The KiPro from Aja. Media management is paramount!
Following up on our previous post in this series, we were recording footage from 4 different Toshiba Ice Cube cameras, as well as 2 additional Canon C300s outside of the aircraft simulator. The Ice Cubes record to their own individual decks, and the C300s recorded to CF cards. It would take an enormous amount of time to transfer footage onto a master hard drive either during or after the shoot.
What was the solution? A handy little device called the KiPro, from Aja.
Imagine a tape recorder mixed into a tape deck, but has a myriad of connections available that allows you to record from multiple sources in multiple ways, and then on top of all that, encode all that footage into an Apple Pro Res codec and store that onto an onboard hard drive. That’s what the KiPro can do.
We came prepared and 4 KiPros available on set. We connected via primarily SDI inputs. Each KiPro came equipped with a 500GB hard drive (which is awesomely interchangeable) and as it recorded to the drive the KiPro transcoded each file into Apple Pro Res 422. So once the contents of the drive were transferred off to a back-up, editing and playback could commence right away.
So clearly there was a lot of action happening on set and being recorded, but how did we keep tabs on all this without interfering?
Here’s a hint: wireless.
Till next time!
