CS5.5, 10 bit, AVCIntra, AJA Kona and GTX580 vs Quadro

I will be purchasing a new editing computer in june. I'm switching over from Final Cut Pro on a Mac. Why am I switching? For a lot of reasons, but suffice it to say, CS5.5 is really looking like a time saver, and seems to make good business sense overall. And being independent, I don't really care about conforming to any one dogmatic camp (FCP or Avid, and the like).
I'm working a lot with AVCIntra footage (10-bit) and client-provided 3D generated content (also 10-bit). I'll have an AJA Kona LHi (supporting 10-bit) installed.
I've read a lot on the GeForce vs. Quadro, and understand that there is not much advantage to a Quadro, other then the extra edge for 3D applications. And that Geforces are 8-bit and Quadro are 10-bit. So price wise, the Geforce 580 for CS5.5 is probably my best bet.
My main questions are: Does PProCS5.5 fully support 10-bit, end-to-end? And if the GeForce is only 8-bit (though I've glimpsed somewhere the 580 might support 10-bit), will it impact real-time MPE playback outputed on the AJA Kona card? With the AJA Kona LHi installed, does it matter at all that I have an 8-bit or a 10-bit GPU card?
On a side note, there is a GTC590 now, with dual GPUs. Anyone tested it yet with the hack? Or will it be the same problem as with SLI GeForces not being supported by PPro?
One a second side note, I know people ask a lot about the best hardware to use. I've read a lot of posts about them. Most of them are quite old posts. As of May 2011, Any recommendations on components? Such as motherboards, raid cards, GTX580 manufacturer, etc.? But I'm especially interested to find out if the 6-core 990X i7 is worth the investment, compared to the 2nd gen 4-core i7 2600K? I would presume yes. But have never seen real world tests. And would a dual Xeon truly be twice as fast? Investment wise, much like the Geforce vs Quadro issue, I'm not sure it's worth 3 times the price for most likely less then twice the speed. Any comments?
Thank you all,

Actually I am trying to get an answer to your 10 bit question via the I/O device currently. I am verifying if the I/O device is independent of the OGL 10Bit query Adobe does for the 10bit draw or if the I/O device passes the query. If not then do you have to have a Quadro card installed even with the I/O devices. Once I have the info, I will post it for you.
The AJA drivers before the 5.5 update did not work completely with the hardware acceleration, so an AJA card would slow the MPE performance down if using an AJA preset and the card. I am unsure if that is still the case with the new 5.5 version however they don't show an update for 5.5 on their website. I would call and talk to AJA on that one.
The MPE does not support Multi GPU so the 590 would be slower than the 570 or 580.
The 990X is worth it if you work allot in AE or overclock. Also what codec is the 3D material you will be working with?
Eric
ADK

Similar Messages

AJA Kona and Matox MXO2

Hello, I've started to research I/O devices and am confused a little on some features that I am not sure about. From what I've read, they both seem to be somewhat similar with the MXO2 having a couple things that I think would work for me. A little background first.
I would like to start doing weddings, local productions and documentaries. I plan on getting an 8-core MP and I want to venture into HD and P2 territory but, would also like the flexibility to work with SD and tape-based formats as well. Also, I would like the option to connect a VCR so I could transfer old family videos to digital.
I do have a budget so I trying to prioritize my needs until I start bringing in income. I can't afford a professional HD monitor or a deck yet. Tats being said, From what I've been able to understand, the MXO2 seems like a good choice. It's got HD/SD SDI, component and composite I/O's, six RCA outputs for surround sound monitoring, and HD/SD monitoring vis HDMI.
I'm just trying to make a purchase so I won't regret it later; I would prefer to spend a few extra bucks and try to get everything in one package.
Is having SDI mean you can monitor with it or do you need a card or box that is specifically for monitoring? The MXO2 says it can turn your display or HDTV to mimic professional monitor; are there any drawbacks to this? Also, do the composite I/Os mean I can connect a VCR to capture?
thx

