Grass Valley, Calif. - AJA Video, a manufacturer of professional video interface and conversion solutions, announced the use of its KONA 3 video capture card with Apple Final Cut Pro as the editing platform-of-choice for the current Twentieth Century Fox release Alien vs. Predator: Requiem.
KONA 3 is AJA's uncompressed capture card for SD, HD, and Dual Link 4:4:4 HD for PCI Express (PCIe) Apple G5 Power Macs and Mac Pro systems, and was an integral part of the film's Apple Final Cut Pro editing pipeline.
The highly anticipated follow-up to the worldwide 2004 hit Alien vs. Predator is directed by visual effects artists and commercial and music video directors The Brothers Strause. In the effects-heavy film, which was released on December 25, 2007, the iconic monsters from two of the scariest film franchises ever wage their most brutal battle yet in an unsuspecting Colorado town.
The editorial team modified the existing workflow to integrate with the pipeline at visual effects studio Hydraulx, setting up an Apple Final Cut Pro editing pipeline for the film that relied on AJA's KONA 3 card. Shot on 35mm 3-perf film, the setup allowed Hydraulx to cut the film at a 1080i resolution, lay down previews to a D5 deck, and go out to an HD deck for studio reviews before finishing the film at EFILM with a 2K Digital Intermediate scan and film output. The pipeline employed five KONA 3 cards: a projection system, an editor system, a visual effects editor system, a utility system and an assistant system.
Supporting any uncompressed SD or HD format, including Dual Link and 2K, KONA 3 captures and plays back uncompressed 10-bit and 8-bit digital video and 24-bit digital audio. KONA 3 also includes a variety of 10-bit broadcast-quality features, such as hardware-based up-, down-, and cross-conversion to and from HD, and adds a live hardware HD/SD keyer for compositing bugs, live clips, and other elements over video.