Katara Studios removes 8K barriers with Kona 5 by AJA

The AJA Kona 5 is one of the key pieces of equipment in the latest upgrade of creative studio Katara Studios‘ facility, which is now able to support up to 8K I/O for producing fiction content and large live events.

Katara Studios senior technical engineer Thahasin Kasim, who led the redesign, identifies the recent increase in 6K and 8K footage from clients (and the new encoding and file size challenges this brings) as the main reason for undertaking this cross-functional transformation just six years after opening.

An integral part of the Katara Studios renovation is the use of six Kona 5 cards in Windows, macOS and Linux workstations. Currently, the I/O cards are installed in PCIe Thunderbolt 3 expansion chassis manufactured by Sonnet with Apple Mac Studio, with more cards planned for the second phase of the studio upgrade. According to Kasim, the company decided on these solutions because of “its ability to handle 8K; the high resolution, high bit rate video processing power that you get with the card is impressive”.

“Kona 5 is compatible with such a wide range of media production software so it’s easy to integrate anywhere in our post pipeline. Using it with Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Foundry Nuke, Baselight, Avid Pro Tools, and many other creative applications, we’re able to confidently conduct quality control and preview the output on professional-grade monitors. I’ve also been impressed with the audio mixer add-on within the AJA Control Panel, which significantly enhances the audio monitoring options offered by the card,” adds Kasim.

In addition to Kona 5, Katara Studios also uses AJA’s Hi5-4K-Plus mini-converters in its color grading rooms and Kona 4 audio and video I/O cards to provide clients with UltraHD output for review sessions. This combination of products helps the team convert 4K SDI to 4K HDMI and unlocks HDR options through AJA’s Mini-Config software. In addition, Katara Studios also uses the AJA Io 4K Plus for off-site shoots. Kasim sums up his experience with AJA: “Our AJA gear is crucial to ensuring the content we’re monitoring and sharing with clients for review is top-notch.”