I remember when 4K first hit the streets. It was the next big thing and everyone was so excited; four times the resolution, this was going to be bigger than when SD went to HD. Ultra HD was the wave of the future, and sure enough it hit the consumer market far sooner than I expected and the professional market spent plenty of time on its heels trying to catch up. In fact, go into your local big box electronics provider and ask for an HD TV that isn’t 4K; they won’t have any.
I was equally excited about this brand-new frontier, but not for the same reason as most people. When I first learned about how 4K was being done, which at the time was literally with four independent 1080 signals matrixed together, my question was, “What if you don’t matrix them together, what if you just used four isolated 1080 signals?” Everyone I talked to initially said, “It won’t work.” However, they couldn’t seem to wrap their minds around why anyone would want to record multiple separate feeds.
Fast-forward to today; there are a few products that have been launched that will record multiple isolated cameras simultaneously, but most have come up just a bit short in application. However, it seems that AJA is finally joining the game, and in fact may be leading the charge now with their recent release of the Ki Pro Ultra Plus Multi-Channel HD Recorder 4K/UltraHD/2K/HD Recorder and Player.
For those not familiar with the Ki Pro family of products, they represent AJA’s attempt to replace the standard VTR. They have become an industry staple in the recorder/player field. Built on the fundamentals of the industry established Ki Pro family, the Ultra Plus is keeping the great recording tradition alive. Offering up to four channels of simultaneous HD recording, or in Single-Channel mode a 4K/UltraHD/2K/HD recorder and player. Like the rest of the Ki Pro family, the Ki Pro Ultra Plus records to two industry favorite codec Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD MXF. 4K/UltraHD is supported through 4x 3G-SDI, HDMI 2.0 or optional fiber inputs and outputs at true 4K, 4096 x 2160p. The front of the unit itself is dominated by a large 4.8-inch 720p LCD display and transport controls, alongside dual drive bays for rerecording. The Ki Pro Ultra plus weighs in at a whopping 5.6 lbs and is 2 RU tall and 1/2 RU wide.
MEDIA
When it comes to storage there are two drive slots for media on the front of the unit. The Ki Pro Ultra Plus uses AJA’s Pak media for storage, which has some flexibility with regards to medium for storage. First, there are the standard AJA Pak Solid State Drive (SSD) Media. They are available in 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB sizes. However, AJA also offers Pak-Adapt-eSATA, which looks like Pak Media SSD except features an eSATA port on drive. This allows the Ki Pro Ultra Plus to attach a qualified RAID or single-volume storage via an eSATA cable, so that it may be used as a recordable drive. You can even put a Pak-Adapt-eSATA in each drive bay to expand your options. There is also a Pak-Adapt-CFast, which adapts the drive bay into a CFast slot. With all these options for media, the Ki Pro Ultra Plus allows for mixing and matching of media so you could be recording to an SSD in one slot and a CFast card in another.
I/O
One of the more unique features found in the Ki Pro Ultra Plus is on the inputs. It features four SDI, in and out, one SDI monitor out, one HDMI, in and out, reference in and looped out, and LTC in and out. That’s all pretty standard, but it also features SDI Fiber Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) ports, thank you Wikipedia. The way it works, is the fiber channel ports are just open ports, but when you plug in a CWDM SFP transceiver into the port it determines the wavelength of the laser used to send the signal, like wireless microphone frequency. Different CWDM operate at different wavelengths, which can be changed by swapping one CWDM SFP for another. The Ki Pro Ultra Plus has two CWDM SPF in and two out, since they run in pairs that means a total of four fiber channels in and four out. The possible CWDM options:
• Dual TX 1271/1291
• Dual TX 1311/1331
• Dual TX 1351/1371
• Dual TX 1391/1411
• Dual TX 1431/1451
• Dual TX 1471/1491
• Dual TX 1511/1531
• Dual TX 1591/1611
• Dual TX 1551/1571
On the audio side of the I/O the Ki Pro Ultra Plus has 16 of 24-bit SDI/fiber embedded as well as eight channels of embedded HDMI and eight channels of AES/EBU. Audio output is eight-Channel, 24-bit D/A analog audio via DB-25 TASCAM pinout as well as two unbalanced RCA and a stereo headphone jack.
The ability to record four isolated channels of video in a single device is a big deal. If your church has a multi-camera environment for IMAG or broadcast this is going to be make your life incredibly easy. Just hit record and you have four isolated clean feeds that you can edit in post.
Speaking of post, if your media team does a lot of internal videos like interviews and testimonials, the Ki Pro Ultra Plus is great in the field as well. Imagine hooking up your cinema cameras and recording your interviews. Once you are back in the edit bay all your footage is already synced and in an edit ready codec. It just doesn’t get much faster than this in current workflows. The question I have is can it also playback four isolated outputs that are synced? We’ll find out when we get our review unit in a few weeks. Most of the similar products won't, but nothing in the spec sheet clear states one way or the other.
For multi-site churches this is also a real win. Many churches are utilizing a multi-channel recording for multi-site distribution. Right now, unless you are on the bleeding edge, you are limited to two channels. We use these two channels for tele-presence and IMAG at my home church. However, the way I imagine the Ki Pro Ultra Plus working in our situation would be this; a tele-presence shot of our speaker for projection on the stage, a tight shot with embedded notes for side screen IMAG, a dedicated shot of premixed secondary cameras for cut-aways, and a dedicated graphics feed for a third screen or key as needed. All coming from a single device all synced.
I have been a fan of the Ki Pro family since the beginning and I think the Ki Pro Ultra Plus is another great addition.
Look for a full, hands-on review in a few months.