Is having SDI mean you can monitor with it or do you need a card or box that is specifically for monitoring?
Provided you have a monitor with SDI input (ie: a professional broadcast monitor) you can use the SDI output to monitor.
The MXO2 says it can turn your display or HDTV to mimic professional monitor; are there any drawbacks to this?
None that I'm aware of. It's actually a great solution for lower budget monitoring. I wish I had something like that.
On the surface the MXO looks good for your business plan and budgetary concerns. That said, I had a REAL bad experience with Matrox years ago that has made me wary of them ever since. Particularly in customer service. Still, this product looks promising and if I had the money, I'd certainly be tempted.
The downsides are minimal from your standpoint I'd say. It's limited on digital and analog AES INs/OUTs, but for what you're planning on using it for, you'll never miss it.
Andy

AJA Kona Support in Premiere CS5.5

I'm new to Premiere, and I've encountered some unexpectedly poor performance that I'm currently attributing to my AJA Kona 3, but I'm wondering what I can do about it. I downloaded a trial of CS5.5 and installed the latest AJA drivers (9.0.3) and Adobe plug-ins (9.0.1). Here's my system configuration:
Mac Pro 4,1
2 Xeon 2.93 Ghz
16 GB RAM (10 GB allocated to PP/AE/AME)
OSX 10.6.5
AJA Kona 3
No CUDA-enable GPU
External RAID storage array w/ fiber interface
I'm working with a mix of source materials - XDCAM EX footage, ProRes 422 or Animation graphic renders, DVCPro HD or Uncompressed captures - all at 1080/59.94i
For starters, sometimes I have clips that shouldn't have to render that begin stuttering or failing to play, but after I stop and attempt to play that portion again, it works fine. This becomes very problematic during Export to Tape operations, when it can play through most of a sequence then hang up at the end. It seems most prone to this when switching between video codecs in the same sequence where they are not marked with any render-indicating color. I assume this means the Kona is handling those clips and should be able to play them without any problems. Is there some configuration issue I should look at that will address this? Maybe RAM allocation?
Secondly, I can't figure out how to output timecode via the 9-pin RS-422. It seems that Premiere is not sending any timecode information to the Kona, because when I enable timecode overlay from the AJA Control Panel, it doesn't show anything. If I open a Quicktime file using AJA TV, the timecode will display as expected. Is there a configuration option within Premiere that I'm overlooking? Not offering TC output seems like it would be a major oversight, so I'm assuming this is something I simply can't figure out.
Third, I'm experiencing an odd issue when scrubbing the sequence to find edit points in the audio. When I scrub frame-by-frame, it seems that the audio being played is always from the frame I just scrubbed FROM, not the frame I scrubbed TO (i.e., the current frame). This is not intuitive, and also not how Premiere works in non-AJA sequence presets. I'm assuming that this is just an AJA bug, but wanted to mention it in case I'm overlooking something.
I know this is a lot for one thread, but I appreciate the community's time, expertise, and help. I really am excited about working with Premiere instead of FCP, but these issues can be frustrating.
Thanks,
Josh

Post this message at the link below. You will target your quiry to some folks that should be able to help you. Have you called tech support at AJA? If you are serious about resolving this issue that would be a good thing to do as well.
http://forums.creativecow.net/ajakona

AJA Kona 3 and Final Cut Pro

Hi,
We have a G5 that has a new AJA Kona 3, Final Cut Pro 5.1.4, and OS 10.4.9. The problem is that when you try and do anything in Final Cut Pro it runs amazingly slow.
Any Help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Dave

Have you contacted AJA Technical Support? I am not sure that that card has been cleared for use with the latest versions of Final Cut Pro (last version I knew was supported was FCP 5.1.2) and the Operating system.
Shane

[BUG] Photoshop CS5 Extended 64-bit and the UAC

HI
Installing all the updates of the suite of Photoshop CS5 Extended 12.LS4 32-64 bit on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, you must completely disable the UAC to start Photoshop CS5 Extended 64-bit. Why?
THANKS
BYE

That's a fair question. Mine's not broken and I have not had to reinstall it, so I can't answer from personal experience.
General advice: Make a good backup and set a restore point before trying any restorative activity.
Also search this forum for something like "registry permissions"... I seem to recall at least one thread in early to mid 2010 where someone identified parts of the registry on which to alter permissions to solve some problem or another.
-Noel

Both CS 5.1, and CS5.1 64 bit installed.

I am running Vista Home Premium. I just updated from CS2, to CS 5.1, and I see that two(?) versions installed. There is a CS 5.1 in C/Program Files (x86)/Adobe, and a CS5.1 64 bit in C/Program Files/Adobe. Both show up on the Start/All Programs, but only CS 5.1 64bit shows on Control Panel/Programs & Features. So, should I delete the CS 5.1 (I guess it is the 32 bit version), or just leave it? Thanks.

