AJA Ki Pro

James Huenergardt · April 29th, 2009, 11:42 AM

What does the unit weigh? I haven't found any info on the AJA web site yet on specs, etc.

Guy Cochran · April 29th, 2009, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by James Huenergardt

What does the unit weigh? I haven't found any info on the AJA web site yet on specs, etc.

3lbs for the weight.

AJA Ki Pro at DVcreators.net

Pricing on the FW800 500GB "spinning disk" module $385. Yeah. That's $385 for 6hours of 4:2:2 1920x1080 ProRes in Standard Quality at 18MB/sec. Try that with P2, SxS or SDHC.

Hoy Quan · April 29th, 2009, 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon Thorn

Hoy Q. - The AJA Ki Pro supports input from SDI, HDMI and yes, component analog... SD or HD. So if you own the Canon XH-A1 camera (a fine camera I might add), you will be able to use the Ki Pro with it.

Sold! I was planning to upgrade to P2 because of the better codec. The Canon captures a great image with old reliable 3 CCDs but the HDV codec suffers when there is a lot of motion. The Ki Pro should easily solve that with the component input for the A1. Saved a couple grand on the SDI output option... let alone a new camera.

I am also speculating that the XLR inputs should be able to capture a pristine audio signal comparable to a Sound Devices mixer. (Another $1,300 saved)

Monitoring with component inputs saves the upgrade to a new SDI monitor.

500gb option allows for virtually all day recording (Try that on a firestore or a laptop). I had several jobs where I add cost (separate line item) of the hard drive to the daily rate. They get ready to edit footage immediately at the end of the day. No fuss, no transferring, no shipping, and even if you had to encode/copy it, that is sombody's time and money + they still need a hard drive to store the footage. $400 bucks for 4-6 hours of 4:2:2 10 bit is a steal. Let your client return it to you for the next gig and you locked up another job.

I also heard that the Ki Pro can save to express card memory but only in regular ProRes (Not HQ) due to speed. I am calculating 220 Mbps (HQ) will require a sustained 27.5 MB/s and 145 Mbps can work with 18 MB/s write speeds. Any potential solutions with SxS cards or less expensive alternatives?

Also wondering about battery options. An optional battery pack that can attach directly to the unit would be nice. Allow the use of a pair of Panasonic / Canon / Sony batteries would be great (no need to invest in another set of batteries). Similar solution as the Marshal monitors. It would be bit clunky to rig a AB or V mount to the unit.

Charles Papert · April 30th, 2009, 10:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hoy Quan

An optional battery pack that can attach directly to the unit would be nice. Allow the use of a pair of Panasonic / Canon / Sony batteries would be great (no need to invest in another set of batteries). Similar solution as the Marshal monitors. It would be bit clunky to rig a AB or V mount to the unit.

So that would be two batteries on the Ki Pro, one on the camera (and maybe one or two more on an onboard monitor, etc etc....) have to admit, THAT sounds clunky to me compared to a single battery for all!

Hoy Quan · April 30th, 2009, 10:30 AM

No question, a single battery would be more efficient for the entire rig. Options are always nice. Most of us have a few spare batteries so if we are only running a camera and recorder, throw a couple spares on the AJA and we are good to go - no need to invest in a V mount or AB set up. For those with existing V or AB batteries, recorder + monitor -running 3 taps on one battery would definitely be the way to go.

Luke Garza · April 30th, 2009, 02:21 PM

I too want to do the exact same thing with my xh a1 and now saving for it. Only thing will be to see a shoulder mount kit all rigged up and how much from zacuto or someone else. But yes know i dont have to buy new cameras for a while now and produce better quality at same time. One thing i would like to know is if you can connect the harddrive up to esata to transfer so much quicker then fire800. I know it hooks up firewire800 but it hooks up sata wise to kipro so assuming you could hook it up somehow to double speed transfers. I asked aja reps at nab and one told me yes and another told me no.

