Ki Pro Mini, Prores and TV Logic questions...

You can just connect it via USB to the host PC. For best results, Media Four's MacDrive is recommended for working with Windows.
 
MediaFour worked quite well. It's $50 to register but at least they give you 5 days to use it (with some nag screens) and see if it works. There didn't seem to be any through put lag. I was able to play video right off the CF card.
 
Jon Thorn said:
b) Card spanning? Are there plans for any firmware that allows spanning for the Ki Pro Mini?
Reply: At this time, the Ki Pro Mini does not provide the ability to "span" cards; if AJA provides such a feature in a future firmware update, it will be considered "rollover" as opposed to spanning (to be precise about the terminology used). Contrary to another posting on this thread, this was not a promised feature of the device, but rather something that AJA has said it would like to offer in the future. The device has two CF slots so that users can use the SLOT button to unmount the first piece of media and mount the second piece of media without having to physically remove and insert new media to quickly begin recording again. You can refer to the Ki Pro Mini operation manual, page 10, for proper use of the SLOT button. I would strongly recommend reviewing the operation of the CF media and the SLOT button as appropriate removal of CF media from the device is an important procedure.
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Hi Jon,

I'd certainly accept rollover to the second card. Hot swapping and rollover should be your highest priority at the moment. We need to be watching the view screen, not the recorder screen.

Is rollover in the works? Or just on a wish list?

Thanks,
Duke
 
With CF card slots how would it support that? You can get adapters to make CF cards act like SSD drives, but I haven't seen the opposite.

However, you can do the DIY drive with an SSD or hard drive with a USB2 enclosure and Express card to USB2 adapter. How do you say 5 hour recording times for $200, with a sata hard drive and the above!
 
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Duke M. - Often, when a feature is not promised on a product, that does not mean that it has not been considered at some point during the development process. Having said that, un-promised features always come later in the development cycles for products if they are deemed possible to implement and users express a demand for them; feedback, like you are providing, is of course helpful. At AJA, we sincerely try to incorporate feature requests and feedback in an effort to improve our products and their operation. I also appreciate that, in an ideal world, you would keep your eye in the camera's eyepiece and all of the data from the Ki Pro Mini would be reported in the eyepiece so that you didn't have to monitor the recording device's status separately; however, that simply isn't possible for a recording device that attaches to a camera via baseband video connections. There isn't any data conduit for the video recorder to report it's status back to the camera the way there is for the camera to report it's own internal recorder's state. A good analogy for video recorders attached to video cameras via baseband connections is this: think of them like film magazines that are used on film-based motion picture cameras. Film-based cameras required the user to keep an eye on the magazine and evaluate it's state. If the film was running low, you knew to switch the magazine; if the Ki Pro Mini CF card capacity reported on it's UI is low, you might consider switching the card out before the next take.

Lenilenapi - The original Ki Pro product can host SSD storage modules. The Ki Pro Mini was designed to host CompactFlash cards in an effort to minimize the size of the recorder.

Hope this is helpful,
Jon
 
Jon Thorn said:
Duke M. - Often, when a feature is not promised on a product, that does not mean that it has not been considered at some point during the development process. Having said that, un-promised features always come later in the development cycles for products if they are deemed possible to implement and users express a demand for them; feedback, like you are providing, is of course helpful. At AJA, we sincerely try to incorporate feature requests and feedback in an effort to improve our products and their operation.

I also appreciate that, in an ideal world, you would keep your eye in the camera's eyepiece and all of the data from the Ki Pro Mini would be reported in the eyepiece so that you didn't have to monitor the recording device's status separately; however, that simply isn't possible for a recording device that attaches to a camera via baseband video connections. There isn't any data conduit for the video recorder to report it's status back to the camera the way there is for the camera to report it's own internal recorder's state. A good analogy for video recorders attached to video cameras via baseband connections is this: think of them like film magazines that are used on film-based motion picture cameras. Film-based cameras required the user to keep an eye on the magazine and evaluate it's state. If the film was running low, you knew to switch the magazine; if the Ki Pro Mini CF card capacity reported on it's UI is low, you might consider switching the card out before the next take.
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Thanks for the reply. I think you misunderstood part of what I was trying to say. My apologies for being less than clear. I didn't mean to imply there should be a connection between the Ki Pro Mini and the monitor (although that's an intriguing idea.)

It seems the most common ki pro mini mounting options are behind the camera on rails (which helps with balance) and on the right side, especially when being hand held. In both locations the operator can't see the AJA screen to see how much time is left.

At the same time recording times on CF cards are short. At ~$1k per 64gig card, the 32gig cards are more common. On HQ, and if you don't use the full card, you have maybe ~15 minutes of record time. It would be easy to miss a card change and miss a shot if you can't see the AJA view screen because its behind you, etc.

I imagine the development of those features is made more difficult by speed or size of the write buffer. Maybe a scheme of dynamically reallocating the buffer would help.

Don't get me wrong, I like my Ki Pro Mini and I understand it's a new product that will mature with time just as my Nanoflash firmware matured with time. However, some of the most important features they enabled were 1) time code trigger (which you have) 2) spanning or rollover (which would nearly double the recording time) and 3) hot swapping (most helpful for live events but which may be precluded).

All of these features help to avoid missed shots and in a professional environment protection of the footage is paramount. That points to where your firmware development efforts should be aimed.

Thanks for listening,
Duke
 
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Duke M. said:
Thanks for the reply. I think you misunderstood part of what I was trying to say. My apologies for being less than clear. I didn't mean to imply there should be a connection between the Ki Pro Mini and the monitor (although that's an intriguing idea.)

It seems the most common ki pro mini mounting options are behind the camera on rails (which helps with balance) and on the right side, especially when being hand held. In both locations the operator can't see the AJA screen to see how much time is left.

At the same time recording times on CF cards are short. At ~$1k per 64gig card, the 32gig cards are more common. On HQ, and if you don't use the full card, you have maybe ~15 minutes of record time. It would be easy to miss a card change and miss a shot if you can't see the AJA view screen because its behind you, etc.

I imagine the development of those features is made more difficult by speed or size of the write buffer. Maybe a scheme of dynamically reallocating the buffer would help.

Don't get me wrong, I like my Ki Pro Mini and I understand it's a new product that will mature with time just as my Nanoflash firmware matured with time. However, some of the most important features they enabled were 1) time code trigger (which you have) 2) spanning or rollover (which would nearly double the recording time) and 3) hot swapping (most helpful for live events but which may be precluded).

All of these features help to avoid missed shots and in a professional environment protection of the footage is paramount. That points to where your firmware development efforts should be aimed.

Thanks for listening,
Duke
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I have a 32gb 90x card that works just fine in the AJA mini that cost $180. Have had no issues with it.
 
Yeah, Jon warned us off on non-certified cards but that is likely to be so they don't get complaints and some cards have issues.

The 600x cards are for the highest quality settings. When I tested cards before some tested over and some under their rated writing speeds. Keeping in mind that 24p is a 1/5th lower data rate than 30p, I'd bet my 400x Transend cards would work for that.

I need to test it. And if doing SQ instead of HQ you might be able to drop lower than that. Of course with VBR the rates can drop lower on simple images.

Time to test more. :)
 
I heard back from TVLogic on the voltage issue.

"The power range of VFM-056W monitor is between 6V~18V. You shouldn’t have any problem with 15.5V battery.."

So we can power the camera, the Ki Pro Mini and the TV Logic monitor all off of the same brick battery. Three bricks and a little rotation in the chargers. That vastly simplifies life! :thumbsup:
 
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