AJA Kona-LH vs DeckLink HD Extreme

[aalleexx]

I am not clear as to what is the big difference on these two cards, specially for my needs, I need a card that will work for cc monitoring in apple color and in fcp, I am not going to be doing much downconversions, I work mostly with regular prores422 and with dvcpro HD

Which card would better fit my needs?

Thanks guys

 

[DJDecay]

I would go with Kona 3HD. Blackmagic makes a good product, some of their chipsets and Kona boards are similar. But if you're going to be doing CC work, do what everyone else does. Get a Kona 3. -

Explaining it away with words like "Well Kona 3 has the Downres/Upres realtime engine and Decklinks does not do such a good job, is just false". Thats a base feature thats absent, this is not why there is a price difference in those cards.

Now I personally found Konas Mini-SDI connectors and their short breakout cable that ships out of the box "hiddeous", but with the multi out framebuffer setups, upwards backwards and forwards Final Cut Studio compatibility is GOOD. Picture from Kona 3 is CLEAR, very accurate.

Chaper framebuffer, means cheaper picture interpretation.

Now just like all vendors, AJA Kona 3 comes with its own Codecs, but they don't mind ProRez 422. Its actually embedded into their (now outdated by ProRez 444) product called IOHD.

Most people nailing up Color 1.0.5 or Color 1.5 stations use Kona 3 HD PCIe boards.