Ki Pro Mini - Specification Request

[Andrew Stone]

I look on with great interest in the Ki Pro Mini. At the outset, it looks compelling in terms of acquisition for broadcast using inexpensive cameras, the ability to use phantom powered mics right off the unit, solid state and all that it entails. As a shooter, the current list of specs on the product leaves me feeling cold. I can see the inputs and try to divine what is and is not included in this unit compared to it's larger cousin, the Ki Pro but some fundamental questions are unanswered. Here's a list of what comes to mind at the moment that many would be interested in hearing:

What is the weight of the unit without a battery plate and/or battery?

Will you be offering the unit for sale preconfigured with A/B or V-lock plates? If so will that be on initial release and do you have an expected MSRP for these units with the battery plate premounted and wired?

Can you get both embedded HD-SDI audio and audio from the phantom/balanced inputs concurrently, even if it is only 2 tracks of HD-SDI audio?

What are the HD formats and resolutions that it will offer when it initially hits the streets. For instance, does it allow the typical 720p and 1080p capture frame rates? I am not talking about Varicam related isses but the standard fare that one gets out of say a Sony EX cam or a Panny HVX.

Does it allow slomo settings or at the very least 720p60 capture?

Does it do SD capture from an HD signal?

The monitor/output signal... Is it free of latency and does it simply output the signal rate the unit receives or is it possible to have the output signal converted (on the fly) within the unit?

Does it or will it do "hot swap" of the media in a manner that shooters of solid state video cameras are accustomed?

How much approximate power does the unit draw when powered by a typical 12 volt A/B or V-lock batt? The power figures in both standby and in in use would be helpful.

How hot does the unit get when in use?

Is there a maximum size of Compact Flash card that can presently be used by the unit and what kind of speed or kind of card would be required as a "qualified" card for the unit?

The rails bracket unit that is featured in your promo video, will that be available as an AJA product. If so, when and what is the expected MRSP (or thereabouts on it).

That's it for now but feel free to mention any other specifications that would be of interest to most shooters that I have missed.

[Jon Thorn]

Andrew S. - The Ki Pro Mini is essentially a subset of the original Ki Pro product. It removes some connectivity (analog video i/o, wireless capability, conversion capability) in order to fit the more camera centric needs into a smaller footprint.

To answer you specific questions:
The Ki Pro Mini weighs just over 1 lb. It's shell is made of aircraft grade aluminum for durability.

AJA will not be offering the Ki Pro Mini with pre-configured battery plates; instead we offer the Mini Mounting Plate which has a wide variety of tap holes for mounting the Ki Pro Mini to a variety of items as well as mounting a variety of items to it. One of the items you can mount to the plate is an Anton Bauer Gold Mount battery plate or a V-mount battery plate. One inexpensive resource for such plates is Ikan:
ikan M-A - Universal AB Mounting Plate
Then you would simply use a P-tap to XLR cable to power the unit from the Anton Bauer or V-mount battery plate. We designed Ki Pro Mini with the XLR style power connector because it has been adapted to such a wire range of other connectors and because it's an industry standard locking power connector.

The Mini Mounting Plate features screw holes to mount wireless mic receivers, or mount the Ki Pro as if it is a wireless mic via it's recessed slots. The various threaded holes allow you to mount Ki Pro Mini via the plate to hot shoes, existing camera plates, clamps, wireless receivers - let your imagination run wild - at the IBC booth it is mounted to monitors, tripod pan handles, 15mm rods, wireless plates, etc. Each adapter plate is sold separately for US MSRP $75.

Audio selection is either embedded SDI audio or XLR inputs; the product will not embed analog audio into an existing SDI audio stream. You can use XLR with SDI video of course though. AJA provides the AJA HD10AMA mini converter if embedding analog channels into SDI is desired:
HD10AMA - AJA Video Systems

Ki Pro Mini will support what the current Ki Pro does upon release:
525i 29.97
625i 25
720p 23.98/59.94
720p 25/50
720p 29.97/59.94
720p 50
720p 59.94
1080PsF 23.98
1080PsF 24
1080p 23.98
1080p 24
1080p 25
1080i 25
1080i 29.97

Note that unlike the original Ki Pro, the Ki Pro Mini does not perform conversions; it records the format that it receives via baseband video. If downconversion on input or output is desired, AJA provides the AJA HD10MD3:
HD10MD3 - AJA Video Systems

No slow motion capability is provided at this time, but the product does support 720p 59.94 fps.

