Kona for PC?

[Roberto Lequeux]

I am in the dark about this so the question might not even be the right one.

If I decided to go with Premier, what would be the equivalent to a Kona Card? Would performance and quality be on par?

All I found was Xena (http://www.aja.com/html/products_windows_xena.html) but I've barely heard of it...

Any guidance is appreciated.

[Christian Edwards]

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/

[Jarred Land]

Xena is pretty badass.. but remember, Kona will work just fine in the Adobe suite of products...

[Adam Glick]

I am in the dark about this so the question might not even be the right one.

If I decided to go with Premier, what would be the equivalent to a Kona Card? Would performance and quality be on par?

All I found was Xena (http://www.aja.com/html/products_windows_xena.html) but I've barely heard of it...

Any guidance is appreciated.

Hi Roberto,

The Aja Xena is basically the same exact card as the Aja Kona 3. It just uses different drivers and has a Windows capture/playout utility.

It's probably currently the most popular card in "Windows Land" for uncompressed HD-SDI capture and layoff of DPX & uncompressed AVI/QT (although there is support for several other compressed CODECs).

Out of the box, there are some limitations with EDL/XML workflows but these can mostly be overcome through the use of Adobe Premeir Pro contolling capture/playout. They (Aja) just released direct native support for CS4 & Vista 64, and the initial word on the street is that it works pretty well. (I have only done a small bit of testing in the lab and haven't put this combination to the test yet...but I will)

Cheers,

Adam

**PS** A reminder for MAC folks considering a hybrid or PC-based workflow: PC's can't make ProRes... (yeah, i know...talk to Apple)

[Roberto Lequeux]

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/

Ohhh, ok, thanks!

So my head is spinning so a little clarification would be very appreciated...

So it seems that all you need to monitor 4:4:4 1080/2k is their HDLink, correct? And with a Panasonic 25.5 it would work with dual link HD-SDI, right?


Ok, now I'll catch my breath before I read the new posts

EDIT:

Thank you guys! I really appreciate the help.

So if I am planning on editing with Premiere, or FC, but don't need to capture anything to the workstation... all I need then is either the HDLink or something like it... right? Or are there any other hardware acceleration benefits to consider when making this sort of investment?

[Roberto Lequeux]

Or should I get the HDlink Pro? Or a Kona? What would/did you do and why?

[Steve Freebairn]

Kona 3 = Xena 2k, the only difference is the driver/firmware. That's straight from the mouth of the AJA guys at NAB last year, there is no difference in the card. I'd wait 1 month if I were you, I'm not saying I know, because I don't, but honestly I'll be shocked if AJA and BMD don't announce new cards at NAB 09. Can you say Kona 4k? I can already imagine the marketing video, "buy the new K4K now" I'm not saying that it will do 4k realtime, but my guess would be a card that can actually scale 2k and not crop it would be part of the feature set.

[Roberto Lequeux]

I am not doing anything till the end of the year anyway. But I obviously need to start reading up now with as little as I know about this stuff. I still don't understand exactly what these pieces of hardware could do besides outputting a signal to a monitor. I am not sure I understood what you said 100%. But I guess it means that you can't output a 4k image to a monitor right now with these, and all you get is a 2k center crop of the 4k image?

[Hans von Sonntag]

They (Aja) just released direct native support for CS4 & Vista 64, and the initial word on the street is that it works pretty well. (I have only done a small bit of testing in the lab and haven't put this combination to the test yet...but I will)

Cheers,

Adam


Hi Adam,

Where did you find the new Xena CS4 driver?

Any help is much appreciated.

Hans