Why AJA Kona LHi/LHe/LSe cards not VirtualDub compatible?
 

It is mentioned in the thread "Best ATI All In Wonder card alternatives, to transfer tapes to digital" that the AJA Kona LHi/LHe/LSe cards are not VirtualDub compatible.

I was wondering why that is? I checked their website and they have both Mac and Windows drivers. How do you capture with these cards? I saw Final Cut mentioned in the manual. Is this the only application that can use these cards?

Not recognized as vfw capture card.

What capture software is compatible and recommended for use with Aja Kona cards?

What version Kona card do you have?
Aja has it's own capture/setup utility that comes with drivers for your specific card.

I bought a used Aja Kona LHe card. It won't arrive for another week or so though.

Are you on windows or mac ? These cards are extremely picky about the input signal,
and need a TBC TIME BASE CORRECTOR either from the vcr, or a standalone unit.
I guess your card is comming with the breakout cable with it?

I use 1 of 3 different vcrs connected thru svhs to a Leitch DPS 575 TBC into the Kona 3 Breakout box,
with excellent results. I was fortunate that a local tv station gave me 2 of the Leitch units that have the Noise Reduction option enabled.

I am highly familiar with setting up the Kona cards to do what you want,so I can help you when you get it.

My main system is a Windows 10 machine. I'd prefer to use it as it is the most powerful. I also have a 2011 MacBook Pro and a so-called "hackintosh" running High Sierra on roughly ~2008 vintage x86 hardware.

I've talked to lordsmurf about a PAL TBC and fortunately one became available. Last I heard from him he was looking up shipping costs.

The card does not come with a cable. I had to order one separately.

I'd appreciate the help once the card and cables arrive. I'm new to this. :)

If your getting a TBC from lordsmurf, I'm sure he will treat you right.
The problem you may encounter is on windows machines,as the older AJA cards are considered legacy and
are not supported after windows 7. I can't tell you about mac's as I am a windows user.

Here's the link to your aja info

https://www.aja.com/support/legacy/kona-lhe

I use a legacy AJA Kona 3 for Windows 10 Pro capture system. There is a somewhat updated driver available for that card and works with Win10.

The legacy driver available for LHe card should work with Win 10. Download the complete package that has the drivers and capture software. I believe you can’t use Huffyuv or Lagerith with the Kona cards. I use it to capture 8-bit uncompressed.

hi Billuke

any tips you could provide for setting up a Kona LSe card on a Windows 10 machine would be greatly appreciated.

I've just recieved the card, installed it in my machine, installed the drivers from AJA legacy support - the 5.5.2 drivers and Machina 4.2.1.0 (as well as quicktime 7.7.9) - The device manager seems to recognise the card but when I open Machina the UI is all weirdly garbled, all the latin characters have been replaced with gibberish symbols, making it kind of impossible to use (see pic) There's also no input image at all in the Machina window.

any suggestions on how to proceed from here greatly appreciated.

should I install a fresh version of windows 7 or 8 ?

so near but so far....

Hi, I actually don't use Machina but in the past when I did had the same problem with text in it.
Don't remember but I think I un- installed it and installed again and the text was fine.
You should really try to move up to KONA 3.
At least it supports newer control room software which is much easier to use than Machina.
What video card are you using? Could also be drivers messing with Machina.I have win 10 maybe I'll install it and see if I can duplicate your problem.

Just installed in Win 10,No problem with text.
Don't know why pic is upside down,but text is ok on Machina.

Hey 23fps whats happening? Haven't seen you post any replies.
Curious if your still working on this issue.

Hi billuke

apologies for not coming back to the thread, it's been a journey.

So it turned out the garbled text was a OpenGL issue, likely due to the fact that I had to take out the GPU to fit in the Kona LSe and was using the motherboards inbuilt graphics. In any case I put it in another box and rolled back to Windows 8 and got it going OK.

But I wasn't really loving windows 8 or the ancient PC and the capture was comparable with the BMD Shuttle and I was leaning back in that direction. Then I saw that AJA had licensed ProRes for Control Room which was kind of a big deal for my production workflow. I managed to get a pretty sweet LHe+ for an OK price and it is now running very nicely with ProRes capture on a very contemporary Win10 Box. Using "Component BETA" as the input is capturing the best dynamic range of my many test setups to date. My last remaining issue is the blanking on the left hand of the frame that the Panasonic EH57 is doing (I'm losing 7-8 pixels), but it's a price I'm willing to pay for the stabilisation...

now I really need to get onto digitising these 25yr old Hi8 tapes before they evaporate entirely.

Glad you got sorted out.
So your saying you're capturing thru machina with prores codec on windows pc? Didn't know prores was supported.
I have to check out machina again and see if prores is on my system.

