AJA Ki Pro Mini Compact Field Recorder

[Jonathan Dube]

Hi guys,

 

Does anybody have worked with this Field Recorder?

 

Any comments on it, advice, should or not buy...?

 

Thanks for the reply!

 

John

[Aleksandar Bajac]

I had it on a couple of shoots sitting in the video village.

Sometimes it was used as a playback device (before red epic had playback) and sometimes as an external recorder for F3.

 

It is a simple device,with only a couple of buttons, but yet there were always some problems with it.

Like once we couldn't get the output on the monitor except for playback. You look up in the manual, and you realize there is not much you can do. Manual says it should work. On the second day of the shoot it started working.

 

It has slow response on the buttons and you never know how hard you have to press them.

 

When you set it to start recording automatically when you hit rec on the camera it doesn't always work due to signal problems coming from the camera, or caused by the cables connected to HD SDI.

 

Sometimes it offers you to format your media in the middle of the shoot if there was a power failure.

 

All these problems, yet, I wouldn't mind owning it as it seems a nice little device for personal use.

For serious production I would never recommend it. Maybe I am wrong since there are so many of these around, and AJA is a reputable company. Dunno...

 

If you can get it cheaply go for it, the media u use with it is really cheap which is cool.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Aleksandar Bajac

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I just got off a shoot with the Atmos Ninja, similar to the KiPro; and aside from the batteries draining pretty quick I didn't have too much problems with it. Might also be worth a look @

Blackmagic also has their own device, which is the cheapest of the 3, and records either uncompressed or DNxHD; which is also rather useful. I haven't yet worked with the blackmagic, but it looks good (and cheap) on paper.

[Maks Khokhlov]

KiPro Mini is a cheap 4:2:2 and good alternative to HD tapes , but it have some problems:

1. When it meets drop frame, it stops recording. The rest of shot is lost (not 1-5 dropped frames, like on Red).

2. It drop frames and, as a result, loses shots regularly. At least 1-2 times per hour.

3. When you use long (30 - 40 m) cables, it drops twice as often.

 

I used it with Sony F900H + Miranda MDC-902. + SanDisk Extreme Pro 32Gb.

[Marque DeWinter]

I had the KiPro Mini and now when jobs tell me its part of the package I turn the job down. It doesn't work. Flat out. Unreliable. I own both a Pix and the Black Magic both work well. The Pix is more advanced and works great. The Black Magic works well but is very simple. Also a hidden cost to the black magic is the hard drives, because it takes larger faster SSDs since it will only do uncompressed or DNxHD 220 it eats through data very quickly and drive costs can add up quickly. Definitely though I would buy a Pix if I were to purchase one right now.

[Gus Sacks]

Use a PIX240.

[Robert Houllahan]

I used the KiPro Mini on a couple of F3 jobs and I treated it as a known unreliable device i.e. I had heard that you can accidentally over write previous takes if you have the file naming setup wrong. It worked but I would definitely look at an Atmos or Pix240 over the KiPro if only for the other recorders using SSDs instead of the CF cards which I think are crap.

 

-Rob-