AJA Kona LHi External SDI Preview with Vegas 13

NormanPCN wrote on 6/3/2014, 9:37 AM

When reading the release notes, I remember reading something about AJA devices under known issues. If you have not, you might look and see if anything there is applicable to your situation.

http://dspcdn.sonycreativesoftware.com/releasenotes/vegaspro13.0.310_readme_enu.htm

Looking again. It talks about driver 10.1 being preferred and issues with 720p.

larry-peter wrote on 6/3/2014, 9:44 AM

I can tell you that in Vegas 12 it was recommended to copy the AJA .dll (can't recall the exact name of the .dll) from VP11 into 12. Search for "AJA" in the forum to see if there have been any new developments, but I'll bet you need to do this in 13 also. You also may need to use legacy drivers for the Kona card. In VP 11 and 12 older AJA drivers were required. (Again, do a search here. There is a thread that gives the recommended driver version.)

Edit: Norman may have just given you what you needed.

DavidBruce wrote on 6/3/2014, 1:28 PM

Thank for the suggestions.

Changed existing AJA Win Drivers 10.4.0-x64 to Sony suggested AJA Win Drivers 10.1.0-x64. The Sony recommended AJA 10.1.0 still does not pass through correct SDI 1080 video to our Panasonic BT-LH2170P monitor.

This is not a new problem but I assume it’s not a high priority item on the SCS list of fixes. I can’t believe AJA or Blackmagic Design would not help Sony out to fix these issues. We (large US Company) have recently “borrowed” equipment from AJA, Blackmagic Design, Sound Devices, and Telestream to work out integration issues with some hardware and software will we use on a future project. It takes some effort but it can be done.

Come on SCS how about a fix for this!

Lonny wrote on 7/7/2014, 12:16 PM

It is printed right on Sony Vegas's website that AJA LHi cards work with Sony Vegas 13.
Here is the link:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/compare

This is very frustrating and not good business practice to advertise that compatible products work with your software when they actually don't.
On more than one occasion, tech support has responded, that this is a know issue regardless of the advertised comparison, that Sony Vegas is compatible with the AJA Lhi card and many other cards. I think it is only fair to the consumers that has purchased the software that Sony respond and support us. Our company has proceeded through the purchase of Sony Vegas 12 and now Sony Vegas 13 to only discover that Sony has false advertised this stat. We have at least 20 Sony Vegas licenses over the years. But over the last several years, we have continued to use Sony Vegas 11, while our purchased Sony Vegas Software licenses sit unused. In addition, I am greatly tired of the multiple emails that I have sent to tech support regarding this issue only to be given steps that require my effort to cut and paste .dll files, that still don't work. After two years of effort and tech support emails I am so disappointed.

videoITguy wrote on 7/7/2014, 12:38 PM

Shame on the professionals (?) who are relying on a marketing driven website to get the knowledge of what Vegas software can and cannot do. Time and again it has been proven that the site copy is plagued with spelling, grammatical, and indeed mis-leading written copy in many situations.

YOU just can't rely on this kind of info for deep techinical help. Talk to some Sony engineers, talk to some broadcast pros, talk to third-party vendor staff. They can inform you that SCS has not been in a willing and forthright third-party vendor relationship for many years. Shame on you for not doing your proper investigation.

DavidBruce wrote on 7/7/2014, 1:42 PM

You brought up a good point videoITguy. I'm not trying to exonerate SCS, but believe me they are not the only company that promises a feature that does not work (and was probably not tested). We are assembling a complex system with a lot of hardware and software and finding out that things don't always worked as promised. This being the case I'd hope SCS can rise to the challenge and prove videoITguy wrong in this case. Get Sony Vegas Pro 13 previewing video with the AJA Kona hardware. Please!

Logan5 wrote on 7/7/2014, 9:08 PM

Have your tried a different slot for the card? We have found that our two AJA Kona cards are very picky on the machine and slot positions.

Can you render to a Kona codec and see playback thru AJA player?

(We use Vegas 11)
Sorry don't have time to try to remember all the things to try...here on the forum for my own solution.

DavidBruce wrote on 7/8/2014, 7:09 AM

Thanks Logan5 for your suggestion. I have Vegas Pro 11 and it WORKS in preview to an external monitor. Vegas Pro 12 and Pro 13 do not work in the preview mode. When I "Print Video to Tape" in the "Tools" menu on the timeline the video is visible on the external monitor. I would use Vegas Pro 11 except it does not natively support Panasonic's P2 MTS format. Most of what we are shooting today is in the P2 format. For some reason SCS broke the external preview feature in Vegas Pro 12 and 13. At least with the AJA Kona SDI card.

