and finishing, then maybe I can understand your point.

I wouldn't even consider this however, we've invested in a conform system that will allow us to edit a offline compressed proxy, but grade and finish the uncompressed media in real-time.

For either route I think you will want to monitor an uncompressed 2K 4:4:4 output, and that seems to me to be the point in using these cards. How else will you monitor?

 

[Steve Freebairn]

using both, i suppose i can give a fair opinion.
if we are talking about the boards:

koona
+better up/down conversion
-not crossplaform (xena windows/koona osx)
-price

blackmagic
+price
+crossplatform
-up/downconversion lesser quality, lesser features

qualitywise both are identical. on digital. never measured analogue.
blackmagic jitter is a myth - attach a decent genlock and the vcr is just fine.

the aja products seem a little bit better in resonse speed to me.
the blackmagic have (via filelink) a virtual filesystem to turn mov/avi into framesequences and vice versa, without using diskspace.

however, you should specify what particular card/system you are comparing. If you are using windows with Adobe cs3, blackmagic is ahead right now, fcp i am not competent enough to recommend.

Kona is actually cross platform. I asked at NAB and they said it was just a firmware issue. The boards are identical.

 

[nek]

Hi,
thx to all for the answers.
I think Kona will make it. But still I am not sure if there is direct output for the kona platform or the output from red platform goes threw some standart 2k files like sony hdcam.
I work with fcp. My idea is finsh on hd tapes or betacam digital. depends on the client.
And yes important for me is the monitoring in 2k.
4khub: how do you monitor on your platform meanwhile you edit offline?
thx all
great forum
christoph

 

[SashkaMish]

I'm curious as to why anyone would use these devices (except perhaps for playback). If you can extract 2K images from the 4K raw files "live" through the QuickTime codec, why would you pipe them through a hardware device and bloat the data payload (and your drive-performance requirements) immensely by capturing uncompressed 4:4:4? Or you'd have to recompress, something you certainly don't want to do.

At a data rate of under 30MBps, there seems to be no reason to convert the original files to anything else until you render your finished work onto the final delivery medium, with the exception of effects shots (which you'll render out uncompressed).

Because:
1. Those devices give you possibility to see what you are doing on a reference screen, not a computer monitor. Saw lots of people working on their computer monitors and afterwards they just could not believe what they saw on TV. Only the calibrated CRT (ok, maybe some LCDs also) can show you the right colors.
2. You have to give a final to your client on something (here it is still an analog Beta tape) so you have to connect your editing hardware to some VCR (analogue/digital Beta, HD...).
3. Some of those gadgets have the ability to accelerate effects and transitions. Let's just say that my Kona can do 3-way color correction in real time on three layers of uncompressed HD in FCP and according to some people in Color also.
4. Some of those gadgets also compress/uncompress codecs and that gives your CPU some time to relax and start to work with actual video.

I could go on like this for some time, but these are the main reasons.