No SD capture from an HD source for the Ki Pro Mini as noted because it does not feature conversions; you would choose the Ki Pro for such scenarios instead.

The monitor output is realtime, meaning that what you see input you can see in realtime on the output; please note that some HDMI monitors (not the Ki Pro Mini) will introduce latency to the monitoring and this is beyond AJA's control. Most professional monitors do not have this issue however.

No hot swapping of media; to gracefully respect the file directory, media is mounted and unmounted on the Ki Pro Mini just as it was with the original Ki Pro via a SLOT button. By analogy, think of it like you would a thumbdrive or FireWire harddrive; you plug it in, the bus is scanned and the media is mounted, but to properly remove the media you eject it at the operating system level... if you don't you receive an error prompt that you've removed the media inappropriately.

Ki Pro Mini draws relatively low power. Here at IBC, we run the unit via an Anton Bauer Dionic 90 battery for the entire tradeshow day; approximately 8 hours. Power consumption is approximately 12 watts. A specific range will be provided within the product manual at launch.

Ki Pro Mini features a fan which draws hot air up and out of the unit. Climate values will be provided at launch, but I can tell you that it does not get terribly warm even though the unit is made of metal. Typically we design products to meet the same - or higher - environmental standards as camera manufacturers.

Currently, the largest UDMA 6 600x (or faster) capacity compact flash cards are 64GB. We will provide a certified CF card list at product launch. We are testing a fair amount of CF cards prior to launch as you might imagine and will only recommend what we feel are acceptable in terms of performance requirements.

The 15mm rod adapters are the same ones used on the original Ki Pro Exoskeleton. These are the AJA Rod End Plates. A pair of these aircraft grade aluminum pieces with 1/4-20 threaded knobs and 15mm openings have a US MSRP of $295. You could elect to use one or both adapter plates depending upon what you wanted to mount to Ki Pro. These Rod End Plates have been available since the original Ki Pro product began shipping.

I hope this helps answer some of your specific questions. Now I think I should go to sleep... long days here in Amsterdam...

Regards,
Jon Thorn
Product Manager
AJA Video Systems, Inc.

[Andrew Stone]

All sounds good Jon with exception of the fan you mentioned. I hope the fan noise is close to inaudible or if you are able to ramp it down through the web app and/or the on board menu system. Many using a device like this will be shooters with onboard microphones albeit hypercardioids which a fairly tight proximity effect. Have you done field testing with the units to see how the fan fares against a camera strapped up with a hypercardioid in the cameras' hot shoe mount?

[Jon Thorn]

Andrew S. - Like the original Ki Pro, Ki Pro Mini features the ability to control fan speed. The following is the breakdown of fan operation:
Normal (default): Fan runs at normal fixed speed for optimum cooling.
Normal Auto: Fan runs at variable speeds for optimal cooling.
Quiet Record: Fan runs at a fixed slower speed for optimum quiet.
Quiet Auto: Fan runs at normal speed until recording begins, then the fan ramps down to a slower speed for optimum quiet.

Okay... desperate to get some sleep now...

Regards,
Jon Thorn
Product Manager
AJA Video Systems, Inc.

[Mark Job]

Hi Jon:
I have been following this thread very carefully, and the Ki-Pro Mini looks like a truly interesting and substantial product. I would say it looks like a reasonable alternative to the more expensive Nano Flash, which is only an 8 bit MPEG -2 recording device. I have been using the much more expensive Flash XDR quite successfully, but would like to be able to get away from the MPEG-2 based codec as a means for acquiring camera original material. I understand the Ki-Pro can also record in direct Quicktime codec ? Can you elaborate on this please ? Sorry, I mean after you have had a chance to get some sleep ;-) (I sympathize with this believe me !)

[Peter Corbett]

Nice reply Jon with lots of info. When do you think major onliners like Adorama and B&H will be taking orders and actually stocking?

