Grass Valley, Calif. - At The Chimney Pot, one of the largest visual effects companies in Sweden, AJA's Ki Pro Mini portable flash disk recorder is housed in a rack in the machine room, meeting the high demand for Apple ProRes 422 logging and QuickTime file output.
"People come in with HDCam and SR tapes everyday, and there was always a huge queue at the logging station," describes Hans Crispin, technical engineer and machine room manager at The Chimney Pot. "Ki Pro Mini is a perfect solution. It's switched in as a VTR with a router. We access it, put a tape in, and walk away, and we get high-quality QuickTime files with proper timecode. It's a brilliant product that packs a hell of a punch for the money."
AJA‚s Ki Pro Mini records native Apple ProRes 422 QuickTime files onto CF cards. It includes two CF card slots, one active and one standby. Crispin has set up the Ki Pro Mini at Chimney Pot with an eSata CF card reader, which can download 100GB in a few minutes. In addition to a front-panel control, the device includes a Web browser interface, which The Chimney Pot uses almost exclusively.
"We have Ki Pro Mini connected to the Internet and use it as a remote device. It's so simple to just do your settings from the computer. It couldn't be easier to use," Crispin continues.
Ki Pro Mini is in daily use at the company, and has been part of the workflow on projects ranging from the David Fincher-directed feature film Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to the Swedish game show "On the Minute," the TV show "Panama" for SVT1, commercials for H&M, and many other projects.
Crispin even envisions the possibility of extending the role of Ki Pro Mini into duplication. "I could transfer a TV show to SR tape, take six 5.1 audio tracks and two stereo tracks, transcode ProRes 422 into the card, reverse that, play back to SR tape, and make duplicates. That's how good the quality is."