Aja Kona 3g For Mac
KONA 3G is a video and audio desktop I/O card that provides professionals with unparalleled features for handling everything from SD to HD, 2K and 4K - all with full 10-bit uncompressed clarity. AJA KONA 3G Malaysia. FEATURES Handle SD to HD, 2K and 4K – 10-bit uncompressed clarity Futureproof for 4K Workflows Supports macOS, Windows and Linux Workflow 3D Ready and Able (2) 3G/HD/SD-SDI inputs and two outputs HDMI 1.4a monitoring output LTC input and output Genlock input Configurable BNC HD/SD analog video output. I have 2 systems with AJA hardware, one with Kona 3, one with Kona 3g. I am on Windows 7, have the latest vers. AJA Kona 3 and 3g isn't recognized 4 years, 7 months ago. So even though I was changing my system audio output in the Mac's settings, Lightworks was still trying to send audio to the Kona.
A tale of putting the cart before the horse:oops: Over the past several months I put a system together in anticipation of the new FCP: 6 core 3.33 Mac Pro, (soon to have 3x16gb Samsung ram sticks), Areca 1880x RAID card, 8 bay cineRAID box with 8 Hitachi 2TB 7K3000 ultrastars in a RAID 60 array, Intel 160GB 320 SSD for boot and apps, AJA Kona 3G capture card and break-out box, Neumann KH 120 near field monitors. I thought I would be cutting film by now but, since the release of FCPX, I put everything on ice. I need a different NLE. Not to denigrate FCPX in the least as my case is perhaps unusual: I have a picture in the can - 24hrs of 16mm that's been too many years sitting in the vault on betaSP (w/time-code and edge# window burns) - and I need TAPE ingest. FCPX is no help there. My question is will Lightworks work with the system I've described?
Or is Premiere my only alternative? I've already looked at Avid: MC 5.5 only works with AJA Io Express, not the Kona 3G card. Will Lightworks accept the Kona 3G? I've been snooping around the press info and the forums and I really like the look of LW. Yes I understand the risk in working with a Beta but all I really want to do is cut picture and sound; it appears stable enough for that as long as I'm backing up my work, yes? I also realize LW is windows only at this point, but I am willing to use boot camp and go for it and support this 'new' NLE.
I do not come from a FCP background so I don't want to backtrack into FCPS3 only to learn an unsupported system. I've had enough of THAT: I have an Avid MC system complete w/hardware and DONGLE, only to find myself unsupported and non-updatable. The codecs are going to be your real problem, if captured on a Mac everything will be a Quicktime wrapper, and not all of those are going to be supported, whereas capturing on Windows would probably result in a codec and wrapper that will work in Mac Quicktime. You may want to borrow a Win7 installation for 30 days and try it out for capturing to get your media into a file. There are details of this in one of the Bootcamp threads, you might be able to run this as a virtual machine through VirtualBox and get things captured. Right now the Matrox codecs are your best choice for compatibility, choose a nice high bit rate.
Also you said you had 16mm transferred to Beta, any chance you can have that rescanned into a sequence of images and a wave file? Might as well get higher resolution for the possibility of HD. Sit down and figure out exactly what portions you want to use so you can keep the scanning fees down, there are a few places doing this for about $0.50 per foot. Could you use the AJA VTRXchange to capture to a DV file and do a rough cut to find the parts you want to keep?
I'm not real familiar with what the AJA cards can encode to so I can't make any good recommendations on what you can use other than I'm positive they will do DV since everything can do DV. As far as upgrades for Media Composer, you have two paths of upgrades and the price is rather reasonable at I think $600 for previous owners (any version) and FCP upgrades that might be the same price. A tale of putting the cart before the horse:oops: Over the past several months I put a system together in anticipation of the new FCP: 6 core 3.33 Mac Pro, (soon to have 3x16gb Samsung ram sticks), Areca 1880x RAID card, 8 bay cineRAID box with 8 Hitachi 2TB 7K3000 ultrastars in a RAID 60 array, Intel 160GB 320 SSD for boot and apps, AJA Kona 3G capture card and break-out box, Neumann KH 120 near field monitors. I have an Avid MC system complete w/hardware and DONGLE, only to find myself unsupported and non-updatable What vesion of MC are you running? It will definitely be updateable. Apparently support for Kona is in late development and the Io Express is currently supported. Alternatively there are others here running LW under Boot Camp.
