Kona 2 Vs. BM Decklink

Hello

I am gong to make the leap from DV to HDV and I need some advice. I would like to know which card will produce the best results for both image quality and speed of use in FCP5. I am comparing the AJA Kona 2 card with the Black Magic Decklink 4:4:4 or 4:2:2.

I plan to set this system up with an 8 bay SATA RAID 0 array connected to a G5 Dual 2.3 with at least 2.5 GB of RAM. I will be shooting 1080/60i on a Sony Z1U. I plan to master to HDV and DVD.

Which card is better and why?
Will I be able to do any realtime effects/ editing?
What problems should I expect to encounter in the setup, capture and master processes?
Any recomendations on SATA cards/ drives/ housing/ cables/ software?
For a 4:3 aspect ratio can I simply scale the footage and pan & scan in FCP5?
Is FCP5's titling up to HDV standards?

Thank you

Rich

The Decklink card is better because it's cheaper. Other than that, there's not much difference between them.
Real Time has nothing to do with the card. The card is strictly for input and output. For HDV you don't need the input, but the card will help only for output. You don't really need a card for HDV, but if you want to monitor while editing, it can be useful.
For 4:3 you can scale and pan if you want, but all HD is 16:9, so making a 4:2 programme these days will severly limit it's broadcast market (you can rule out Europe for starters) and lifespan.
FCP's titling has always been poor, but Motion is great, as is just doing static titles in Photoshop.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

"DV to HDV and I need some advice. I would like to know which card will produce the best results"

As mentioned but not prominently, you do NOT need an HD card for HDV. HDV is Firewire about the same speeds as DV. The advantage of any card with proper outputs is being able to hook it up to a production monitor which can be done from a deck to the monitor.

So why would I want to buy a card in the first place?
Are the codecs not better for input?
Is realtime editing in FCP5 soley based on the processor speed and RAM?

You'd buy a card for one of two reasons:

a) You need to capture HD over HD-SDI digital connection from a professional HD Deck, or lay back an edit to such a deck

b) You want to monitor your HDV edit on a professional HD monitor, as FCP won't send HDV in real time out to a monitor as that's one of the major limitations of the HDV format

Are the codecs better? Actually, that's almost irrellevent as HDV is so compressed to begin with, that there's nothing you can really do to make it any better. And as you'd need another box to turn HDV in HD-SDI to go into a capture card, that's more expoense, and that's only really for making HDV work with an existing HD workflow where you're, say, shooting HDV B-Roll for a HDCAM production.

Yes, realtime is based on processor, ram and hard drive speeds.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

We do plan to shoot in HD on the Sony HDW F900 in the future. I know the data rates are much higher because it is not higly compressed like the HDV format. I will get the card with that in mind.

Last question...

Can you direct me to a good resource that breaks down the differnt kinds of HD? I am a little overwhelmed by the vastness of the technology and the differing formats.

Ah, but HDCAM is highly compressed. The issue is that you don't have the HDCAM native codec, so you need to capture and edit uncompressed. If you had the native codec, the data rate would be a lot smaller....

I don't know of any super articles on all the varieties of HD, but if there's anything specific you need to know....

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X