Cheers,
Peter

[Jon Thorn]

Mark J. - Thanks for your interest in Ki Pro Mini. Ki Pro Mini, like the original Ki Pro product, records native QuickTime files in the Apple ProRes 422 codec family to compact flash cards formatted HFS+. By creating native QuickTime files and HFS+ formatted media, the path to post production on Apple products (as well as other products) is quite easy. No transcoding. No log and capture or log and transfer. No special media mounting procedures. No strange naming conventions. It's a simple and logical path from acquisition into post production. Apple's ProRes codec is now supported on an ever growing variety of softwares and is finding more traction in operating systems beyond Mac OSX. It's use continues to expand.

Peter C. - While I am not in the sales department at AJA, I believe that orders for Ki Pro Mini began this week. AJA fills orders from resellers in the order they are received. Since we announced the product in Europe, I would imagine some European distributors and resellers have placed their orders first. Where specific companies are "in the queue" I could not say however... sorry not my domain! We expect to have Ki Pro Mini availability by the end of October; note that AJA ships product when it feels that it is ready for customer use.

Regards,
Jon Thorn
Product Manager
AJA Video Systems, Inc.

[Peter Corbett]

Thanks Jon, looking foward to it. Wish I was in Amsterdam.

[Helen Oster]

Originally Posted by Peter Corbett

Nice reply Jon with lots of info. When do you think major onliners like Adorama and B&H will be taking orders and actually stocking?

Cheers,
Peter

We expect to be shipping sometime in October; the list price is $1995.00.

It should be up on our website in the next couple of days to enable pre-ordering.


BTW please don't forget that we are in the midst of our Fall holiday period.
Our Holiday Schedule:
Yom Kippur Eve - Friday, September 17: Closed
Succot Eve & all of Succot - Wednesday, September 22 thru Friday, October 1: Closed

Thank you for your understanding.
NB I'm only an email away for advice and after-sales support with any order from Adorama Camera: HelenO@adorama.com

[David C Wright]

This looks like a great new recorder. I had just advised a colleague to buy a nanoflash but read the posts on this product and emailed to suggest he holds off.

I am wondering if there will be any issues regarding sync sound when using the unit to record 24p or 25p from a camera like the HDX900. With the nanoflash I see it has been suggested that you can run analogue sound into the unit along with the vidoe signal over the HD SDI output?

I am hoping that will not be required with this product.

Thanks

David Wright
http://www.lunaseafilms.com

[Steve Phillipps]

David, AFAIK that's just an issue with the Varicam, not the HDX900. The Varicam only ever runs at 60hz so getting 25P audio sync was tricky.
Steve

[Bob Griffiths]

Hi Jon,

Do you have a chart indicating recording times/GB in each of the ProRez formats. Or something that indicates how much you can fit on a 16/32/64 GB card in each format?

Thanks!

[David C Wright]

Thanks Steve for clearing up that confusion. I have not had chance to test the nanoflash with the HDX900 I own. Hoping that the Ki Pro Mini will offer a good tapeless solution to getting another few years use out of a great camera. I shoot for a variety of clients, which means various frame rates. Just want to make sure there are no issues with this.

Best
David
http://www.lunaseafilms.com

[Billy Steinberg]

Originally Posted by Jon Thorn

No hot swapping of media; to gracefully respect the file directory, media is mounted and unmounted on the Ki Pro Mini just as it was with the original Ki Pro via a SLOT button. By analogy, think of it like you would a thumbdrive or FireWire harddrive; you plug it in, the bus is scanned and the media is mounted, but to properly remove the media you eject it at the operating system level... if you don't you receive an error prompt that you've removed the media inappropriately.

If one has both (two) CF cards inserted, will the KiProMini transition seamlessly from the first card to the second while recording?

Billy

[Keith Dobie]

Bob - I had the same question. Someone posted a link to this PDF from Apple. It explains ProRes in its various flavours.

http://images.apple.com/finalcutstud..._July_2009.pdf

If you look at page 20 you'll see the data rates. Looks like ProRes 422 LT uses 102 Mb/s or 46 GB per hour recording full 1920x1080 HD @ 30p/60i. Sony's EX codec at 35 Mbps seems downright efficient by comparison. The website says it will also record ProRes 422 Proxy, which uses 45 Mb/s or 20 GB per hour -- but I don't know how it would compare to the XDCAM EX 35 Mb/s codec for recording. Anyone? I am looking for something that will mainly work as a redundant recorder. I know the EX cameras are supposed to be very reliable with their SxS cards, but it's still basically a computer. A backup just seems like a good idea.

Keith