What you describe is a normal install. I would not delete the 32 bit version. It can be handy if you need to use TWAIN or 3 party plug ins that will not work in 64 bit mode.

Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and AJA Kona LH card...

Hello,
I just installed the AJA Kona LH PCI-X HD capture card in the G5 2 Ghz dual.
I configured it, but when I go to the "System Settings - effects handling" of Final Cut Pro HD 4.5, I read that all the effects can only be handled by "Final Cut PRO HD": if I click on the selection menu, the only other available heading is "none": no AJA KONA!
This is for all the formats list (DV/DVCPRO - NTSC, DV - PAL, etc...).
So every think I do, FCP must render, and time flows...
Can you help me?
Thank you very much.

But we got this card especially for this reason: hardware acceleration.
I read that it has got this feature in this page:
http://www.aja.com/html/productsmacintosh_konaLHe.html
I don't know more.

Final Cut 6 and AJA Kona LHe

Ok, so we're upgrading all our edit bays at work to FCP Studio 2.
One of the bays in my dept. is having issues.
We have an AJA Kona LHe that outputs to a BETA SX deck.
Does anyone know if FCP 6 has issues with this card? So far, no combination of settings has made it work.
Ideas?

we did install the new drivers (v4) and it still didn't work. Apparently, the IT guy here is going to call AJA later today. It's good to hear they have great tech support. I feel like noone does anymore.
When we upgraded my bay we had a codec issue and called Apple, they told us to start a new project from scratch.... It's one I've been building for years now. They weren't very helpful.
Thanks, I'll update this when I get more info on it/resolve it so others might get help when searching the forum!

Does Premiere 5.5, on a Mac, with a AJA Kona 3G display and play back footage from a RED Scarlet-Dragon or Epic-Dragon in 4k?

I currently work on the following mac. It has an AJA Kona 3G Card.
Curious if I can get this system to play back the red files on the client monitor. I'm using a JVC
DT-R24L41DU.
I know that this monitor won't display the 4k image. I will be getting one that does. But for sake of argument, does anyone have any success with the config I have outputting 4K to a client monitor?
thanks,

The optimal RAID solution are the ARECA raid controllers. If you want a total engineered RAID solution one of the Areca outlets can do that for you. Another total systems solution is probably available from ADK VideoEditing, they use an also good line of RAID controllers from Intel which are actually manufactured by LSI
Also look at our PC oriented benchmarks PPBM5 and notice that many of the better scoring systems use Areca and Intel.
I wish we had a procedure to test Macs with our PPBM5 tests but both Harm and I are not Mac users so we cannot use the Mac terminology to write one. Eric at ADK since he sits on both sides of PC and Macs has run PPBM5 on a well set up Mac Pro 2010 using the onboard RAID controller. Maybe with your heavy PC background you could interpret the PC procedures to your Mac and see how those two machines compare. If you are interested PM me and I can give you more information

CUDA acceleration and Aja Kona LHi output on Mac

Hi, I hope some of you can answer my question. I'm getting mixed information right now. So can I have CUDA acceleration turned on when outputtin picture through Aja Kona Lhi? Or is it so that CUDA and I/O devices such as Blackmagic/Aja cards don't work together? Best Tapio

Those Mac Pro's should be fine with the Nvidia cards. The new ones are not approved with them and are not supported according to Apple. It took Blackmagic several months to get the driver worked out to allow the MPE in a Blackmagic project so I am not suprised if AJA is still working on it. I will say that we have not tried the MPE with the Blackmagic on the Mac side. We have many times on the PC side and it works fine as does Matrox.
Eric
ADK