Logan5 wrote on 7/8/2014, 12:18 PM

Ah yes P2 footage. We have been using Raylight Ultra since Vegas 9 for all the P2 MTS files that come in from time to time. Works great...the downside is its $150.
http://www.dvfilmstore.com/raylight-ultra.html

I've got V12 but have never installed to try with the AJA Kona,
My guess is that SCS changed something the AJA card is looking for.

Probably just a casualty as Vegas migrates from a solid base edit tool...as the scaffolding builds out, the less stable the structure.

larry-peter wrote on 7/8/2014, 12:46 PM

DavidBruce,
Did you try copying the AJA .dll from Vegas 11 into 13 along with using the suggested AJA driver version? This fix did allow me to preview in VP12 (didn't buy 13) but wasn't extremely stable - occasional crashes when clicking the external preview button.

DavidBruce wrote on 7/8/2014, 2:48 PM

atom12 - Thanks for suggestion. Yes I tried to replace the AJA .dll when I was using Vegas Pro 12 as suggested on the Video Forum. This fix did not work for me.
Kim N. from Sony SCS offered me the same advice for Pro 13 along with the proper AJA driver version "If you have Vegas Pro 11 installed please go to the following destination on your computer C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 13.0\Video Hardware Drivers and rename the Vegas Pro 13 AjaVideoDevice.dll to AjaVideoDevice.old so it is not overwritten completely. Once this is renamed please copy the AjaVideoDevice.dll from your Vegas Pro 11 location and paste the copied file to: C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 13.0\Video Hardware Drivers where the AjaVideoDevice.old file is".

It's interesting to me that the AJA .ddl replacement worked for you in Pro 12. I did change the AJA hardware driver as suggested in my try to fix Pro 13. I'm not sure what this problem is but maybe SCS will track down and fix it in a future update. I can only hope.

larry-peter wrote on 7/8/2014, 4:21 PM

If you were previously using legacy AJA drivers (from memory it seems like the ones I first used in VP11 were 5. something) and switched to 10.1.0, you probably noticed there is now an "AJA control panel" app. If you haven't already done so, make sure all settings there are accurate for your setup. Everything from sync to video pass-through are controlled there now. After setting that up properly, I did get video preview from Vegas 12.

And to echo an earlier response - don't believe what the marketing guys put in the "new features" blurbs. The sole reason I upgraded to 12 was because of the "AJA devices will now preview audio from the timeline" statement. Didn't work. When I contacted SCS, the condensed response was, "Yeah, we know. Working on it." I don't think so... Several builds and a new version later the only way to use them at all is to copy/paste an ancient .dll to get a crippled preview? If that. I do hope you get it working.

Logan5 wrote on 7/8/2014, 8:22 PM

atom12 "make sure all settings there are accurate for your setup" - yes as atom12 mention that is important. Everything could be set to a default and not sending SDI out.

DavidBruce wrote on 7/9/2014, 4:27 PM

atom12 & Logan5 - thanks again for your suggestions. I'm going to try another test next week. This is what makes me question the issue of "settings". In Vegas Pro 11 I get get an external preview through my AJA Kona LHi card. In Vegas Pro 12 &13 I see NO external preview without changing any settings on the Kona LHi card. I can logically conclude the problem isn't with the AJA card since it works in Vegas Pro 11. The problem must be with changes to Vegas Pro 12 & 13 software. At least this makes sense to me. By the way, I'll take any setting suggestions you both use on your AJA settings configuration. I don't think this is the problem, but I'm open to any suggestions other than changing the AJA .dll in Vegas and the AJA application driver version (10.1.0) which I have already tried.

larry-peter wrote on 7/9/2014, 5:53 PM

If you still are getting preview from Vegas 11 with the new AJA driver package installed, then your problem is not in the Control Panel app. If you haven't tried preview in Vegas 11 with the new drivers yet, see if it still works as before.

In my case installing the new drivers + the AJA control Panel reset several things to default that needed to be changed. Open the AJA Control panel app and check to see that your sync setting is correct - proper video input if you're feeding it a reference, or "freerun" if not. Also make sure the SDI output is set to "primary" and your frame buffer color settings are what you had before. Mine are set to 8 bit YUV.

