AJA do a range of cards for PC and MAC, both SD and HD. The Xena range is for PC and Kona range for MAC.
Xena HD-SDI cards are supported natively within Premiere Pro - the Xena XS is specifically supported when the program is installed, however when you install the drivers for the Xena cards you also get modes for analogue capture in various formats.
Unlike the Matrox cards the Xena cards do not accelerate Premiere Pro - they basically provide extra inputs and outputs. They do let you play native captured HDV files from the timeline with no rendering.
The Xena cards come with video out plug-ins for Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Combustion and Eyeon Fusion. You can also output QuickTime and AVI files as well as image sequences in DPX, Cineon, TIFF, TGA and BMP formats.
All Xena cards except the HS come with AJA’s Machina - a stand alone capture application which can capture into QuickTime, AVI or still image formats.
AJA cards capture into uncompressed video. This means you have to be careful to be sure that your hard drive array is fast enough to support the format you choose. There is an excellent datarate calculator on the AJA site which tells you what speed is required for your chosen format and how much space it will consume. Uncompressed 8 bit HD takes 600GB per hour and needs to have at least 4 hard drives striped together in an array to meet the speed requirements! Obvious uncompressed SD is considerably lower data rates.
Like the Black Magic cards the AJA’s main advantage over the Matrox RT.X2 is the price for the types of inputs that are supplied. The LHe, for example, gives you 10 bit digital capture and 12 bit analogue, with XLR inputs for audio, SDI and component i/o for both SD and HD and is £1,135 +VAT. The Matrox Axio LE is £2,750 for HD-SDI and supports 8 bit, not 10bit or 12bit capture. Of course, the Axio gives you support for Panasonic DVCPro HD and Sony XDCAM, plus a range of extra filters, higher quality slow motion and better HDV support than the AJA cards.
In short the Matrox cards give you better features when editing but cost more. An AJA card is ideal for someone who mainly does effects work with After Effects/Combustion etc, or needs to take image sequences made from a 3D program and output them to video at the highest quality. If editing and you don’t use the extra Matrox effects, then the AJA would also be ideal.
Aja effectively have 4 types of card:
Xena 2K & 2Ke
These are the top Xena cards - they offer SDI, HD-SDI, Dual Link SD and HD-SDI 4:4:4, and 4:4:4:4, 2K HSDL with the biggest advantage being 2K support. One version is PCI-X, the other 4 lane PCIe.
Xena LH & LHe
SDI and component HD and SD in and out, with SVIDEO and composite. One version is PCI-X, the other 4 lane PCIe. An optional rack mountable breakout box is also available.
XENA LS AND LSe
Standard definition SDI, component, SVIDEO and composite i/o. Optional breakout box.
XENA hs
The card that is natively supported by Premiere Pro. SDI i/o only (SD and HD)
