Capture card
 

Would it be worth it to capture everything with a card like the AJA Kona for the HD100U footage as opposed to just going straight in through firewire to FCP?

That really depends on what you want to do with your footage. Do you want to edit native HDV 30fps (or hopefully soon 24), or use your deck as an analogue source and change to uncompresssed HD or DVCProHD on capture? There are a lot of considerations either way.

You get two different signals. FW gives you the same output you get from the tape: HDV compressed video with 4:2:0 color encoding and embedded sound. With a capture card you get component signal with 4:2:2 color encoding and no audio. Some capture systems allow you to run the output from your recorder, either your mixer, or the line out from the camera, and record video to hard disk with embedded audio. The component out signal is higher quality than what you get from the tape or FW. If that style of capture fits your workflow you should definitely consider it.

I capture my HDV footage through FW, and edit it native, but still have the Kona card to provide output to an HD monitor; the Kona 2 which I have, also provides some extra processing horsepower for HDV and DVCProHD (I use both codecs), as well as HD-SDI in/and out for other formats.

Gary Morris McBeath
SaltAire Cinema Productions

I'm thinking about getting this:
http://www.aja.com/html/products_con...s_HD10AVA.html

It seems like the Kona card but in a smaller package. Has anyone had any experience with these smaller boxes? From what I understand I would need a video card that takes a composite signal and then the box would go to the card right? What are some good options for the video card?

I'm editing a short film that will ultimately end up on dvd and festivals. Thanks for your advice.
Cal

This box would produce a HD-SDI output from the camera or deck. But then you'd have to get another video card capable of HD-SDI input. It would be better just to get one that captures analog HD. Or both if you need SDI capture too. Plus these boards play back analog and SDI for monitoring or recording. They also do down conversion on playback. They also handle both analog and digital audio IO with RS-422 control thrown in.

I've used both native HDV and the analog component HD from the JVC's. I would say the native is better both visually and technically, coming off tape that is. True, the analog outs are uncompressed 60p during shooting, but once it's on tape, you are going through JVC's analog encoders. This introduces some noise and color space conversion. Staying native is going to move exactly what is on the tape to the NLE 1:1.

Problem is, if you shoot in 24p, today, you can't use FCPro without 2-3 step conversions of each file. Using a Kona analog HD input, you can capture 24p.

Even with 30p we are having some problems with stream errors over firewire, where shots are getting broken up into smaller clips during HDV capture.

Using Kona eliminates this problem.

On the other hand, 100Mbit file sizes of DVCProHD analog transcoded HDV, vs 19Mbit files of native JVC HDV makes a damn good argument to capture native if the broken clip prob and 24p issue can be resolved.

Dave Beaty

RS-422 and Kona
 

Hi Dave,

I'd love to know how your RS-422 connection works when you capture via the Kona card. Are you getting good machine control? Are you getting timecode via RS-422, and if so, what timebase is it? Have you ever tried of considered capturing an analogue DV downconvert and then using timecode to recapture uncompressed later on? Do you think it would work? Thanks for your thoughts.

Thanks for the input. I appreciate it!