Mailbag of fantastic audio/video goodies. And a terrible mistake? 

The AJA Kona series of cards are great capture cards and very flexible with the multi-I/O options. At work, I was using a Kona LE on a 2008 Mac Pro as a dedicated PAL capture rig, the LE had analog audio IO which I used as the main audio out for the machine, I ran SDI into the card and also had AES/EBU connected to the other end of a Sonic Solutions SDIF converter and used the LE for input into Nuendo. I stopped using the card when the fan failed as shortly thereafter a 2012 Mac pro was freed up to become the capture machine and it already had a BM deklink card installed. For now, the Kona is sitting in an antistat bag waiting for a fan.

Nice kit! The company I worked for became a Canopus dealer, shortly before I left. I have an old PCI Canopus capture card somewhere.

I have the Grass Valley Canopus HDMI in to DV out converter. I recorded some movies in 1080 to HDV, very nice indeed :)

AJA stuff are worth $$$, nice haul.

That ADVC is a treasure. Hard to get reasonably priced. 👍

There's a good chance the AJA SDI cable is closely bound like that because it's a bridge to the breakout box, which has 4 SDI connections at about that spacing on the back.

The Kona test app probably tried to write to HDD as much as 6 Gbps since it can capture up to 4K, but an SD SDI is only 270 Mbps.

This will sound weird, but PCI-E cards support hot-swap connection. Linus Tech Tips had a video with experiments. So don't worry too much about it.

Great box of goodies. :)

This is the first time I've seen a computer power supply installed like this. I believe the PSU should go with the fan facing down, not up. That way you will suck up the fresh air from under the case, which I'm sure has some kind of air filter in it. At least this is what I see in every case-build manual I read. If you leave it like it is now, you will get massive amounts of dust inside your PSU. If the layer of dust gets moist a bit, it will short something out in time.

My heart also stopped when you plugged in that very nice looking card with semi power applied. Thankfully the system was in some kind of sleep/standby. Phew! 😀i was pleased :-D I would be surprised if the quality was anywhere near your pro equipment. Fun to have a look and a fondle of some interesting gear :-D Ooow you had glued something at the start, was the part strong enough?. That j.b weld is much stronger than araldite with rough repairs.

I used to edit on a MacPro with Final Cut Pro 7 and that had an AJA Kona 3 card installed. I think that one might have analogue audio as I'm sure there were a number of XLR connectors on it's break out box.

AJA make some good kit for pro & broadcast video production. I use their stuff for my transfers. Blackmagic Design are very good too and cost effective, I think you're using some of their stuff to make your videos I think you said once. Anyway, keep it up!

The cables were included more to allow you to reuse the nice die-cast connectors and configure them as you need 😋

The cap card probably misbehaved in the first machine due to BIOS settings or the chipset being naff, as AMD back in the 2010s were awful. Also, the reboot on the second machine was caused by Fast Boot in Windows falling over due to new hardware - a reboot is expected. You can get older Intel machines that would be comfortably fast enough for that card, that cost peanuts now. 4th, 5th,6th and even 7th gen Intel CPUs are dirt cheap now and would be massively faster whilst being more energy efficient.

Great video! Those AJA capture cards must have been worth a pretty penny back in the day.

The tripod you had was sold in Asda around about the early 2010's. I know this as I owned one. Horizontal was silky smooth, and the legs extend to become extremely tall and remain stable. but vertical movement was awful.

AJA Kona 4 SDI Connector = DIN 1.0/2.3 I used my ADVC-100 with locked Audio Mode and Panansonic DV-in Camcorders for Sat-TV recording. Premiere can´t open my DV-AVI1 Files.

I wonder if youd be able to publish the pinout of the AJA HD10AVA card. There are plenty available online for reasonably cheap but none with cables. Making custom cables should be easy but without the pin out its a bit of a challenge.

Aren't M-II decks a bit finicky? I do personally like the idea of a digital deck which records on standard S-VHS tapes, though.

Hello. Would you consider selling the Canopus dv capture unit?

hi that computer is old my one not far of i am using a old amd3+ x4 4ghz is very old still running the mum pcb is very bad solder is lifting save up for a new pcb cpu work ace still i have m-audio sound card pci 44 66 1010 why i can's my a new pcb it's all pci-e now

hi see you are playing with better card i am still using a old tiger card with a pigs tail i have got a hd card monitor doe's not like the video card so i can only do SD HD max 4gb a hr over this size the monitor play up i had a you tube no one know i had poor video putting out hd only video i tred higher

Don't you say an STI ? Sir