There's even a complete forum devoted to it. Maybe it would help to check that out. My understanding is that you can capture with your Kona using VTR Xchange on the Mac or AJA Machina on the PC. Either way you can then import your media into whatever app you wish and cut with it.
Not as good as full compatibility, but at least a low-cost workaround. You would know Kona better than me though.
If you can afford to wait a little, check out. @ GregE and jwrl Thank you both for your responses and information. I'm glad to see Avid aggressively doing the right thing.
Unfortunately it's a bit late for me. I took the 'update any version' quite literally myself, even the people I spoke with in Avid support were quite sure I would be able to upgrade. (It took me forever to locate my damn dongle!) Three weeks ago I had a full boxed set of MC 5.5 paid for and on the way when Avid's main office set me right on the matter. As It turned out my version was the Media Composer Meridien and, as of 2004, I was out of luck. No longer supported.
Fortunately the Video Guys were great and backed the order off my AMEX card. THAT is when I started turning over stones in earnest and discovered that Lightworks is reborn. As for the task at hand you've given me good notes and I'll be sorting out my options. @ GregE regarding the 16mm footage: The timed tx to Beta SP looks beautiful but includes dual T.C./Edge# window burns low in the frame probably inside any letterbox cropping:( , so I'll treat it as workprint, (if anyone remembers what that is), and consider my task as an 'off-line' cut.
Once picture is locked I'll re tx selects; go from camera neg to HD. I'm poking 'round the forums, I've downloaded the user manuals and I like what I've seen of LW's GUI as shown in some of the tutorial vid's.
I'm in a bit of trouble on the tech side, as evidenced by the work station I put together for a non extant editing system, so I appreciate the direction you've both pointed me in to go check out the codecs and methods of ingesting, and if boot camp/windows will work my hardware. What I'd dearly love is to be sitting in front of a fully functioning Mac version of Lightworks with my footage slathered all over the monitor and my hands all over one of those slinky little desk-top CONSOLES.one of these days. Thank you for the help! For what you are doing with the beta tapes, DV would certainly be my choice since it is very easy to work with and a codec that is common to just about all editing platforms.
You could ingest that with iMovie and a really cheap composite analog to firewire device. And I'm fairly sure they are wrong about your upgrade. Meridian is no longer supported, but updating to the software only version is still supported. That and the external software for your card would let you capture files to be imported into MC and get your work done. For wait you need to do, I think this would be reasonable and just wait for the update that supports the Kona card so you can get the outputs back. Meridian was a decent device at the time, but way to proprietary and as a result even Avid dropped support for it. You have at least 6 months to a Mac version of Lightworks (pending changes to the roadmap) so you have some choices to make.
Aja Kona 3g
#1 wait with the project on hold for a bit longer #2 buy the MC software only version and use the Kona card and software to get the files #3 install Win7 PRO 64 bit with bootcamp 3.x drivers and give Lightworks a try using Kona software for capture #4 get Adobe Premium (CS5.5) FCP crossgrade promotion You can do both #2 and #3 free for 30 days so both are worth investigation, the Avid demo is available on their product page, there are links for the Windows disks in a post down in the Mac Bootcamp section or google will provide a link to real Microsoft downloads. If you like the Windows install, you can buy a product key (full version) and enter that key into your demo version and it will be all set (there should be instructions around the web, look for changing product key). Looks like the retail version of Win7pro 64bit will run you about $275USD so I suggest running the 30 day demo to make sure it is what you want. The last alternative would be to sell your Mac and buy a new PC, you should be able to easily break even with this deal, Macs hold their value for a long time and you should be able to build a similar Windows machine with around the price of your used Mac, maybe even a faster machine with a better graphics card. Or you could get a lesser machine like an i7 and a great graphics card and be good for 2K workflows.
Aja Kona 3g Mac
Disk speed and graphics card seem to be the areas where you need to have really good stuff. Most of the editors offload the heavy lifting to the graphics card now so an i7 would probably be fine unless you are doing a lot of compositing. I would suggest one of the best nVidia cards which will set you back a chunk of money.