NAB: AJA Highlights 4K Support

LAS VEGAS -- AJA Video president Nick Rashby admits he was surprised to see the volume of 4K, or “Ultra HD,” at January’s CES Show. “It was incredible,” he said. “Everyone had 4K monitors of various sizes, and they all connected with HDMI.”

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This drove some of the key product announcements that AJA made this week at the NAB Show, including the Hi5-4K, a $595 3G SDI to 4K HDMI mini converter. “Hi5-4K provides a very simple solution for facilitating full 4K monitoring on-set,” Rashby said, explaining that it provides a connection from professional 4K devices using four 3G-SDI outputs to consumer 4K displays equipped with 4K-capable 1.4a HDMI inputs.

AJA also announced availability of its Ki Pro Quad, a portable video recorder designed for 4K camera-to-editorial workflows. Development was announced last September; it lists for $3995.

To integrate computer signals into video production, AJA  unveiled its $995 “ROI” mini converter for conversion and realtime scaling of computer DVI-D and HDMI outputs to baseband video over SDI.

The company revealed several partnerships this week, including one with Avid, through which AJA's Kona support Avid's Pro Tools HDX and Pro Tools Native platforms; Adobe, through which AJA’s Io, T-TAP, and Kona  will support the next version of Adobe Premiere Pro and Speedgrade; and FilmLight, which is offering Kona support  in its Flip image processor.

AJA is also working with Quantel--whose Pablo Rio is now being sold as a software product with AJA’s Corvid Ultra technology to “deliver support for everything from high frame rate 4K to stereo 3D,” said Steve Owen, marketing director at Quantel.

“We are already talking about what comes next,” Owen added, pointing out that Quantel was demonstrating its Rio playing 8K during NAB.