{"id":6,"date":"2007-10-08T00:26:58","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T07:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/08\/aja-xena-cards\/"},"modified":"2010-07-29T22:31:33","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T05:31:33","slug":"aja-xena-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/08\/aja-xena-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"AJA Xena Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"

AJA<\/a> currently has three main HD I\/O cards for use in a PC, the Xena HS, the Xena\u00c2\u00a0LHe and the Xena\u00c2\u00a02Ke.\u00c2\u00a0 The LH<\/a> and 2K <\/a>come in PCIe and PCI-X varients, which are otherwise identical to my knowledge.\u00c2\u00a0 All of these AJA cards support 10bit color and 23.976\/24p frame rates.\u00c2\u00a0 (The Xena HD was AJA’s first HD card for PC, and was identical to the HS except that the HS now includes Standard Def SDI support)
\n
\nThe Xena HS<\/a> is a simple card that only supports single channel HD-SDI (422) and 6 channels of AES audio.\u00c2\u00a0 The lack of analog audio options\u00c2\u00a0can be a significant hinderance.\u00c2\u00a0 Their are sync issue when\u00c2\u00a0trying to use the sound\u00c2\u00a0card audio and the Xena SDI for picture.\u00c2\u00a0 It does allow realtime preview of surround sound which the newer\u00c2\u00a0LHe does not.\u00c2\u00a0 I recommend get speakers that allow direct connection of AES audio.\u00c2\u00a0 I have used ones\u00c2\u00a0from\u00c2\u00a0Roland and JBL that work well.\u00c2\u00a0 Using AES convertors to get analog signal can be a real pain.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0The Xena LHe<\/a> has many more features, most importantly analog audio and video support.\u00c2\u00a0 Component HD video I\/O, as well as stereo XLR I\/O.\u00c2\u00a0 My favorite feature of this card, as well as the HS\u00c2\u00a0is that\u00c2\u00a0they support realtime capture and encoding of Cineform<\/a> AVI files, and realtime playback and effects from CineformRT in Adobe\u00c2\u00a0Premiere.\u00c2\u00a0 The big missing feature missing from the LHe is surround sound support.\u00c2\u00a0 I have not found a way to monitor surround in realtime with the LHe without having sync problems.\u00c2\u00a0 Keep in mind, this is only with the Cineform RT engine.\u00c2\u00a0 I have never tried with native AJA uncompressed files.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0The Xena 2Ke<\/a> is a card I have not used, but this is what I know.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It is similar to\u00c2\u00a0the LHe <\/a>and\u00c2\u00a0adds support for 8 channel audio I\/O, dual link SDI for 444 RGB, and HSDL (High Speed Data Link) mode for 2K.\u00c2\u00a0 Xena handles 2048x1080p24 in realtime, and 2048×1556 at 15fps. (not realtime)\u00c2\u00a0 In the Apple world, the same basic card is called the Kona3<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The only feature missing that is found on the LHe is analog component HD input.\u00c2\u00a0 It does have analog HD output though.<\/p>\n

There are a few\u00c2\u00a0disadvantages I am aware of compared to the competition.\u00c2\u00a0 No conversion capability like a Multibridge<\/a>, few realtime effects like an AXIO<\/a>, and no single card has all the I\/O you might want.\u00c2\u00a0 They have no\u00c2\u00a0support for DVI or HDMI out for\u00c2\u00a0more economical\u00c2\u00a0monitoring solutions.\u00c2\u00a0 Their implementation of 2K over HSDL is not as simple or fast as 3Gb\/s SDI, but the card was developed before that standard was created.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AJA currently has three main HD I\/O cards for use in a PC, the Xena HS, the Xena\u00c2\u00a0LHe and the Xena\u00c2\u00a02Ke.\u00c2\u00a0 The LH and 2K come in PCIe and PCI-X varients, which are otherwise identical to my knowledge.\u00c2\u00a0 All of these AJA cards support 10bit color and 23.976\/24p frame rates.\u00c2\u00a0 (The Xena HD was AJA’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[16,18,15,20,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}