Just checked and I have no prores option. Doesen't matter, I capture uncompressed video.

@billuke:

What software do you prefer for capturing 8-bit uncompressed? That's what I plan to do with a Kona card as well. I'm presently getting everything set up and now I'm at the software stage. Thanks in advance.

You are using your workflow unefficiently, The Leitch DPS575 is more than just a TBC, it is an analog to digital converter and that's its main function, You should use its SDI output and feed the lossless digital video stream to the Aja Kona SDI input, You will get rock solid picture because you are converting from analog to digital only once vs twice with your current workflow setup.

Not sure what your saying here. I'm only converting once. I know exactly what the DPS is and does. I get rock solid output with my workflow,and would put it up against anyone's workflow here. However I'm always open minded to take advice from you fine members here so thanks for your input.
Bill

Describe exactly your workflow with connectors and cables and I will show you where you are converting from analog to digital twice.

If you insist,
VCR -SVHS OUT
LEITCH DPS - SVHS IN
LEITCH SDI OUT
KONA SDI IN

Where is there more than 1 conversion?

That was my intended suggestion, however you clearly stated you are using a breakout cable for the Kona which I had assumed it's analog and that's how I based my suggestion, You are free to use your hardware however you want, I was just suggesting a better way or at least thinking that way.

Breakout Box (read what I said)which is a direct connection to the card .

I use the AJA control room software that comes with the card drivers.Does everything I need to capture vhs.

That's what w'd like to hear, And I like that Tascam DAT machine there.

It actually is just filling space on the rack.I never use it much except when I want to hear old practice tapes of my drumming.

Gotta warn you, You need a fairly beefy computer with no bottlenecks to capture uncompressed video.
You can try Avid DNxHD if you run into issues capturing.
I've captured with that codec on very large projects and as long as you keep it within say 2 generations, you can get excellent results in the final output.

As of yesterday I finally had the minimum amount of hardware, so I took my first test capture last night. HS-HD2000U s-video output >> Extron s-video to BNC Y/C split cable >> Kona LHe breakout cable BNC Y/C inputs >> capturing 8-bit 4:2:2 uncompressed in Premiere Pro CS6. I think CS6 is the last version that supported my LHe. About 1GB per minute :laugh: and I'm pleasantly surprised by how it came out. I tested on a THX Return of the Jedi VHS that seems to be in good condition. x265 compressed it to about 1.4% of the original uncompressed size with almost no quality change. Excited to keep going and start trying different settings and eventually be ready to do the home videos properly. Thanks for your tips and insight on successfully using the Kona cards.

I would like to see some feedback from the pre 4K cards, the HD and SD ones, as those are very cheap used.

@billuke: Do I have this correct?

(analog) VCR - S-VIDEO OUT
(analog) LEITCH DPS - S-VIDEO IN
<<< Leitch unit does frame TBC >>>
<<< analog-to-digital conversion >>>
(digital) LEITCH DPS - SDI OUT
(digital) KONA BREAKOUT BOX - SDI IN
(digital) KONA BREAKOUT BOX - MUTLI I/O CABLE OUT
(digital) KONA CAPTURE CARD - MULTI I/O CABLE IN

AND the last 3 steps (2 breakout box and 1 capture card) can be replaced with:

(digital) KONA CAPTURE CARD - SDI IN (if not using a breakout box)?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Also, re: the breakout box and SDI connections:

I didn't even look into what the SDI connections are until just seeing some workflows using them. All I know right now is that SDI is the acronym for "serial digital interface."

My immediate question while I read further is if there's any difference between feeding the analog A/V signal into the capture card (specifically one of these Kona cards) direct from the VHS/TBC/etc, versus that analog A/V signal going through an analog-to-digital conversion for an SDI output to be fed into the capture card via SDI.

I understand that there will be a literal difference as one signal is analog and one is digital. I'm wondering about the actual data in the signal -- Is the ADC for SDI output a lossless conversion in the case of our VHS s-video signal data? E.g. in the workflow shown above, if the frame TBC unit had the ability to output the corrected signal through either s-video or SDI, is it part of the SDI standard (or otherwise a fact) that the digital signal would contain exactly the same data as the analog signal it converted?

Apologies if I am out in left field or completely missing something here.

mrmuy97
Which Kona capture card do you have?

The difference between the two workflows is that if using SDI route the capture device is the Leitch DPS and the router will be the Kona, If using analog breakout cable the Leitch DPS will act as a pitza box size conventional TBC and the Kona will be the capture device here.

The right way of doing it is the SDI route because the Leitch is intended to be used as a capture device (or a converter in the manufacturer language) to convert analog video to digital and stablise it before outputing it via SDI, the analog output of it is for monitoring purposes not for feeding another converter. The Kona card can be used as an analog capture device on its own but I'm not sure how it handles consumer analog tape formats, so it is better to use it only as a SDI interface.

