Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card??
by Benjamin Eshagpoor
on
Aug 19, 2008 at 9:14:21 am
I just wanted to get some advice. I'm looking to purchase an HD capture card and I wanted to know people's thoughts on the Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme versus the Aja Kona card. I know a lot of people use the Kona card but I was on Blackmagic's website last night looking at the Decklink HD Extreme card and it looks pretty sweet and the price is really amazing!
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by RIchard Trier on Aug 19, 2008 at 11:45:10 am
I know a lot of people have their own stories and opinions about this stuff. For me its simple: I have a list of bad experiences with Decklink and, so far, I've never been let down by AJA.
So its an easy choice for me - I'd recommend the Kona.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Steve Cohen on Aug 19, 2008 at 4:31:43 pm
[RIchard Trier]"I know a lot of people have their own stories and opinions about this stuff. For me its simple: I have a list of bad experiences with Decklink and, so far, I've never been let down by AJA.
So its an easy choice for me - I'd recommend the Kona."
My experience is the opposite.
I have 2 AJA IO's and 3 MultiBridge Extreme's conneted to a 16TB via Fiber optics.
The AJA's would drop frames on capture while the BlackMagic's capture just fine. Spent a year and a half trying to trouble shoot this.
My engineers kept saying it was this or that, finally I just switched them for a week and watched the results.
Needless to say as I type this we are pulling out the 2 AJA's and replacing them with BlackMagic's.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Jeremy Garchow on Aug 19, 2008 at 8:25:41 pm
Sorry you're having so much trouble, Steve. I have been through aja io, Kona 2, Kona 3X, Kona 3 and ioHD. I have never had any serious issues that weren't operator error and the one time I did have to swap a board it was handled in a very timely and professional manner. AJA is very timely with helpful responses when you pick up the phone and call them. They are all very nice folks who care about us end users. Back in my Blackmagic days the problems were numerous and every driver update seemed to break something else. I am not trying to start a flame war, but I do call it like I see it.
As far as dropping frames, that is most likely a config issue for whatever that's worth. What were you trying to do?
Benjamin, what are you planning on using your Kona for and what formats do you work in? The Kona does some very important things that the Blackmagic does not, 720p24 hardware downconversion being one of them.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Steve Cohen on Aug 19, 2008 at 9:15:17 pm
Jeremy;
I know AJA has great support and I really don;t have a problem with AJA, but Benjamin was asking for opinions, so I gave mine.
I actually just got a call from someone who is the AJA distributor for Florida and he was asking to come down and troubleshoot the issue with AJA.
I don;t think it is a config issue with the AJA because all we are doing is capturing 8 bit uncompressed or DV quality video to a 16TB San connected by a 4GB Fiber connection.
We have 6 raids and only have problems digitizing to Raids 1 and 2, we can digitize to raids 3, 4, 5 & 6 with no problem.
It will happen with video coming thru the AJA or coming from the firewire connection of the Mini DV.
Believe me we have gone thru everything possible including backing up all of the media and projects, reformatting the 2 raids and re-digitizing new footage and starting projects from scratch.
Any thing you can think of is a welcome suggestion.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Steve Cohen on Aug 19, 2008 at 10:56:24 pm
The San is a Rourke Data San with FibreJet for the software.
No it is fine on any other drive. The internal HD, a G-Raid, or any of the other Raids. it only has problems on Raid 1 and 2.
Yes it probably is a SAN issue.
All the raids were installed at the same time, using the same controllers, switches and everything is identical on all 6 raids.
Raids 1 and 2 are on 1 box. Raid 3 and 4 are on a second and raids 5 & 6 are on a third, but we will only drop frames on Raids 1 and 2 nothing else.
My point the AJA and the BlackMagic is that it will drop frames with the AJA IO (a Firewire device) and the Mini DV (another firewire device) both are on seperate busses. We installed a Firewire card for the Mini DV and the AJA is on the compute Buss.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by walter biscardi on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:00:52 am
[Steve Cohen]"Any thing you can think of is a welcome suggestion. "
With Io's and IoHD's, the first question I ask is what else do you have connected to the system via Firewire? More than anything, any other device connected via Firewire can cause issues with the Io and Io HD's.
That's one of the main reason we run with the Kona's as we use a lot of various Firewire drives for various projects.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Steve Cohen on Aug 20, 2008 at 1:32:53 am
The only other firewire device is a Sony Mini DV deck, but it is connected to a PCI Firewire card, while the AJA is connected to the Computers firewire.
Regardless, we have 2 AJA's on 2 different, but identical quad Core G5's the dropping frames happens on both systems.
The mini DVD deck is only hooked up to 1 of the systems the other has no additional firewire devices.