Also, if you open the "preview device preferences" in Vegas 12 or 13 do you see the various settings for your Kona card - frame rates, etc? Are "use 10-bit encoding" and "recompress edited frames" UN checked? My system is more stable with both unchecked.

I only downloaded the first two builds of Vegas 12, so if AJA preview was completely broken in a later build I can't help you. I'm still using 11 99% of the time.

Lonny wrote on 7/10/2014, 3:29 PM

I guess I could try switching slots, but my Sony Vegas 8, 9, 10, 11 work just fine with the LHi card. Vegas 12 and 13 just don't work with the Kona LHi as advertised. Our has about 12 machines, most are the HP z820 or z800 (KILLER MACHINES!).

I just feel that if it worked in older version there really shouldn't be any problem.

SCS please help.

Lonny wrote on 7/10/2014, 4:32 PM

Hi Atom12,

Thanks for your suggestion. As Sony has suggested, I downloaded the 10.1.0 legacy driver and re-copied over the .dll file from my Vegas 11 to Vegas 13. I opened up AJA Control panel and tried multiple different settings, but nothing I do seems to help. I still only get an ugly screen with green, purple and yellow dots.

Also, I really wish I could use the latest AJA driver, because Premiere and AE function far better with the latest AJA drivers. The old legacy 10.1.0 driver doesn't let my 5k Epic Video preview on my AJA LHi with Premier. I need all of these tools available.

If you would please let us know what you did in Control Panel to get your Vegas 13 to work with your LHi card?

larry-peter wrote on 7/10/2014, 7:30 PM

I have never had 13. I only installed the first two builds of 12. I abandoned 12 for several reasons - instability with previewing through Kona being one. I still have the second build installed and I'll check when I'm in the office tomorrow and post my exact settings. As I said earlier, if the AJA functionality was totally broken in a later build of 12, I won't be able to help.

larry-peter wrote on 7/11/2014, 10:14 AM

In Vegas 12 build 563, here are my settings for successful SDI preview. (Don't have later builds of 12 installed on this machine) Just tried it again with an SD closed captioned source to make sure output was accurate. All Closed Captioning was read by my CRT in Vegas preview Full/Best.

In AJA control panel app (Be warned: changing settings while Vegas has control of the AJA card will crash both programs) Only changes to default settings are listed:

Control tab - Format YUV10, Genlock- FreeRun (I'm not running external sync on this machine)
Format Tab - 525i2997, RGB range full (format should change according to preview preferences set in Vegas)
SDI out Tab - SDI output "primary"
Video settings Tab - analog black level 7.5IRE

In Vegas Preview Device Preferences:

Conform output to: NTSC widescreen 720X486 299.97 16 X 9
Always: checked
Sync offset 2 frames
Genlock Freerun

No other selections are checked.
AJA driver set 10.1.0, AjaVideoDevice.dll copied from VP 11. (You may want to do a clean install of 10.1.0. I have never downgraded AJA drivers and don't know if remnants may be left behind.)

Lonny wrote on 7/31/2014, 11:44 AM

Thank you for sharing this info. I will give this a shot. Did you use the HD-SDI output or the HDMI output? I hope it works with V13 too. I am going to try that too.

larry-peter wrote on 7/31/2014, 11:51 AM

In the setup listed I got SDI out and HDMI out successfully. My SDI monitor is a CRT monitor that is SD, I don't have any way to check SDI to an HD monitor - only HDMI there.

Lonny wrote on 8/1/2014, 1:00 PM

Thanks Atom12. Again, I just tried this on V13 and could not get this to work. I don't see the point in me trying to get V12 to work when I want to take advantage of my V13 features.

DavidBruce wrote on 8/1/2014, 1:28 PM

Lonny – Don’t feel too bad. I tried Atom12’s suggestions (thank you) in Vegas Pro 12 and 13. The AJA Kona LHi just does not work period. It does work in Vegas Pro 11 though. SCS should take this feature out of their specs in my opinion unless they finally fix it. I still have an outstanding ticket with SCS on this problem. The suggested fix by SCS Kim N. to use the Vegas Pro 11 AjaVideoDevice.dll did not work.

How about it SCS - can you please fix this included feature in Vegas Pro 13 so I can use our AJA Kona LHi card for external SDI preview?

Lonny wrote on 8/7/2014, 3:51 PM

Hi David,
Thanks for your support! I guess we just need patience and to just keep complaining.
By the way, the NVidia K4000 card works fantastic and offers up to four display outputs. It is a great upgrade because it handles 4k very efficiently and offers an extra output for a preview display.