Just LHe at the moment. Looking into a few newer options. Think I saw you say you've got 3G.

Interesting. Will have to do the reading on SDI and try to find detailed info on the DPS. I'd like to run the capture both ways and see if there's any discernible difference. Or perhaps see info in the specs suggesting that the analog output is degraded in some way that the SDI output isn't. But why would it be designed that way? Seems like for a high-end unit it would make the most sense to apply the TBC to the signal and output with no degradation via analog and just convert to digital for SDI output which would be a separate function/chip on the board. I imagine you're correct that the analog output was designed for external monitoring. But if it's the same quality signal being passed after the TBC functionality, just that one signal stays analog and one gets converted to SDI, I'd think in theory it would capture just as well -- assuming use of an analog capture card that does analog-to-digital conversion at least as well as the DPS unit. Or maybe a part of the TBC functionality is performing an ADC itself? And so then it would be best to just take the digital output that it gives since it would be converting back to analog for those outputs. Just looking to clarify.

I've only run a single test for about 60 secs on a retail VHS tape, so once I've been able to test more tapes I'll have more insight on this.

Ok,this is a simple process so don't over think it.
SDI carries 16 channels of pulse-code modulation or PCM audio and uncompressed video that is digital in nature. It transmits on a coaxial cable at 75 Ohms connected with BNC.

As far as your workflow:
VCR-SVHS OUT TO DPS SVHS IN
DPS OUT TO THE KONA BREAKOUT BOX OR CABLE, OUT DIRECTLY TO THE KONA CARD.

Simple, no more no less ,however if I read your post correctly, you said you captured in Premier Pro which I would not do.
Stick with AJA CONTROL ROOM,or MACHINA to capture. Using third party software for capture is going thru more hoops than needed.You want the cleanest most direct capture path that you can get.

It won't be degraded and you won't see any video quality difference, It's about signal timing and other non visual issues.


The same way a screw driver was designed to unscrew screws not for poking holes. But why would it be designed otherwise, Any TBC would convert to digital first so why convert back to analog when its purpose is to convert to digital.

No it doesn't make any sense at all, The converter converts to digital, applies timing, embed audio and output to SDI.

DPS-575 Operations Manual. Alot of it does not apply to vhs,but there are some crucial settings to get good captures.

If you have noise reduction unlocked on yours,good for you. It's pretty effective if used properly.

The reason why consumer TBC's don't have a digital output is because at the era when they were made having a digital output port on the device meant that you would have to have either a DV encoder or a MPEG-2 encoder chips, both required extra manufacturing costs, both required licensing, both are lossy, there was no way of having a lossless output since computers back then are barely doing photoshop and there was no lossless consumer format to record to, So they put the task of digital encoding in the hands of capture cards and devices.

On the pro arena they had something called D1, to fulfill the need for having a lossless digital video and audio and be able to store it as such on a 3/4" digital tape the size of an encyclopedia book (around 1986), A standard was born (rec.601) and every capture card on the market played by it consumer or not.

A decade or so later when everything was switching to digital, studios needed something to keep their analog tape players working with digital transmission or convert the tapes to a digital format and play them back in the digital players for the ones who switched the players to digital, so the need for analog to digital converters and a digital port arose and manufacturers like Aja, ED, BM … did just that following the D1 standard and that's when the SDI port was born (around 1989), Though they kept the same BNC connector design to save on cables and re-cabling entire studios.

SDI carries both lossless video and lossless audio, Analog to digital converters didn't require an encoder chip or computer like consumer capture devices, After the ADC and timing a serializer is used to send both video and audio on the same cable D1 standard, AVI 4:2:2 8bit (D1) and later 10/12 bit used, 720x486 (NTSC), 720x576 (PAL/SECAM), 24bit/48KHz audio.

The extra 6 lines on top of the frame for NTSC is added to allow for preserving signaling data such as caption, aspect ratio flag ..., Don't know why it wasn't added for PAL/SECAM maybe because it has enough scan lines already compared to NTSC.

Ok, after more reading I understand what you're saying now. I was misunderstanding this step in the signal pathway:

Got it.

I was missing the part where the TBC is already doing a ADC, so if it passes that digital signal straight to SDI, it should be the best quality of the available options.

Thanks again for those explanations.

My original questions were based on the thought that perhaps a newer/better/etc analog capture card in the PC could do a higher-quality ADC of the signal than the on-board hardware/software ADC in the TBC units -- but I was completely missing the fact that the actual TBC process is doing an ADC in the first place. Now, if I'm understanding correctly, I would agree that the highest-quality signal must be the output from the ADC of the TBC hardware/software, and to have that directly output losslessly over SDI as you've both stated.