RED Rocket & Kona Compatibility

[Jordan Livingston]

Dear RED-Post Experts,

I'm wondering if anybody has yet tested a RED Rocket in the same MacPro tower along with an AJA Kona LHi...

I use my LHi constantly for realtime 10-bit HD mastering and projection, and I would really hate to purchase a separate MacPro tower just for occasional RED Rocket use. That being said, I'm currently knee deep in three RED 4K projects and could certainly use the Rocket for efficient transcoding.

So - does anybody know if the Rocket will play nicely with the Kona in my system? In my experience, the Kona drivers are fairly benign, but they do operate both at the system level, as well as within Final Cut Pro when editing.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

 

[Pablo.garcia.soriano]

I'm also interested in compatibility between Aja kona and Red Roquet, can they live together?? if is afirmative.. can i have a 4k output and a Hd output at the same time?
Thanx a lot

 

[Jordan Livingston]

I'm also interested in compatibility between Aja kona and Red Roquet, can they live together?? if is afirmative.. can i have a 4k output and a Hd output at the same time?
Thanx a lot

I have not yet received any official answer to this query, however, all available evidence points to "NO."

The primary reason is that both the AJA Kona card and the RED Rocket "require" the high speed PCIe slot in the MacPro (there is only one available in the system). I have not personally tested my AJA in the slower slot, and I don't have a RED Rocket to test at all, but it stands to reason that they will not co-exist due to this requirement.

Of course, if anybody tests this and can answer definitively, we would very much appreciate it!

 

[Kaku Ito]

I installed the latest snow leopard driver for Kona LHe with my RR.
Kona was working fine, but I actually didn't check the RR at that time.

1 ATTO R380
2 KONA LHe
3 REDROCKET
4 ATI

My configuration was as the above, LHe and R380 working at x4 speed.

 

[Kevin Wild]

We have the KonaLHe in the 16x slot and the Rocket in the 4x slot. It works and to me, plays back realtime just fine and transcodes super fast. I haven't tested the same clip in each slot for comparison, but I can tell you that it does work, despite the warning it gives you when you open it.

 

[Deanan]

Aside from the reports here, I've had a few other reports of no problems except for one person that had a bad motherboard.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

I installed the latest snow leopard driver for Kona LHe with my RR.
Kona was working fine, but I actually didn't check the RR at that time.

1 ATTO R380
2 KONA LHe
3 REDROCKET
4 ATI

My configuration was as the above, LHe and R380 working at x4 speed.

This is definitely not a supported config - by either RED or AJA. I'm told by AJA that their card "has" to be in the fast slot. Mine is an LHi, however, which passes 1080p + 8 channels of audio over HDMI, so it could very well be that demanding less (i.e. 720p + stereo audio) would work fine in the slower PCI slot.

BUT - I'm super glad to hear this is working! AJA and Rocket in the same machine is a MUST for me!

 

[Jordan Livingston]

We have the KonaLHe in the 16x slot and the Rocket in the 4x slot. It works and to me, plays back realtime just fine and transcodes super fast. I haven't tested the same clip in each slot for comparison, but I can tell you that it does work, despite the warning it gives you when you open it.

This is fantastic - this is exactly what I want to hear!

 

[Kaku Ito]

This is definitely not a supported config - by either RED or AJA. I'm told by AJA that their card "has" to be in the fast slot. Mine is an LHi, however, which passes 1080p + 8 channels of audio over HDMI, so it could very well be that demanding less (i.e. 720p + stereo audio) would work fine in the slower PCI slot.

BUT - I'm super glad to hear this is working! AJA and Rocket in the same machine is a MUST for me!

Jordan, I don't know about Kona but RR is exactly where RED suggests, x16 slot and it's working at x8 speed.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Jordan, I don't know about Kona but RR is exactly where RED suggests, x16 slot and it's working at x8 speed.

That's great news! AJA also demands the x16 slot, and I'm not sure how it behaves in the slower slots... I guess maybe the demand for x16 is generally overblown?

- JL

 

[Kaku Ito]

Well, not with Kona, but I always work with Blackmagic Design Multibridge Pro with 10-bit 444 at x4 lane.

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

That's great news! AJA also demands the x16 slot, and I'm not sure how it behaves in the slower slots... I guess maybe the demand for x16 is generally overblown?

- JL

I think so, Ive heard repeatedly that the KONA doesnt need that much bandwidth. Torrey from Silverado also posted that somewhere recently.

Im also planning on the same config as KATU, because that IS exactly what RED and Silverado (only auth reseller) have recommended.

All these new threads need a sticky for sure. but who has time for that?

But glad this post was started. We have a KONA 3

 

[Kaku Ito]

Tim, Kaku not Katu

 

[Kevin Wild]

The KonaLHe would NOT work in our 4x slot, fyi. The audio would go way out of sync with the video. The RED Rocket works as I mentioned above.

 

[Kaku Ito]

Kevin, thanks for the tip. So there's an advantage in using Blackmagic with RR then.
I have run into that problem before, but didn't realize it was because of the slot config.. Thanks again.

 

[Kevin Wild]

By the way, per AJA's own website, the Kona 2 will work in either slot. It's only the LHe that has trouble with the slower slot.

 

[Colin Hubick]

We use the Kona3 and Red Rocket together in the same machine with no issues.

...I know Deanan is probably getting sick of seeing me post this, but PsF support would be extremely useful sooner than later...

Another thing that would be great would to have RedLine support RedRocket, this would open the door for so many other applications like Monkey Extract, Clip Finder, and others...

...a bit off topic, but those are my thoughts.

cheers
Colin

***GO RIDERS!!***

 

[Peter Majtan]

That's great news! AJA also demands the x16 slot, and I'm not sure how it behaves in the slower slots... I guess maybe the demand for x16 is generally overblown?

- JL

AJA is fine in any x4 slot...

So for any current Mac Pro's (from 2008 and up) the best config is as follows (top to bottom):

Slot 4 (x04) - mass storage device
Slot 3 (x04) - Audio/Video I/O (such as AJA, BMD, etc...)
Slot 2 (x16) - RED Rocket™
Slot 1 (x16) - GPU

We have this conf running well on several machines with all cards running at full speed with the exception of the mass storage. However the x04 slot provides for 1GB/s, which is more then sufficient and exceeds the performance of vast majority of storage enclosure out there...

:devil: Peter

 

[Peter Majtan]

From BMD website:

"High Definition DeckLink cards also support standard definition and require a x4 lane slot for maximum performance. High Definition is supported in any model of Mac Pro."

From AJA website:

"The KONA 3 operates properly in slots 2 and 3"

:devil: Peter

 

[Jordan Livingston]

We use the Kona3 and RED Rocket™™ together in the same machine with no issues.

...I know Deanan is probably getting sick of seeing me post this, but PsF support would be extremely useful sooner than later...

Without PsF support in the REDRocket what are the downsides? I know that most HD cameras record in PsF, but I've successfully played back Sony and Panasonic PsF sources over plain-P presets using Kona 3 or LHi and have not been able to detect a difference in the final output. What am I missing? What's the benefit to PsF?

- Jordan