Jon Thorn · April 30th, 2009, 08:44 PM

James H. - Ki Pro with the 250GB drive module in the unit weighs 3.55 lbs.

Guy C. - Not sure anyone gave me information to pass on about a 500GB drive module... ;-) 250GB spinning drive is $269 US MSRP. 128GB SSD version is $695 US MSRP, and 256GB SSD version is $1,395 US MSRP. I can check on the 500GB front, but don't recall that... not something that I've seen/used yet when demoing the product. Drive capacity always increases though... remember when we were excited about having 9GB of storage? ;-)

Hoy Q. - Yes, the audio inputs will allow you to record 48KHz 24-bit audio. You might still want a mixer, but we do provide audio level control knobs if you feel they are sufficient, then I suppose you could indeed forgo the use of a mixer...

Yes, we can use ExpressCard/34 media in the device and yes, as of now, we are really only recommending trying to record "standard" Apple ProRes 422 and not the "HQ" variant to this media. Currently we are only recommending Delkin 8GB Industrial ExpressCard/34 media. Why? Well, you might note that you need a driver to mount Sony SxS media on your MacBook Pro... same for a Windows machine. As of right now - and this may change - there is not a driver available for us to mount the Sony media in the Ki Pro. We are talking with Sony about this and they have shown an interest, so support for SxS might even be enabled by the time the product ships, but I cannot promise that. Sorry... still up in the air.

Battery options? You've got a lot actually... Ki Pro operates at very low wattage, much less than a 40 watt household light bulb (depending upon what gets turned on in the unit anywhere from roughly 20+ watts to just over 30 watts), and therefore you should be able to run for quite a long time when used with something like an Anton Bauer Dionic 90 battery. Note that a lot of devices we showed at NAB are capable of using an Anton Bauer battery - in fact we were using only one type of battery - the Dionic 90 - for sustained durations with our devices (like our LCD monitor we had, the JVC GY-HM700 we were using, etc.) We ran the Ki Pro several times during the show from the Dionic 90 via a PowerTap to XLR cable from Anton Bauer that is readily available. Theoretically, if your camcorder was low power consumption, you might be able to run it and the Ki Pro from one power source... we will be trying that sort of thing out for sure (you can probably appreciate why, though it was working at NAB, we did not want to just start shipping the product immediately! The QA process is quite lengthy for a device that does so much!) If you get the optional Exoskeleton and use 15mm rods, mounting batteries via something like the Zacuto DoubleMount and v3 plate in combination with an Anton Bauer plate creates a quite elegant power solution. If you don't want to go that route, you can also get a little V-mount to 15mm rod widget from the guys at Element Technica to mount a V-mount battery on... or you can run a brick battery with a straight XLR 4-pin line to the Ki Pro or... or... do you see a pattern forming here guys? ;-)

Charles P. - Wish you had been at NAB... battery mounting is not clunky at all - in fact I think as a "former" camera-person, that it is quite elegant. We will have plenty of hi-res images of various configurations on our website just before we begin shipping... battery use/mounting has not been much of an issue for anyone thus far who has seen it in person.

Luke G. - Sadly, I had a co-worker take images of myself handholding the Ki Pro mounted alongside a Sony HDV camera, but the marketing folks said that the images needed to be professionally done (not taken with an iPhone!) and thus why we haven't shown them yet - professional photos are forthcoming, happily with a better looking model than myself holding the camera! ;-) Here is how the initial handheld configuration has been accomplished: mount your camera to something like the Zacuto universal baseplate product, extend rods out behind the camera, use a shoulder pad (Zacuto provides that as well FYI), then invert the rod endplates of the Ki Pro Exoskeleton and mount the Ki Pro on the same plane as the camera, not below it as you would in tripod mode. This serves two purposes: it transforms these somewhat awkward smaller cameras that you typically hold out away from your body into true shoulder mount cameras, and second you actually end up balancing the weight of these cameras (which tend to fall in the 3 to 6 pound range) with the weight of the Ki Pro.

