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.
|
