What does a Kona 3 get me for Red workflow?

[Lee Warner]

I'm a longtime editor with a technical background and I am looking at putting a FCP system together. I want to be able to accept clients with Red projects and I need to know whether to go with a Kona 3 or I can back off to a LHi. When it comes to workflow and delivery, how would a Kona LHi hamper me and vice versa, how would a Kona 3 help me?

thanks for your help,
Lee

 

[Tom.Wong]

it offers more bandwidth and bit rate in capture and offload. Geared for more tape based workflows but very effective on digital workflows too. Direct capture of playback from uncompressed sources, etc, and very powerful upconvert, downconvert, and cross conversions if you deal with a lot of that day in and day out.

But as for editing, the difference between a LHI and KONA 3 won't improve performance.

 

[Lee Warner]

Thanks again Tom,

Have you (or anyone else) had any experience with the Kona IO HD? Would it be a viable alternative to the Kona 3? Pros? Cons?

Lee

 

[Tom.Wong]

I"m actually picking up a LHI, hgp converter, and Dreamcolor in the next few months for a reference/ color correction solution.

the things to gain from a I/O card or external unit are a full rec 709 reference port, ie. SDI. If your working from home, and don't do any tape based work like post houses do with HD CAM/SR, digi beta, XDCAM, and so on, or on set work where you are ingesting uncompressed footage to the KONA or some other format where it's not common to work directly with for pro ress or a more suitable for edit codec capture, than the Kona 3 is kind of overkill.

You'll still get a nice 10 bit reference source with the LHI, pro res support, dvcpro HD acceleration, and tons of different conversion options too. Kona 3 is just their flagship top of the line card but intense post production environments.

the IO HD was designed to be a portable solution for macbook pro's, or if your full up on PCI X cards and still need some kind of capture/reference solution. Since it connects with a FW 800 port you won't get the different uncompressed options in capture but still get pro res capture, tons of conversions, and HD referencing, but you do kill a 800 port if that means anything at all to you. For me and if i needed that, it's of little consequence for me because of the mobility it offers.

the new black magic IO device directly competes with the IO HD now, and is usb 3 so you will probably need a usb 3.0 card installed to use that, offers all the same bells and whistles as the IO HD but more powerful cause of the faster port it offers. (more capture options)

so if you just need to edit, but want the fastest red solutions, I'd go for red rocket and LHI, or even just an io hd if all you need is HD referencing/color correction.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

I don't know what you future plans are but I got bitten when I bought Smoke on Mac and found out that my 1 year old KonaLH is not supported.

Hans

 

[Lee Warner]

Tom,

This would be home-based secondary business so maybe the LHi would suffice. I just didn't want to invest in a card and then down the road, need to re-invest in the next model up if I can avoid it.

I am also looking at the Dreamcolor monitor as well. Are you purchasing a X-Rite to set up the color as well? Is the converter for SDI to DVI?

Lee

 

[Tom.Wong]

i have read that results with a hgp2 from AJA will give you the best results from a AJA card to a dreamcolor. It will keep the 10 bit SDI information and keep the dreamcolor engine activated on the monitor no matter what kind of project you are working on, SD to HD, the converter does all the scaling and conversions for you so that the dreamcolor doesn't get confused.

although I AM looking a little more into the da vinci resolve now, I personally am not a fan of blackmagic designs, but if their hardware has gotten more stable and solid since the last time i've used them (a year ago) maybe it's worth the look. such a powerful piece of software at a 1k price point is hard to pass up, especially if it can offer me more than what i do with "Color" now.