AJA + Adobe = Great High-End Workflows

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have the privilege of getting to work with high-end workflows all of the time. I go from everything to DV to Film 4K and everything in between, but clearly SD and compressed HD workflows predominate what we do. However, I have to say that I’ve been really intruiged with what AJA offers for Adobe products – all that you would expect and a whole bunch extra. Read on to get all the details.

I recently had a chance to play around with AJA Xena 2Ke and have to say that I love the ability of the AJA Xena and Kona cards. Xena by the way is no longer just a PC card – they’ve removed the licensing restrictions and lowered the price to top it off. I’d love to get my AJA card in a Mac tower and then make it work in both OS X and Vista via Bootcamp. Rock on!

So, what’s cool about the AJA cards? A lot if you’re a film maker, digital film maker, documentary film maker or video editor. Here’s the top things that I think are compelling for you.

1. DVCProHD Quicktime capture in RT for cross platform compressed workflow. This also includes the ability to use these captured files in FCP or use DVCProHD captured files from FCP in our projects in Premiere Pro or After Effects.
2. Native sequence file support on Mac (DPX, Cineon, etc) without using proxies. Are you kiddin’ me? DPX files playing in real-time. Digital film makers rejoice! Premiere Pro + AE + AJA = end-to-end digital film workflow!
3. Native 10-Bit RGB Editing on Mac (can’t do this in FCP)
4. PS capture plug-in on mac for deck control and individual frame capture (great for touch up work with sequential file workflows)
5. AE capture directly in AE (instead of through Premiere Pro)
6. Built in RT down convert or cross convert from formats. This makes it easy to see your HD material on an SD monitor or do a high-quality conversion from 1080 to 720. It’s got a very comprehensive control panel.
7. Playback support for P2 and XDCamEX that is native to Premiere Pro: These files play in the timeline and out to the board in RT without using proxies or converted files. In other words, native file types stay native – not converted!
8. Also it makes basically everything in the AJA/Adobe workflow cross platform. Because the project files are cross platform and because AJA functionality is virtually identical across the two plaforms in Premiere Pro (except for AVI file support which is windows only) it means that users can more easily have full cross platform collaboration if they need it.

So, check out the AJA website when you get a chance.

Also check out more from Dennis’ blog here: Genesis Project