As for your drive question, yes inside the Ki Pro, the drive is connected via a SATA connection, and - for now - you will be connecting to the host computer via the FireWire 800 connector. Will there be SATA to eSATA connectors and other options coming? Undoubtedly, but we wanted something you could use out of the box. Lots of companies are excited to support this product, so expect plenty of options/accessories so you can configure it however you please.

Jon Thorn
Product Manager
AJA Video Systems, Inc.
California

Charles Papert · April 30th, 2009, 09:40 PM

Hi John:

I should have been more explicit; I meant that managing multiple batteries is a clunky way to work, when one Dionic 90 would handily power everything (or v-mount equivalent, etc). Having to keep an eye on so many power sources is like spinning plates, and when one is in the midst of a hectic shoot it's easy to drop one. Sometimes that is a mere annoyance, other times it's downright risky (possiblity of losing footage or audio,etc).

Jon Thorn · May 1st, 2009, 01:16 AM

Charles P. - Charles, most of the smaller (also read "lower power consumption" cameras) should be able to run off of one Anton Bauer - or other professional battery - as well as be able to provide power to the Ki Pro, The appropriate battery and adapter cables will be required of course and this is something that will be part of our testing procedure. Ki Pro needs just under 10 volts of power to operate properly, (9.6v I believe is our minimum) and it can operate when provided with up to nearly 16 volts.

I can appreciate not trying to juggle a variety of batteries... I have many memories of this... When I was a first A.C. on film sets, I had to carry one of those handy little voltage readers that went between the battery and the camera that would tell you how much juice the battery had left before the director and the D.P. decided to try rolling that long, elaborate continuous take in an homage to "Touch of Evil" for over 8 minutes straight with the 1000 ft. magazine attached to the camera. :-) "Before we do the take, may I switch the battery out please?"

When I worked in video, I always loathed that the cameras were sometimes using NP style batteries... and the monitor batteries something else... (sigh) At least now, you could elect to run one battery type to power a variety of your gear, and the Dionic 90 seems like a very good choice not only for its weight, form factor and status indicator, but also because I believe it is one of the few "safe for flight" batteries you can elect to use. According to the Anton Bauer manual for the Dionic 90: "Anton/Bauer, Inc. declares that the Dionic 90 lithium ion batterypack contains equivalent lithium content (ELC) in a quantity not exceeding 8 grams. This quantity is in compliance with section ICAO/IATA Special Provision A45 and US 49 CFR (Hazardous Material Regulation).The Dionic 90 battery pack thus is excepted by definition and therefore is suitable for air transport as a non-hazardous article."

Just some things to consider when looking at a battery solution to power Ki Pro and your other products...

And congratulations on "The Perfect Sleep" by the way... that turned out very well !!! The producer of the film provided AJA with the trailer for display in our booth at NAB - people were very impressed with the look and were eager to see the film based on the trailer (I particularly like the Palm Springs images myself!)

Hope this information on the batteries is helpful,
Jon

Jon Thorn
Product Manager
AJA Video Systems, Inc.
California

Charles Papert · May 1st, 2009, 01:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon Thorn

And congratulations on "The Perfect Sleep" by the way... that turned out very well !!! The producer of the film provided AJA with the trailer for display in our booth at NAB - people were very impressed with the look and were eager to see the film based on the trailer (I particularly like the Palm Springs images myself!)

I had no idea--and wish I had. The only time I spent in the AJA booth was looking at the GearNex head, and that briefly. So much to see, so little time.

Would have loved to have seen the trailer playing at the show.

p.s. it's viewable in HD at:

theperfectsleep.com/1080/1080.HTML

or rest of site:

theperfectsleep.com

Luke Garza · May 1st, 2009, 03:56 AM

Thankyou so much for all the info Jon, and i cant wait to see a should mount rig like you talked about the zacuto options. I do have another ? though, On the audio xlr inputs is their any limiter on the kipro to prevent peaking or is just set level with knobs and thats it. So i think their are two xrl imputs on kipro so how does each input get recorded with video file on kipro. And does the kipro record video and audio perfect so no audio or video drift. So no worry of having to sync in post. Oh and man this is answer to my prayers thank you guys so much for making this i cant say enough how excited i am about this product.

