HD For Indies

AJA today quietly announced a new product, the Kona LHe (PDF press release), a version of the already excellent Kona LH that now adds a PCIe interface to work with the new PowerMacs released yesterday.

In short, this looks like the new Killer Card To Have for almost everyone. It does hot and cold running video of practically every imaginable flavor - SD, HD, analog, digital, compressed, uncompressed, accelerated effects for everything FCP accelerates, everything. I literally can't think of a reasonable video device or flavor that this thing can't handle. All FireWire based media, all SDI and HD-SDI based media, as well as analog media for composite, s-video and SD & HD component.

The only possible limitations I can even think of are twofold:

1.) No RGB 10 bit 4:4:4 input/output - that is reserved for the Kona2, and frankly would be a pretty rare need for 99% of editors & facilities, only if they needed to interface with a $100,000 fully loaded and upgraded HDCAM SR deck.

2.) that it only has two XLR channels, and I'd have to think pretty hard about when that would be a realistic limitation.

(update - unlike the Kona2, this unit can downconvert HD to SD but not upconvert SD to HD)

Price is $1790, so that's entirely reasonable as well.

What is it's competitor? For the moment, BlackMagic's Multibridge Extreme with PCIe interface is as close as you can get. It is an external box with a PCIe interface and should ship around the same time AJA's product does (in theory - it is months late already). It does a few more things as an external box, it has more audio I/O it would appear, and also handles 4:4:4, and also does some stuff as a standalone box with no Mac required which is pretty cool too. It costs $2500, but it pretty much IS a breakout box (all the crucial guts are in the rackmountable box, the part in the computer is strictly interface).

I would guess they will have a PCIe version of the DeckLInk HD Pro Single Link, which is presently $1495 for the PCI-X version, available as PCIe in the not too distant future, at which point that would be the closest thing to the Kona LHe. For $300 less, you don't get the analog input, just some analog output (no s-video). So no BetaSP or other analog deck can be captured from without some kind of converter being used. But no PCIe version announced at this time, so no dice.

At present, I like the Kona2's output controls more than the BlackMagic DeckLink HD Pro Dual Link's - the controls per output are more granular, you can configure more precisely. Or at least the interface makes it appear that way, that there are more choices with the AJA (my opinion based on experiences to date).

It's also worth noting, by the way, that it would appear that the whole "you have to get the right G5" thing may be a thing of the past with these PCIe machines - so far I see nothing that would keep ANY of these machines from being valid for HD uncompressed work, even the $2000 entry level PCIe G5. Excellent news! It will be very very interesting to do some hands on testing to see if there are practical differences between a 2.0 and a 2.3 in terms of realtime performance - will there be a scenario where you can get one more color correction in real time during a cross dissolve that'll run full res full speed vs the other box or not? I fully expect the quad processor box, with whatever changes come next NAB, to be able to do SIGNIFICANTLY more RT stuff than the other two. Time will tell. And I don't expect the current v5.02 of FCP to take full advantage of what the quad can offer.

Full AJA press release follows:

www.aja.com
AJA Announces KONA LHe 10-bit Uncompressed Video Capture Card for
New Power Mac G5 PCI Express Line

Grass Valley, CA (October 20, 2005)— AJA Video, a leading manufacturer of professional
video interface and conversion solutions, today announced the KONA LHe, a new PCI Express
version of the popular KONA LH. Identical in feature set to the KONA LH released one month
ago, the KONA LHe is a 10-bit uncompressed video capture card that supports editing on the new
PCI Express Apple G5 Power Macs with Final Cut StudioTM. Reinforcing the company’s
commitment to supporting the latest hardware upgrades, AJA is introducing the KONA LHe as
Apple prepares to debut its new PCI Express line of Power Macs. KONA LHe is the only PCI
Express (PCIe) card available for OSX and Final Cut Studio that provides a cost-effective, single-
card HD/SD analog and digital I/O solution with the superior broadcast quality for which AJA is
known.

"PCI Express is much more than a new interface slot—it is an entirely new motherboard
architecture with dramatically improved bandwidth,” commented John Abt, CEO, AJA Video
Systems. “The combination of Apple's incredible new G5 Power Mac, and AJA's KONA LHe will
bring a new level of performance to desktop digital video."

KONA LHe will ship worldwide on October 31st, 2005, with a list price of $1790 US. KONA LHe
has the same feature set as the KONA LH, but with the new high-performance PCI Express bus
interface for use in Apple’s new line of Power Macs. The KONA LH remains available for non
PCI-Express applications.

KONA LHe Feature List:

• PCI Express compatible
• 10-bit Uncompressed SD/HD QuickTime Capture Card
• SD/HD/Analog (Component/Composite/S-Video)(HD Analog Component-only)
• DVCProHD hardware acceleration
• HDV hardware acceleration
• Dynamic RT Extreme hardware acceleration
• High-quality 12-bit Video A/D and D/A converters
• SDI or HD-SDI Input, 2 Independent SDI/HD-SDI Outputs
• 10-bit Hardware HD to SD Down-conversion
• 2-channel AES and 8-channel Embedded Audio
• 2-channel Balanced XLR Analog Audio
• HD/SD Genlock
• RS-422 Machine Control
• Final Cut Pro 5, Motion, After Effects, Combustion, and More
• Cables Standard, KL-Breakout Optional
• Three-year warranty
• Technical Support


-mike