AJA Video Systems KONA LHe PCIe Card for Mac Pro and PC's
The First Card for OS X & Final Cut Pro to Offer HD, SD Analog & Digital I/O
Not an entry-level card, KONA LHe offers a full ride to HD with no-compromise, 10-bit uncompressed video, 2-channel AES and 8-channel embedded audio, analog composite/component video I/O, 2-channel analog audio I/O, broadcast-quality hardware downconversion and TBC on analog inputs. KONA LHe bridges the analog and digital worlds by offering I/O for both. A lot of card for a low price, KONA LHe also features dual-monitor desktop viewing for editing ease. The KONA LHe comes standard with a breakout cable and also works with the optional KL-Box-LH for rackmounted I/O convenience.
Supporting native 10-bit resolution, KONA LHe provides optimum quality for SD and HD - the maximum allowed in SMPTE SDI standards. Using QuickTime format, KONA LHe captures directly to 10-bit files on disk, and also supports many legacy 8-bit formats for backward compatibility. KONA LHe also supports DVCPROHD and HDV, DV25, DV50, JPEG and more.
In addition to perfection in video, KONA LHe offers all the audio support you'd ever want: native OS X multi-channel audio and 24-bit AES/EBU digital audio at 48kHz for digital production. For ease of use, KONA LHe also includes hardware sample-rate conversion on AES inputs - eliminating source synchronizing requirements.
Because of it's unique HD/SD analog I/O, KONA LHe is perfect for not only uncompressed and Apple ProRes 422, but also HDV and other diverse workflows.
KONA LHe Hardware Acceleration
Final Cut Pro users will love DVCPROHD, HDV, and Apple RT Extreme hardware acceleration, developed in close cooperation with Apple and available exclusively on KONA LHe. KONA LHe hardware takes a portion of the codec processing load off the CPU, allowing more RealTime (RT) effects in Final Cut Pro when outputting. KONA LHe also has hardware support when capturing. This brings amazing RealTime HD production power to the desktop. With KONA LHe, any source can be captured using the DVCPROHD codec - giving you online HD quality at remarkably low data rates, allowing the internal Mac Pro or PowerMac SATA storage to be used for HD capture, playback and RT effects. Of course, you'll obtain still better performance and more RT when using a fast SCSI or Fibre array, but this feature allows HD to be used where only SD would have been considered because of budget or time constraints. KONA LHe even supports the DVCPROHD and HDV codecs with downconversion - allowing projects to be downconverted to SD.
How Does KONA LHe Accelerate DVCPROHD, HDV & Apple's Dynamic RT?
Because KONA's precision hardware does part of the work, the Mac Pro has more time available to process RT effects. This means more RT-effects power and more RT streams. Most broadcast codecs, including DVCPROHD and HDV, use a two-step process. The video is first scaled to a lower horizontal pixel count, and then the video is compressed. This is done because the slightly scaled video results in a favorable trade-off between resolution and codec efficiency. KONA LHe's hardware not only dramatically speeds up the scaling part of the job, but it's also done with full 10-bit broadcast quality. When using the Final Cut Pro HDV codec, KONA LHe's hardware acceleration allows instantaneous RT playback for both monitoring and recording. Even KONA's downconverter works in realtime with HDV, allowing SD monitoring, dubs or mastering. This KONA LHe functionality makes HDV a fully professional solution. The Panasonic DVCPROHD format takes advantage of KONA hardware as well. KONA's precision hardware allows capture and playback of HD-SDI video to and from the DVCPROHD codec at a quality level virtually indistinguishable from native FireWire, while freeing up valuable RT processing power. For Final Cut Pro's Dynamic RT feature, KONA's hardware is used to offload the video scaling as the "Playback Video Quality" dynamically adjusts. This allows more playback power - and because KONA handles it seamlessly, the Dynamic RT you see on the Mac monitor is the same as that shown on your professional broadcast monitor.
KONA LHe Supports Final Cut Multi-Cam Feature
Final Cut Pro 6 provides multi-cam playout - and KONA LHe supports it! With KONA hardware and a sufficient storage solution, you can handle up to 16 sources in realtime. Each stream of video is captured individually and then ganged together in Final Cut Pro for a multi-cam editing workflow. The KONA LHe hardware seamlessly plays the multi-cam clips out to professional broadcast monitors or decks, via SDI, HD-SDI or component video. Up to 16 sources can be viewed in realtime via the KONA (4-up, 6-up, 9-up, 16-up, etc.), or each individual source can be viewed as it is selected via Final Cut Pro.
Key Features
- SDI, HD-SDI, analog HD/SD
- 12-bit HD analog component I/O
- 12-bit SD analog component or composite S-Video I/O
- 10-bit hardware HD to SD downconversion
- Apple ProRes 422 and
- Apple ProRes 422 HQ supported
- DVCProHD hardware acceleration
- HDV hardware acceleration
- Dynamic RT Extreme hardware acceleration
- SDI or HD-SDI input
- 2 independent SDI/HD-SDI outputs
- 2-ch balanced XLR AES and 2-ch balanced XLR analog audio I/O
- 8-ch SDI embedded audio I/O
- HD/SD Genlock and RS-422 machine control
- Final Cut Pro 5, Motion, After Effects, Combustion and more
- Cables standard, KL-Box-LH breakout optional
- 3-year warranty
- Available in PCIe as KONA LHe
- Available in PCI/PCI-X compatible as KONA LH