Kona LH Card With HD XDCAM

[Rob Stiff]

Are there any special settings to get the best performace
for 35 Mb/sec 1080 24p footage in FCP with the Kona LHe?

I have tried the video playback setting: "Kona 1080psf 23.98 8bit"
and can see still frames but is does not play motion?

I spoke to AJA tech support today and they said HD XDCAM is not
supported. Am I missing something?

[Nate Weaver]

Try 1080i60 (or i30, whatever it may be called). The preset you're using might be trying to send out a PsF analog signal, which your monitor might not be liking.

[Phil Bloom]

Actually I am having problems myself. new mac pro and kona lhe card with blackmagic hdlink. when I play back stuff in 1080 i get spinning wheel and only a few seconds of play...i have some setting wrong somewhere...

edit: easy setup fixed it...dont know what i did wrong

[Phil Bloom]

Am having a problem that I could do with some help on.

When playing back xdcam cam stuff in the timeline or the viewer the spinning wheel starts it then plays for a couple of seconds then freezes. Do I have some settings wrong?

Final cut says my hard drives arent fast enough. i am using my mac pro's internal one at the moment. Is this no good? What drives are people using? Is 7200 rpm firewire 400 fast enough or does it need to be firewire 800?

Phil

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Phil Bloom

When playing back xdcam cam stuff in the timeline or the viewer the spinning wheel starts it then plays for a couple of seconds then freezes. Do I have some settings wrong?

Typical behavior if your drives aren't fast enough is not to spin the pinwheel...but to simply drop frames. Playback would be sluggish, but the rainbow wheel would never show.

If the wheel IS showing up, that typically means FCP is waiting on some other aspect of the system. Either drive access (do you have enough RAM? is the virtual memory subsytem paging out while you're attempting to play video?), or some other system gremlin.

In short, 5400 or 7200 drives, either FW400 or 800, should be plenty fast for NATIVE XDCAM HD playback. If you digitized via HD-SDI, that wold be another deal entirely. Do yourself a favor though and don't digitize to the system drive. Often it works, but it can cause problems very easily as well.

[Phil Bloom]

the only reason I am using my second internal hard drive is my mac pros firewire is fried and I transfered captured stuff from a usb2 drive onto the internal. Apple are sending me a new mac pro any day now.

Interestingly i only get the dropped frames, sluggish speed when playing back a very speeded up shot, although fully rendered.

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Phil Bloom

the only reason I am using my second internal hard drive is my mac pros firewire is fried and I transfered captured stuff from a usb2 drive onto the internal. Apple are sending me a new mac pro any day now.

A second internal drive should be no problem, in fact likely a tiny bit faster than firewire and potentially a lot faster than USB2

Originally Posted by Phil Bloom

Interestingly i only get the dropped frames, sluggish speed when playing back a very speeded up shot, although fully rendered.

That's a really important clue. Where are your render files being rendered to? Make sure it's the same drive as your media...not the USER/Documents/Final Cut Pro Documents folder on your system drive.

[Rob Stiff]

Kona LHe card on a MAC PRO tower does have a funky
requirement to only be in slot 3 plus OS X PCI utility program
must be used to modify PCI settings.

Nate, it seems there is realtime playback with HD XDCAM
footage using the Kona LHe card only if 100% rendered in the
timeline. Also, while the Kona is outputting to plasma the Apple's
monitor will not do realtime multicam playback or show
any realtime video playback.

So, my questions is, how about the blackmagic card?
Same limitations?

[Phil Bloom]

Originally Posted by Rob Stiff

Kona LHe card on a MAC PRO tower does have a funky
requirement to only be in slot 3 plus OS X PCI utility program
must be used to modify PCI settings.

Nate, it seems there is realtime playback with HD XDCAM
footage using the Kona LHe card only if 100% rendered in the
timeline. Also, while the Kona is outputting to plasma the Apple's
monitor will not do realtime multicam playback or show
any realtime video playback.

So, my questions is, how about the blackmagic card?
Same limitations?

you sure about that Rob?

My Kona Lhe has to be in slot 4, slot 3 isnt fast enought. Using the pci utility program it now is configured to run at 8x which is fastest speed.

My sequence settings are for xdcam hd 35mbs and i get realtime playback through my kona card and blackmagic hdlink on my 23" without rendering

[Rob Stiff]

Ok, moved it to slot 4, seems a bit smoother.
How do I get the kona card to output and at
the same time playback or do multicam realtime
on my apple monitor? Any special settings?

[Phil Bloom]

how are you outputting to the apple monitor from the kona card? are you using an hdlink?

[Rob Stiff]

I have the Mac Pro Tower running on a 30 inch apple
display for FCP/desktop.

I have the Kona sending an SDI-HD signal to a plasma tv.

What settings will make FCP on my desktop play video
and multicam in realtime as I use the Kona realtime
output to the plasma?

[Phil Bloom]

does your plasma have an hd sdi input? if not how you converting it.

let me clarify. You are seeing output on the plasma but not on your 30" apple as part of the fcp windows. Do you have mirror on desktop set on output settings?

[Rob Stiff]

Panasonic 50 inch plasma with SDI-HD card.
It is a beautiful option!

Just tested Kona Card With:

720 30p footage test:
Using the 8 bit 720 59.97 output
Mirror Desktop is selected and ist has realtime
desktop video and multicam output while
Kona is outputting realtime to the plasma.

1080 24p HD XDCAM footage test:
Using the 8 bit 1080 23.97 output
Mirror Desktop is selected and is has full
desktop video and NO multicam output while
Kona is outputting realtime to the plasma.
Also, another problem, if the timeline is
NOT 100% rendered the video plays back
very distorted and stretched beyond recognition.
Even just a green line in the timeline above footage
will make play back distorted...

Nate did offer a good point about trying 1080 59.97 or 60.
There is no other setting for Kona output that I have found
that will play back to footage for HD XDCAM 1080 24p.

Are you able to get realtime multicam function while
outputting from the Kona at the same time?

[Alister Chapman]

With a decklink card the output must be the same frame rate as the project. So a 720 30P project would only be output in real time using a decklink 30P setting.