AOTG: AJA ROI Review

AOTG by Gordon Burkell

At NAB 2013 AJA announced their ROI Mini-Converter, which they emphatically stated does not stand for “Return on Investment” but “Region of Interest”. When they announced it, I was very interested in it since as a documentary editor I’ve had to pull clips from YouTube or Vimeo while the producers attempt to track down the creator of the original content to secure higher quality source video. The ROI scales video from your computer screen via DVI or HDMI to SDI including material pulled from the net, which, hopefully, will lessen the producer’s questions and comments on image quality. I’ve used screen-capturing software in the past but the ROI gives a hardware solution that really packs a punch.

The Tech

So, what’s under the hood?
Convert DVI/HDMI inputs to HD/SD-SDI
User-adjustable “region of interest” for personalized screen extraction
4:3/16:9 conversion modes supported
Setup via PC/Mac using USB port and supplied USB cable (AJA MiniConfig software application supplied on CD)
Frame-rate conversion
Automatic configuration to input video raster and frame rate
SDI output configurable to most common SD and HD formats (1080i59.84 max)
Genlock with reference input
Audio input via 3.5mm-2channel analog input or 8-channel HDMI embedded
Embedded SDI audio out (up to 8 channels)
Uses universal input +5V power supply AJA model DWP-U-R1 (included)

The Feel

Overall, the ROI has a great interactive feel to it. The only problem I had was fixed with a simple upgrade of the MiniConfig software downloaded from http://www.aja.com/en/products/mini-converters/roi/#support.

Other than that this tool runs smoothly. Once everything's plugged in it will immediately be recognized and you can hit the ground running. If you’ve used any AJA tool you’ll immediately understand the MiniConfig interface. In this case we have five tabs: Input Region of Interest, Output, Audio, Update, and Info. read more...

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	AJA ROI Region of Interest Mini Converter $995.00