Bruce S. Yarock · May 1st, 2009, 04:02 AM

Jon,
i wanted to repeat Bill Ravens' question. What about those of us editing on pc with CS3, for example?
thanks
Bruce yarock
Yarock Video and Photo

Jon Thorn · May 1st, 2009, 05:51 AM

Charles P. - Sorry you missed your own project in our booth! That GearNex head was a bit distracting though... that is a fine product and made by some very nice people. Expect that product to be wildly successful.

Luke G. - I so, so wish I could just post my iPhone pictures of the hand held configuration, but alas, I must follow our company rules and only share approved images... sorry!

As for the audio question, no limiter so you will need to use the audio level control knobs to determine peak level... if you need more than this to control the sound, then mixers and other audio devices can easily be placed in the audio signal path for added control. Yes, audio and video should be in sync if they are in sync from the camera or the audio/video source. One exception to this that I know from previous experimenting with other AJA products: the original Canon XL-H1 camcorder had HD-SDI output, but this output did not carry embedded audio in it. If you tried to use the analog outputs from the camera with the HD-SDI feed, they were out of sync by about 2 frames. Please note that this is NOT the case with the new Canon XL-H1s product which has embedded audio in the HD-SDI. Just thought I would mention that if you have two disparate sources (like an analog source and a digital source that come from the same host camera, they could be out of time with each other I'm afraid). So, if you have HD-SDI with embedded audio, you probably would want to record that audio using Ki Pro. If you had embedded HDMI audio, you would probably want to record that audio using Ki Pro. If you had component analog input, you can only elect to get your audio from an analog audio source. Hope this makes sense...

Luke if you are happy with the product, we will be happy with the product. AJA prides itself on trying to deliver products that people want and that improve their work.

Bruce Y. - If you are editing on a PC with Adobe Premiere, you will be able to read the QuickTime Apple ProRes 422 media if you have the Apple ProRes 422 QuickTime Decoder component installed:
http://support.apple.com/downloads/A..._0_for_Windows

Keeping in mind of course that this is a decoder only: you will not be able to write Apple ProRes 422 QuickTimes on your PC. If you don't like the playback or possible rendering issues that this might cause you, then I would recommend that you simply transcode to another codec of your choosing on Windows for use with Adobe Premiere. And of course, this could change in the future, but this support has as much to do with Windows, Apple and Adobe as it does with anyone else. Sorry.

As usual, hope this is helpful information,
Jon

Jon Thorn
Product Manager
AJA Video Systems, Inc.
California

Hoy Quan · May 1st, 2009, 08:19 AM

One of my primary goals is to get away from the HDV codec. Capturing to a 4:2:2 I frame is a huge improvement. In the Windows environment, we had excellent results with Cineform and one can easily take ProRes and convert it to Cineform which plays very well with Premiere. We bypassed that issue by converting all our systems to Macs.

Luke Garza · May 1st, 2009, 10:39 AM

So If I do use companent input from my xh a1 into kipro would I then also go xlr into kipro instead of xlr into a1 then RCA into kipro. Which way would for sure sound better audio wise and be synced perfectly. If not One of these ways works I guess could use ur analog to Sdi converter but prefer to not add another piece since want to be run an gun.

