Adventures in 4K Acquisition: Assembling A Workflow with Canon’s EOS C500 and AJA's Ki Pro Quad

CreativePlanetNetwork by Jeff Greenberg

Though the adoption timeline is debated, 4K is clearly the future (high resolution pun intended). In the next few years we’re going to see more high-end editorial shops and post facilities adopt 4K workflows to remain competitive in their markets. As the industry embraces the format, there are still a number of hurdles to overcome with regard to the production chain, primarily acquisition and drive bottlenecks.

Thankfully the editorial part of the chain already works. All the current versions of the major NLEs (Adobe, Apple, Avid) handle 4K directly in some way. Even though Avid Media Composer can’t output 4K at this time, there are strong workflows that permit a full 4K output with Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve.

Delivery and display pose challenges. If your client wants to see an HD master in 4K today, it can be difficult and it’s going to be a challenge to deliver. How is your client going to evaluate a 4K H.264 file? And what about you? Right now, it’s likely that you don’t have a calibrated 4K monitor—and your clients certainly don’t (although the native display of a MacBook Pro with Retina display comes close). Monitoring in HD on a calibrated system is a similar compromise that resembles the HD/SD monitoring before HD monitoring was affordable. Of course, checking the focus at 100 percent is vital.

But I want to emphasize the front of the chain: acquisition. We’re talking about large data acquisition. While I love raw workflows, primarily for the flexibility they offer in color grading, most often they’re cumbersome for data piping and storage. That’s where technology developers like AJA are stepping in with cost-effective solutions engineered to simplify 4K workflows. read more...

Check out these items featured in this post and available to BUY NOW at Videoguys.com.
	AJA Ki Pro Quad 4K, Quad HD, 2K, HD Solid State Recorder $3,995.00			AJA Ki Pro with 250GB HDD Storage Module $3,995.00			AJA Ki Pro Mini 10-bit 4:2:2 Flash Disk Recorder $1,995.00