Trade up?
by Bob Cole
on
Mar 22, 2007 at 3:11:43 pm
Trying to save money, I bought the wrong card last fall.
I got the Kona LHe, which works fine. But I am trying to get ready for HD, and it occurred to me that clients are inevitably going to say, "we need to use this old clip in our new program." And the clip will be on Beta SP.
My local dealer has offered a limited-time trade-up from my LHe and break-out box to a Kona 3, break-out box, and AJA HD10AVA, for a net cost of $2800 (and of course the LHe & break-out box).
Having taken one misstep, I'm doubly cautious about this one. Should I be waiting for what happens with Apple and Kona at NAB? I know that anyone who actually knows won't be able to respond, but educated guesses are welcome.
Re: Trade up? by JeremyG on Mar 22, 2007 at 3:18:36 pm
The Kona 3 is a feature rich card that will allow you to get work done today, if you need this functionality today. No one knows what's going to happen at NAB so if you can afford to wait the 30 or so days, I'd do it. As I understand it, you don't really need this up convert function right now today, you just want to be prepared for it, correct? If you don't need it today I'd say hold off until at least NAB. For now, there's other ways to up-convert your footage in software. Not as elegant, but it works.
Now there's an oxymoron if ever there was one. I say you should save your money now so you can spend it next month on a new dual quad core MAC. If you think that Kona LHe was a bad choice, scraping your MacPro is gonna really hurt. In addition, if you buy the Kona 3 you're gonna have to buy that Kona D to A converter box for analog audio and that's gonna run your ticket up too.
Call me over the weekend if you get itchy to buy...
Monitoring audio from Kona 3 requires ADA4??? by Bob Cole on Mar 23, 2007 at 2:53:53 pm
Thanks David, I may take you up on that offer to talk me down. And Jeremy, you're right -- I don't need it immediately. I just like to use down time to get ready for the next spate of projects, because it is so hard to change in the middle of them.
[David Roth Weiss]"if you buy the Kona 3 you're gonna have to buy that Kona D to A converter box for analog audio and that's gonna run your ticket up too"
That LHe is looking better. The breakout box for the Kona 3 shows two RCA's for analog audio out, but I guess you'er saying that's for monitoring only? Or that it doesn't work when you're outputting digital?
Re: Monitoring audio from Kona 3 requires ADA4??? by JeremyG on Mar 23, 2007 at 6:25:42 pm
[Bob Cole]"Or that it doesn't work when you're outputting digital?"
It works. All outputs are active at all times.
If you want balanced audio or more than two channels of analog audio, you will have to get a d/a converter, if you have no need to layoff analog audio, you're good.
