Zoic Studios Adopts AJA KONA

Zoic Studios has adopted AJA's KONA 3G cards to help facilitate live synchronised sessions using Tweak's RV-SDI playback and review software. The move compliments Zoic's venture into 4K post-production within their commercial division for the the Intel and Toshiba webisode series 'The Power Within'.
"KONA 3G is the backbone of high quality image communication between Zoic Vancouver and Zoic Culver City," said Mike Romey, Zoic Studios Head of Pipeline. "Using the RV-SDI integration, we queue up media in the projection rooms at each location for synced up dailies sessions where teams of artists can review and annotate shots in real time with supervisors at full resolution."
Zoic's projection rooms are setup to view HD, 2K and 4K dailies and are frequently tapped to finalise upwards of 400 VFX shots for each episode.
Files are opened in Tweak Software's RV image and sequence viewer using a custom front end to record dailies into Shotgun Software's web-based production management platform.
"We can do instant playback projection to easily show things like the last CG render of the most recent lighting pass. There is constant iterating, and being able to present changes in real time with the KONA 3G is incredibly valuable," Romey said.
Zoic's commercial division is currently working on webisode content in 4K for Intel and Toshiba. The studio uses the KONA 3G cards with The Foundry's HIERO collaborative shot management solution for plate prep, Autodesk® Flame® editorial and color grading software for final conform and finishing, along with RV-HDSDI for review.
"We didn't have to retool our workflow for 4K reviews," Romey explains.
"We already had a high bandwidth to route content to the KONA 3G card from our servers and RV supports 4K so it was just a matter of adjusting the projector."
Zoic is also currently developing a custom software pipeline designed to work with game engines to enable the output of live CG renders through NVIDIA Quadro GPUs for direct-to-video via the KONA 3G card.
www.aja.com
(IT/CD)