April 29th, 2009, 11:42 AM	#16
James Huenergardt Major Player Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Chehalis, WA Posts: 513	What does the unit weigh? I haven't found any info on the AJA web site yet on specs, etc. __________________ Reel Inspirations - www.reelinspirations.com Commercials, Dramas, Image Pieces, Documentaries, Motion Graphics

April 30th, 2009, 08:44 PM	#22
Jon Thorn AJA Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Grass Valley, CA Posts: 252	Answers to the latest questions... James H. - Ki Pro with the 250GB drive module in the unit weighs 3.55 lbs. Guy C. - Not sure anyone gave me information to pass on about a 500GB drive module... ;-) 250GB spinning drive is $269 US MSRP. 128GB SSD version is $695 US MSRP, and 256GB SSD version is $1,395 US MSRP. I can check on the 500GB front, but don't recall that... not something that I've seen/used yet when demoing the product. Drive capacity always increases though... remember when we were excited about having 9GB of storage? ;-) Hoy Q. - Yes, the audio inputs will allow you to record 48KHz 24-bit audio. You might still want a mixer, but we do provide audio level control knobs if you feel they are sufficient, then I suppose you could indeed forgo the use of a mixer... Yes, we can use ExpressCard/34 media in the device and yes, as of now, we are really only recommending trying to record "standard" Apple ProRes 422 and not the "HQ" variant to this media. Currently we are only recommending Delkin 8GB Industrial ExpressCard/34 media. Why? Well, you might note that you need a driver to mount Sony SxS media on your MacBook Pro... same for a Windows machine. As of right now - and this may change - there is not a driver available for us to mount the Sony media in the Ki Pro. We are talking with Sony about this and they have shown an interest, so support for SxS might even be enabled by the time the product ships, but I cannot promise that. Sorry... still up in the air. Battery options? You've got a lot actually... Ki Pro operates at very low wattage, much less than a 40 watt household light bulb (depending upon what gets turned on in the unit anywhere from roughly 20+ watts to just over 30 watts), and therefore you should be able to run for quite a long time when used with something like an Anton Bauer Dionic 90 battery. Note that a lot of devices we showed at NAB are capable of using an Anton Bauer battery - in fact we were using only one type of battery - the Dionic 90 - for sustained durations with our devices (like our LCD monitor we had, the JVC GY-HM700 we were using, etc.) We ran the Ki Pro several times during the show from the Dionic 90 via a PowerTap to XLR cable from Anton Bauer that is readily available. Theoretically, if your camcorder was low power consumption, you might be able to run it and the Ki Pro from one power source... we will be trying that sort of thing out for sure (you can probably appreciate why, though it was working at NAB, we did not want to just start shipping the product immediately! The QA process is quite lengthy for a device that does so much!) If you get the optional Exoskeleton and use 15mm rods, mounting batteries via something like the Zacuto DoubleMount and v3 plate in combination with an Anton Bauer plate creates a quite elegant power solution. If you don't want to go that route, you can also get a little V-mount to 15mm rod widget from the guys at Element Technica to mount a V-mount battery on... or you can run a brick battery with a straight XLR 4-pin line to the Ki Pro or... or... do you see a pattern forming here guys? ;-) Charles P. - Wish you had been at NAB... battery mounting is not clunky at all - in fact I think as a "former" camera-person, that it is quite elegant. We will have plenty of hi-res images of various configurations on our website just before we begin shipping... battery use/mounting has not been much of an issue for anyone thus far who has seen it in person. Luke G. - Sadly, I had a co-worker take images of myself handholding the Ki Pro mounted alongside a Sony HDV camera, but the marketing folks said that the images needed to be professionally done (not taken with an iPhone!) and thus why we haven't shown them yet - professional photos are forthcoming, happily with a better looking model than myself holding the camera! ;-) Here is how the initial handheld configuration has been accomplished: mount your camera to something like the Zacuto universal baseplate product, extend rods out behind the camera, use a shoulder pad (Zacuto provides that as well FYI), then invert the rod endplates of the Ki Pro Exoskeleton and mount the Ki Pro on the same plane as the camera, not below it as you would in tripod mode. This serves two purposes: it transforms these somewhat awkward smaller cameras that you typically hold out away from your body into true shoulder mount cameras, and second you actually end up balancing the weight of these cameras (which tend to fall in the 3 to 6 pound range) with the weight of the Ki Pro. As for your drive question, yes inside the Ki Pro, the drive is connected via a SATA connection, and - for now - you will be connecting to the host computer via the FireWire 800 connector. Will there be SATA to eSATA connectors and other options coming? Undoubtedly, but we wanted something you could use out of the box. Lots of companies are excited to support this product, so expect plenty of options/accessories so you can configure it however you please. Jon Thorn Product Manager AJA Video Systems, Inc. California

