GRASS VALLEY, CA — At the Inter BEE show taking place in Japan, AJA (www.aja.com) introduced the Ki Pro Ultra, a ProRes-based 4K/UltraHD and 2K/HD player/recorder that’s capable of capturing 4K video at framerates up to 60p. Post spoke with AJA product marketing manager Bryce Button just prior to the Ki Pro Ultra’s introduction, and he noted the company’s history in ProRes recording solutions, dating back to AJA’s Io HD in 2007 and Ki Pro in 2009.
Sports, says Button, is driving the demand for 60p recording and playback in the US and Japan, with Europe opting for 50p. The new Ki Pro Ultra is now shipping and occupies a half-width rack space and a height of 2 RU. The unit weighs just under 6lbs. and features a 4.8-inch HD display — the biggest screen on any AJA device to date.
Two Pak SSD media slots allow for the use of two 1TB drives that, when combined, can capture up to two hours of 4K/60p footage. That figure jumps to 13 hours of recording when working at HD resolutions.
The Ki Pro Ultra ($3,995) features menu specific buttons and a rotary selection click-knob for menu selecting. Transport control is made possible through dedicated buttons. On the back, the Ki Pro Ultra features HDMI 2.0 compatible I/O, four SDI I/Os, and dual power options for redundancy. An SDI monitor port allows for HD down conversion to an inexpensive monitor for on-set work. A LAN port allows for Web UI control, and LTC I/O is also offered.
The following ProRes formats are supported: 4K 4096x2160; Ultra HD 3840x2160; 2K 2048x1080; HD 1920x1080 and HD 1280x720.
AJA’s KPU shelf option ($79) allows users to remove the Ki Pro Ultra’s handle grip for installation into a rack. Pak media that’s currently available includes 1TB/$1,495, 512GB/$995 and 256GB/$495 drives. AJA is also introducing the Pak-Adapt-CFast media adapter ($99), which looks like Pak media drive and allows customers with existing CFast cards to use them with AJA’s KiPro Quad and Ki Pro Ultra.