{"id":464,"date":"2014-04-07T09:45:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T16:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/?p=464"},"modified":"2014-08-31T17:22:46","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T00:22:46","slug":"nab-2014-first-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2014\/04\/07\/nab-2014-first-look\/","title":{"rendered":"NAB 2014 First Look"},"content":{"rendered":"

I find myself in Las\u00c2\u00a0Vegas once again, attending my tenth NAB<\/a> convention.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no doubt that 4K<\/a> and UltraHD<\/a> will be the primary themes this year, with many new products updated to operate at those higher resolutions.\u00c2\u00a0 Cameras have actually been available in that range for many years now, as have the software solutions.\u00c2\u00a0 The missing pieces have been on the display and delivery side, so that is where I expect to see the most significant advances.
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\nBut the single most significant announcement I am aware of, which I anticipate will draw a lot of attention right off the bat, is AJA’s<\/a> newest product.\u00c2\u00a0 They have announced their first camera, shooting directly to ProRES<\/a> at 4K, dubbed the Cion.\u00c2\u00a0 It basically includes all of the established functionality of the existing KiPro Quad<\/a>, but with its own capture sensor on the front end.\u00c2\u00a0 Specifically a natively 4K APS-C<\/a> sized sensor with a global shutter, and 12 stops of dynamic range.<\/p>\n

Visually, Cion’s design looks very similar to the Arri Alexa<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Functionally it seems similar to a C500<\/a> with an integrated KiPro Quad.\u00c2\u00a0 It will be interesting to see in which segment of the market it eventually most excels in.\u00c2\u00a0 It shoots HD, 2K, UHD, and true 4K.\u00c2\u00a0 It has an impressive array of framerate options, starting at 24fps at any resolution, up to 30fps at 4K ProRes444, 60fps at ProRes422HQ, and up to 120fps over four RAW 3G BNC data streams.\u00c2\u00a0 The RAW<\/a> data is intended to be ingested by AJA’s existing Corvid Ultra <\/a>product, for slow motion and selective region of interest playback.\u00c2\u00a0 It should be a popular tool for high end sports broadcast productions.\u00c2\u00a0 And with a price tag of $9000, it will be popular with a lot of other potential users as well.<\/p>\n

Now there is no getting around a comparison with Blackmagic-Design’s <\/a>line of cameras, originally announced two years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 While it is a similar story of a hardware I\/O company getting into the camera business, AJA has taken a very different approach.\u00c2\u00a0 First off, the Cion form factor wasn’t borrowed from Fisher-Price.\u00c2\u00a0 It follows a fairly traditional shoulder mount approach, and should work with existing standard accessories.\u00c2\u00a0 I personally prefer the DSLR form factor in many cases, but there is definitely a valid place for larger shoulder mount cameras.\u00c2\u00a0 AJA’s offering has a true 4K sensor, instead of one limited to UHD.\u00c2\u00a0 The workflow is based on ProRes, and should be similar to BMD’s camera, and familiar to anyone who has used a KiPro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

AJA also announced a number of other new products, including a long overdue update to the Kona<\/a> line, with the Kona4.\u00c2\u00a0 It adds HDMI 2.0b<\/a> output, on a PCIe x8 2.0<\/a> card, but retains the familiar four bi-directional 3G-SDI <\/a>spigots, and other legacy connectivity.\u00c2\u00a0 The io4K<\/a> was released late last year, and adds 4K support to their Thunderbolt line of “io” products.\u00c2\u00a0 The Corvid88 is an OEM PCIe card with 8 bi-directional SDI spigots, allowing 8 channels of HD, 1 channel of 4K at 60p, or anything in between.\u00c2\u00a0 The FS1-X adds hardware frame-rate conversion to their line of conversion products, similar to the original Teranex products, but with many more I\/O options.\u00c2\u00a0 And although I am unfamiliar with it, 64 channels of MADI<\/a> I\/O on the audio side should allow any audio configuration you can dream up.\u00c2\u00a0 They also have a new LUT-Box mini-converter for color space conversion of 3G SDI signals.\u00c2\u00a0 Stay tuned for more updates to follow as the week progresses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I find myself in Las\u00c2\u00a0Vegas once again, attending my tenth NAB convention.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no doubt that 4K and UltraHD will be the primary themes this year, with many new products updated to operate at those higher resolutions.\u00c2\u00a0 Cameras have actually been available in that range for many years now, as have the software solutions.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[16,49,18,12,24,35,50],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":468,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}