April 30th, 2009, 09:40 PM	#23
Charles Papert Wrangler Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 6,810	Hi John: I should have been more explicit; I meant that managing multiple batteries is a clunky way to work, when one Dionic 90 would handily power everything (or v-mount equivalent, etc). Having to keep an eye on so many power sources is like spinning plates, and when one is in the midst of a hectic shoot it's easy to drop one. Sometimes that is a mere annoyance, other times it's downright risky (possiblity of losing footage or audio,etc). __________________ Charles Papert www.charlespapert.com

May 1st, 2009, 01:16 AM	#24
Jon Thorn AJA Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Grass Valley, CA Posts: 252	Powering more than one device... Charles P. - Charles, most of the smaller (also read "lower power consumption" cameras) should be able to run off of one Anton Bauer - or other professional battery - as well as be able to provide power to the Ki Pro, The appropriate battery and adapter cables will be required of course and this is something that will be part of our testing procedure. Ki Pro needs just under 10 volts of power to operate properly, (9.6v I believe is our minimum) and it can operate when provided with up to nearly 16 volts. I can appreciate not trying to juggle a variety of batteries... I have many memories of this... When I was a first A.C. on film sets, I had to carry one of those handy little voltage readers that went between the battery and the camera that would tell you how much juice the battery had left before the director and the D.P. decided to try rolling that long, elaborate continuous take in an homage to "Touch of Evil" for over 8 minutes straight with the 1000 ft. magazine attached to the camera. :-) "Before we do the take, may I switch the battery out please?" When I worked in video, I always loathed that the cameras were sometimes using NP style batteries... and the monitor batteries something else... (sigh) At least now, you could elect to run one battery type to power a variety of your gear, and the Dionic 90 seems like a very good choice not only for its weight, form factor and status indicator, but also because I believe it is one of the few "safe for flight" batteries you can elect to use. According to the Anton Bauer manual for the Dionic 90: "Anton/Bauer, Inc. declares that the Dionic 90 lithium ion batterypack contains equivalent lithium content (ELC) in a quantity not exceeding 8 grams. This quantity is in compliance with section ICAO/IATA Special Provision A45 and US 49 CFR (Hazardous Material Regulation).The Dionic 90 battery pack thus is excepted by definition and therefore is suitable for air transport as a non-hazardous article." Just some things to consider when looking at a battery solution to power Ki Pro and your other products... And congratulations on "The Perfect Sleep" by the way... that turned out very well !!! The producer of the film provided AJA with the trailer for display in our booth at NAB - people were very impressed with the look and were eager to see the film based on the trailer (I particularly like the Palm Springs images myself!) Hope this information on the batteries is helpful, Jon Jon Thorn Product Manager AJA Video Systems, Inc. California

