Our previous switcher was an Ampex AVC Century 335, so the Kahuna is a HUGE jump for us. Our TDs has only a couple of days, not weeks to learn the board and get it on the air. I've also heard that the guy that trained them was top notch. The TDs are still learning things. I help out when I can. It's been fun. I believe the only converter we've purchased was a HD to SD converter to feed our SD master control. We purchased 4 Ikegami HD studio cameras, THunder HD, Vizrt (3 channels). We also upgraded our promotion edit to a Final Cut Pro system with a Kona3 board. We do not as of yet have an HD tape format. We can record stuff in the editor or the art room in HD, but that's not a good solution. News is still mostly shooting DVCPro-25. We are moving to P2, still shooting SD but anamorphic wide screen. The playback looks like crap going through a BitCentral system. Well, you can't win them all. All-in-all, the switch went pretty well. The Kahuna is great.

Congratulations on going HD. It sounds like the ThunderHD will work fine once you add a SQL server. You mentioned Kahuna. Do you like it? Does it really save you from buying converters? How smoothly did the installation go? Did you get any other HD devices such as cameras, CG, tape, servers? Irv

I just wanted to thank you all for your help and insight. On October 20th we debuted our HD news product. There was a short lead time to the date and our resources were spread pretty thin. They ended up purchasing the ThunderHD at pretty much the last moment and it was in the rack a little more than a week before the start. We had people running everywhere working on the install of our new Kahuna. That left me, the art director, to finish the install of the Thunder. I had some problems with the RAID and the cards in the chassis but Avid tech support helped me through that. In summary, The ThunderHD was a familiar interface and it was one less thing that our production staff had to learn. It seems to be running fine, and I've made clear to the management that they have to move the Thunder to a SQL database to avoid the problems we had with our SD THunder. More than one browse station on a "Thunder" database is guaranteed to cause problems. Even in HD. It was fun playing engineer for a week or two. I'm thinking about a career change now.

[quote="scottgfx"]I have a correction to my earlier note: Video Technics not VDS made Aprisia. Their current product is Apella. Does anyone know anything about Apella? Also... With the K2, besides running it from the switcher or a Lance, are there any options that would allow it to be run from MOS? I'm not sure if there are sequence lists like you would have in a Thunder. Aye! So much to learn! Scott Thomas[/quote] Scott no idea about K2 MOS, you can make playlists, not really the same as a seq like on a thunder which can be moved through the rundown.. What will you be using the clips for,plaback of what? transitions, news clips, opens?

I have a correction to my earlier note: Video Technics not VDS made Aprisia. Their current product is Apella. Does anyone know anything about Apella? Also... With the K2, besides running it from the switcher or a Lance, are there any options that would allow it to be run from MOS? I'm not sure if there are sequence lists like you would have in a Thunder. Aye! So much to learn! Scott Thomas

[quote="scottgfx"]Thanks for pointing me to that thread. I had read part of it before, but I forgot where the discussion was. In my search I checked Quantel's website to see if they still made something. I couldn't find any reference to ClipBOX. While I'm not a fan of Thunder, it seems like it's one of the best "All-Rounders" out there. I'll have to research the K2 more. A RAID with redundancy is a must, so the Abekas doesn't look like the solution for us. I see that Chyron doesn't sell Aprisia anymore, and Video Design Software doesn't offer their own clip-player anymore. VDS developed Aprisia. What happened between VDS and Chyron? Thanks for your recommendation.[/quote] Scott, sounds like you are looking for a DDR for a studio? I kind of agree the clipstore is great for the price, but they have 3 seperate drives for video/key/audio. A raid with a server setup is a great solution if the station has some money. If no money then clipstore is a good HD solution. I would definitly try and get a demo of the K2, Nexio's, and then I guess the Xclips and Thunder. These are all big companies who I am sure would have no problem doing a demo, best way to see these things obviously. Let us know how it goes. Bill

Thanks for pointing me to that thread. I had read part of it before, but I forgot where the discussion was. In my search I checked Quantel's website to see if they still made something. I couldn't find any reference to ClipBOX. While I'm not a fan of Thunder, it seems like it's one of the best "All-Rounders" out there. I'll have to research the K2 more. A RAID with redundancy is a must, so the Abekas doesn't look like the solution for us. I see that Chyron doesn't sell Aprisia anymore, and Video Design Software doesn't offer their own clip-player anymore. VDS developed Aprisia. What happened between VDS and Chyron? Thanks for your recommendation.

Scott, long thread but check this out Xclips is weird, if you are doing file trfsr you have to go in and reassociate the audio to go with the video. Clipstore is one channel of F/K. Similar to how the Xclips or Thunder are all F/K. Obviously if you already have the Thunder that would be a good way to go maybe, not sure if the HD version has the long clip recall time like the SD versions do. Also take a look at the GVG K2 profiles, you can get them in a 4 channel version and gang channels internally to be F/K. Also does playlists and loops so you dont need an external controller (similar to how thunder can be told when to loop, 3 point looping, etc) Also Leitch Nexio, has a f/k internal gang option. These all have HD versions. If I had a choice I would probably go with 4 channels of K2 profile for 50K. Then connect to switcher directly. Bill