Audio Playback Issues in Premiere Pro 8.1.0 with AJA Kona 3

Hi,
I'm supporting a couple of edits running the latest version of Premiere Pro. The editors are experiencing some strange stuttering/glitching audio playback via the installed AJA Kona 3 cards, manifested as follows:
When scrubbing using keyboard arrow keys for any prolonged period of time, audio either begins to stutter or fails to playback (despite there being activity on the audio monitors within the software)
When playing audio with unrendered effects (nothing too challenging, unrendered titles etc.), the audio will occasionally not play at all or will begin to stutter also.
Specs are as follows:
HP z800 running Windows 7 64-bit
2 x Intel Xeon X5650 CPUs
32GB RAM
512GB Samsung SSD
nVidia Quadro 4000 (latest drivers installed)
AJA Kona 3 (latest drivers installed)
Wacom Intuos 4 tablet (latest drivers installed)
Storage is a SMB share connected via a dedicated 1Gb/s ethernet link (Intel PRO 1000 card) and media is largely DVCPRO HD 100 wrapped as OP1a MXF, with corresponding sequence settings.
I've played with various RAM and Playback settings (including setting the AJA video playback buffer to 'minimum' as suggested on another thread regarding audio playback), but the problems persist. Is there anything else I can try, or more information I can provide?

Since it worked with CS5.5, check with Blackmagic to see if they have updates for CS6
I know from other discussions that an nVidia driver update was needed for at least some people upgrading to CS6

Motion playback on production monitor through AJA Kona LH card looks nasty.

Okay, so here's the deal.
We have recently invested in some shiny new things to equip an edit suite - a Kona LH card and a Production Monitor. Along with a Sony HDV/DVCAM VTR. Specs of our set up are listed at the bottom.
Pretty much all of the work we have done in the past has been non-braodcast - we're looking to improve workflow and quality of final output. We work mainly with Final Cut Pro, but also with Motion.
We have connected everything and have marvelled at how much of a difference it makes having a proper video preview from Final Cut (v. 6) as opposed to what we had before - firewire to camera to TV... Of course we were expecting this marked improvement.
We were also expecting the key benefit of a video preview output from Motion.
Now. We do get a video output through to the production monitor from Motion. But this is where it gets weird.
When we do a preview of an animation, it looks really shoddy.
As a test case, let's take a basic text crawl in Motion 3.
Static graphics look great, but when you play motion graphics, the image quality is really jaggy and nasty. (even at full frame RAM preview, best render settings, full res - all of these options are apparently properly selected).
So we did some test exports. Usually we would export animations in the Animation Codec, with an alpha if intended for compositing on top of a video track in FCP... we tried a bunch of different formats - animation, photoJpeg, DVCPRO 50, Aja 2Vuy, Uncompressed 10bit...
All these play from Quicktime on the computer monitor just fine, but when playing from the AJA TV app to the production monitor, again the same problem. And then when you bring them into Final Cut, the same problem, even when you match the sequence settings and field order to the source video ...
In effect, it seems that anything generated in Motion just doesn't want to look nice on our Production Monitor - even when imported into FCP.
HOWEVER - if you drop the Motion PROJECT into an FCP timeline, all is fine!
We know the AJA card and the Monitor are working because of this fact, and because when you generate titles from within FCP itself - the same text scroll, for instance, it looks perfect!
I have also found when working with old composited animations originating from AE that you can get FCP to pump these through to the production monitor beautifully when working in an uncompressed sequence setting - or in an Animation sequence setting. (For an Animation sequence to go the the production monitor from FCP, the Video Playback option in A/V Settings needs to be set to "AJA Kona 625i25 RGBA" instead of "AJA Kona 625i25 8 bit" or 10 bit).
The above point could be of relevance...? The only Video Output options from Motion or AE that apply to our setup and monitor are "625i25 RGBA" and "625i25 DV-RGBA" ... are we supposed to have more options?
In short, we could work around these issues - it just doesn't seem right however that we can't get a decent external preview from Motion. A big reason for upgrading our setup was faithful video previews of animations from these programs...
We also can't understand why exports from these animation programs can look so poor. I can export a video with a text crawl generated from a DV PAL Final Cut Project with DV Pal compression settings and it looks massively better playing through AJA TV than our test Motion exports.
It just isn't right.
Please help. Pretty please.
For reference, here are the specs of our set up:
Apple Dual 2.5 GHz PowerPC G5
4.5 GB DDR SDRAM
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 9800 XT
Equipped with Kona LH Card
JVC TM-H1750CG Production Monitor fed via SDI (have also tried component, to no avail)
It just isn't right.
Please help. Pretty please. Many thanks in advance.
For reference, here are the specs of our set up:
Apple Dual 2.5 GHz PowerPC G5
4.5 GB DDR SDRAM
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 9800 XT
Equipped with Kona LH Card (version 5)
2 x 23" Apple Cinema Displays
JVC TM-H1750CG Production Monitor fed via SDI (have also tried component, to no avail)

Sounds like you are seeing interlace artifacts - in Motion's project properties, have you tried setting the field dominance to None?