We have even moved one of the AJA into our one of the edit suites (it is normally connected to a system that is dedicated for final output to tape) and it dropped frames in there as well and there are no firewire devices connected to the edit suite.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Steve Cohen on Aug 20, 2008 at 2:20:34 am
Gary;
This is not an AJA IOHD, it is the plan old AJA IO.
It worked fine on our Dual Core G-5's connected to G-Raids, but when we moved downstairs to the new facility and installed a SAN we started having problems.
Again it really is not the AJA that is the problem. it has to be something on our SAN, but can not figure out what.
The AJA in question (or the Sony Mini DV deck) connected to a Quad Core G-5 or even a Dual Core G-5 (both connected via firewire 1 using the built in firewire port and the other using a PCI firewire card) will drop frames when digitizing to Raids 1 and 2, but when digitizing to Raids 3, 4, 5 or 6 it is fine.
So right there it says there is something with the box that contains Raids 1 and 2.
We have had out engineer triple and quadruple check every setting and the settings between box 1 (containing Raids 1 and 2) box 2 (containing Raids 3 & 4) and box 3 containing Raids 5 & 6) are all identically.
We have even tried changing switches that control the boxes, no difference.
We've tried decreasing the port speed, anything you can think of we have tried it.
There is something with digitizing thru a firewire device (AJA or Mini DV deck) that will drop frames on only those 2 raids, but digitizing to the same raids with a BlackMagic has no problems at all.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by walter biscardi on Aug 20, 2008 at 10:59:32 am
[Steve Cohen]"There is something with digitizing thru a firewire device (AJA or Mini DV deck) that will drop frames on only those 2 raids, but digitizing to the same raids with a BlackMagic has no problems at all."
That is a very strange problem and one I've never heard of before, but definitely a conflict between Firewire and your SAN. We've never seen anything like that here for sure.
The Kona boards would remove this issue in your case since that would eliminate the firewire input for digitizing. Of course I would highly recommend the Konas over the Decklinks, but obviously you would need to spend more money to get the Konas.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Steve Cohen on Aug 20, 2008 at 1:47:29 pm
[walter biscardi]"That is a very strange problem and one I've never heard of before, but definitely a conflict between Firewire and your SAN. We've never seen anything like that here for sure."
Walter you are correct. It is very strange.
We have BlackMagics in the edit suites so to achive uniformity we decided to go with BlackMagics to replace the AJA's.
I'm sure the Kona card is an excellent device, but right now BlackMagic is what they want to go with here.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by walter biscardi on Aug 20, 2008 at 2:27:29 pm
[Steve Cohen]"Walter you are correct. It is very strange.
We have BlackMagics in the edit suites so to achive uniformity we decided to go with BlackMagics to replace the AJA's. "
Well, good luck with the new installs, I hope everything works out for you. Nothing worse than troubleshooting when you should be creating.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Steve Cohen on Aug 20, 2008 at 2:50:23 pm
Gary;
It is a Fiber server managed by Fibre Jet.
I did mention that in another post to someone else.
Forgive me but if it were a cableing problem, especially a bent Fiber cable, then it would be dropping frame to all of the 6 raids, not just Raids 1 & 2.
We have have an engineer in here and moved the machine to another fibre drop, same issue, reformat and reconfigure those 2 raids, same issue.
Nothing seems to fix the problem except removing all firewire devices (IE AJA IO and Mini DV deck) and capture threw a hardwired device like the Blackmagic Multibrige (or even a Kona I guesss).
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Herb Sevush on Aug 19, 2008 at 9:31:26 pm
Benjamin -
I have 2 Decklink HD cards, one 4 years old, the other 3. Never had any porblems with either, quality is excellent. Many people prefer the Kona cards, citing quality and tech support, I'm not qualified to compare the 2, just giving my experience with Blackmagic.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Chris Poisson on Aug 19, 2008 at 10:02:46 pm
The Decklink Extreme takes two slots if you use the HDMI component, kinda retarded. To the point though, I liked my Decklink card just fine but I like my Kona LH way more. There tech support is superb.
Re: Blackmagic Decklink Extreme Pro or Aja Kona Card?? by Jason Porthouse on Aug 20, 2008 at 10:33:25 am
Benjamin,
My experience with my BM Multibridge has, so far, been fine. It's a good, workmanlike bit of kit that 'does exactly what it says on the tin'... IQ is excellent, downconversion fine, and so far I'm happy. Yes, the Kona is slightly better built IMHO but you'd expect that for the price.
No experience of tech or customer support as it hasn't broken. I've just stuck it in, turned it on and it's been fine ever since... I think a lot of the differences in customer support between the two are maybe more marked on the west of the pond rather than on the east side anyway...
Just my 2 cents - I think you won't regret either.
Jason
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