May 1st, 2009, 05:51 AM	#28
Jon Thorn AJA Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Grass Valley, CA Posts: 252	A few more answers... Charles P. - Sorry you missed your own project in our booth! That GearNex head was a bit distracting though... that is a fine product and made by some very nice people. Expect that product to be wildly successful. Luke G. - I so, so wish I could just post my iPhone pictures of the hand held configuration, but alas, I must follow our company rules and only share approved images... sorry! As for the audio question, no limiter so you will need to use the audio level control knobs to determine peak level... if you need more than this to control the sound, then mixers and other audio devices can easily be placed in the audio signal path for added control. Yes, audio and video should be in sync if they are in sync from the camera or the audio/video source. One exception to this that I know from previous experimenting with other AJA products: the original Canon XL-H1 camcorder had HD-SDI output, but this output did not carry embedded audio in it. If you tried to use the analog outputs from the camera with the HD-SDI feed, they were out of sync by about 2 frames. Please note that this is NOT the case with the new Canon XL-H1s product which has embedded audio in the HD-SDI. Just thought I would mention that if you have two disparate sources (like an analog source and a digital source that come from the same host camera, they could be out of time with each other I'm afraid). So, if you have HD-SDI with embedded audio, you probably would want to record that audio using Ki Pro. If you had embedded HDMI audio, you would probably want to record that audio using Ki Pro. If you had component analog input, you can only elect to get your audio from an analog audio source. Hope this makes sense... Luke if you are happy with the product, we will be happy with the product. AJA prides itself on trying to deliver products that people want and that improve their work. Bruce Y. - If you are editing on a PC with Adobe Premiere, you will be able to read the QuickTime Apple ProRes 422 media if you have the Apple ProRes 422 QuickTime Decoder component installed: http://support.apple.com/downloads/A..._0_for_Windows Keeping in mind of course that this is a decoder only: you will not be able to write Apple ProRes 422 QuickTimes on your PC. If you don't like the playback or possible rendering issues that this might cause you, then I would recommend that you simply transcode to another codec of your choosing on Windows for use with Adobe Premiere. And of course, this could change in the future, but this support has as much to do with Windows, Apple and Adobe as it does with anyone else. Sorry. As usual, hope this is helpful information, Jon Jon Thorn Product Manager AJA Video Systems, Inc. California

April 30th, 2009, 10:30 AM	#20
Hoy Quan Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 36	No question, a single battery would be more efficient for the entire rig. Options are always nice. Most of us have a few spare batteries so if we are only running a camera and recorder, throw a couple spares on the AJA and we are good to go - no need to invest in a V mount or AB set up. For those with existing V or AB batteries, recorder + monitor -running 3 taps on one battery would definitely be the way to go.

April 30th, 2009, 02:21 PM	#21
Luke Garza Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Spokane, WA Posts: 27	I too want to do the exact same thing with my xh a1 and now saving for it. Only thing will be to see a shoulder mount kit all rigged up and how much from zacuto or someone else. But yes know i dont have to buy new cameras for a while now and produce better quality at same time. One thing i would like to know is if you can connect the harddrive up to esata to transfer so much quicker then fire800. I know it hooks up firewire800 but it hooks up sata wise to kipro so assuming you could hook it up somehow to double speed transfers. I asked aja reps at nab and one told me yes and another told me no.

May 1st, 2009, 03:56 AM	#26
Luke Garza Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Spokane, WA Posts: 27	Thankyou so much for all the info Jon, and i cant wait to see a should mount rig like you talked about the zacuto options. I do have another ? though, On the audio xlr inputs is their any limiter on the kipro to prevent peaking or is just set level with knobs and thats it. So i think their are two xrl imputs on kipro so how does each input get recorded with video file on kipro. And does the kipro record video and audio perfect so no audio or video drift. So no worry of having to sync in post. Oh and man this is answer to my prayers thank you guys so much for making this i cant say enough how excited i am about this product.

May 1st, 2009, 04:02 AM	#27
Bruce S. Yarock Trustee Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pembroke Pines, Fl. Posts: 1,842	Jon, i wanted to repeat Bill Ravens' question. What about those of us editing on pc with CS3, for example? thanks Bruce yarock Yarock Video and Photo

May 1st, 2009, 08:19 AM	#29
Hoy Quan Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 36	One of my primary goals is to get away from the HDV codec. Capturing to a 4:2:2 I frame is a huge improvement. In the Windows environment, we had excellent results with Cineform and one can easily take ProRes and convert it to Cineform which plays very well with Premiere. We bypassed that issue by converting all our systems to Macs.

May 1st, 2009, 10:39 AM	#30
Luke Garza Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Spokane, WA Posts: 27	So If I do use companent input from my xh a1 into kipro would I then also go xlr into kipro instead of xlr into a1 then RCA into kipro. Which way would for sure sound better audio wise and be synced perfectly. If not One of these ways works I guess could use ur analog to Sdi converter but prefer to not add another piece since want to be run an gun.