New AJA Kona Drivers 10.1 are out

New AJA Kona Drivers 10.1 for Premiere Pro/Avid/FCP are out . If you are running CS5 you still need the Adobe Plugin drivers 9.1 . http://www.aja.com/support/konaNEW/kona-3-3x.php

Yay, so glad to hear it. I posted on creative cow under the AJA KONA Mac and received this response yesterday. As always, thanks for posting updates lasvideo!!
Forum: AJA Kona - Mac
User Name: walter biscardi
Post Subject: Re: LHe Plus & Premiere CS6 success?
Two of our systems are LHi boards with zero issues to report other than we cannot lay back to tape properly yet. Though the new drivers released today promise to address that problem, we haven't had a chance to download and test yet.

AJA Kona LHe with 7.0 driver Freezes display on sleep

Loading the 7.0 drivers causes the display to
freeze the display if the system goes to sleep.
Configuration:
* OS X 10.6 and 10.6.1 Snow Leopard
* Kona LHe board
* 7.0 driver
* Mac Pro
* Intel 2 X 2.66 dual-core xeon processors
Tested by installing a "virgin" 10.6, rebooted,
put the system to sleep. The system successfully
wakes back up multiple times.
Installed the 7.0 drivers:
http://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJAKonaLHe7.0.zip
Rebooted. Put the system to sleep.
Wake it back up (key stroke or mouse)
The display is frozen completely, and displays
only what was on the screen when the machine
went to sleep (the seconds on the time/date
are frozen as of the time the system went
to sleep.)
Rebooted in 64-bit mode. The display is still
frozen after waking up from sleep.
The only thing that changed on this virgin 10.6
install was adding the AJA Kona LHe drivers. There
are no other boards in the computer.
Also tried upgrading to 10.6.1. Same results.
So, do you guys have any tips or ideas
I could try to fix this problem and keep
the system from seizing-up when it goes
to sleep?
For now, the workaround is never spinning
down the hard drives and display. Not very
environmentally conscious.
Thanks in advance for any feedback
or suggestions,
Kurt

I was having the exact same problem with freezing after waking from sleep mode after I downloaded the Kona Lhe 7.0 driver. My configuration was: OSX 10.6.1; Kona LHe board, 7.0 Lhe Driver; Mac Pro; Intel 2 x 2.66 dual core xeon processors.
So I wiped the drive and did a clean install of Snow Leopard (10.6.1) and FCP (7.01). I installed the Kona Lhe 7.0 NDD driver instead of the Kona Lhe 7.0 Driver, and now the sleep function is working just fine.
I'm not sure if the problem was solved by the Kona NDD update alone, or if it was the combination of the latest FCP 7.01 update plus the Kona NDD update.
Hope that helps

AJA Kona LHe LHi Playback not working

I'm running two separate Mac Pros that also have Final Cut Pro 7 using a AJA Kona LHe and LHi. Both share the same issues when previewing with a broadcast monitor.FCP works perfect with the Kona cards.
The video signal seems to drop out during playback and audio drops out as well.
I have the newest drivers for Kona 9.0.3 and using the 8,5 aja adobe plugin for CS5. I didn't want to install the the AJA Adobe CS5.5 plugins in fear of messing things up.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled both the control panel and the plugins with no luck, The editor seems to be fine its mainly the playback in the monitor that's not working right.
Is this a CS5 thing? Will CS5.5 version fix the issues with Kona cards? I'm seriously thinking about moving over to Preimiere but need to know if thgis setup will work.
Any help would be much appreiciated.

Kind of similar. The audio issue is like that. Drops out until I stop playback then restart playback. AJA said to not use kona card but uot put setting instead. That helps but didn't fix it 100% Video playback drops out completely for me with the HDMI out of the LHi. The component out from the LHe works better.
My playback in the program looks good my issue is with external the external monitor playback.
I'm editing with ProRes 422 LT and ProRes 422
Nice video sample. Thats a good way to show your issue. I should do the same thing.

CS5.5, 10 bit, AVCIntra, AJA Kona and GTX580 vs Quadro

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