NASCAR season brought to screen with AJA Video's Kona 2

AJA has announced that Kona 2 is helping to bring NASCAR car racing to television viewers.
Beginning with the recent Daytona 500 and following on the heels of the professional football, basketball, and baseball, this is the fourth significant sport being broadcast by Fox using AJA's Kona 2 for editing on the G5 with Final Cut Pro HD.
The Kona 2 system will be in use by Fox for broadcasting the NASCAR races in the 2005-2006 season.
Following the Super Bowl game, Fox installed an Apple G5 system complete with Final Cut Pro HD and AJA's Kona 2 in a production truck in Daytona. Once the system was up and running, they worked on pieces for the Gatorade races, as well as pieces that were seen during the Daytona 500. One of the projects they worked on was a short feature on last year's Nascar Nextel Cup Series 2004 Champion, Kurt Busch.
“We've turned what's essentially an edit device into a tool for live television, and we put it into use at the most demanding levels.” said Jerry Steinberg, Vice President, Field Operations, Fox Sports.
During the Daytona 500, editors quickly pulled live shots, edited the different angles, and put them together for bumpers and teases using the Kona 2 system, which was also used to ingest material from various tape sources. The open and tease were pre-recorded and sent to an EVS Digital Disk Recorder (DDR) for instant replay. As in the Super Bowl and World Series, the 720p HD video and AES audio were captured directly from a router in the Final Cut Pro HD system, and sent out through the Kona 2 card back to the router into the EVS DDRs. From there, it went directly to the switcher and to air.
“It's quite significant how quickly the Apple G5 / KONA 2 system has become the standard for advanced editing functionality in HD mobile trucks and during critical, live broadcast events in the field,” said Ted Schilowitz, Worldwide Product Manager for Desktop Video Engines at AJA.
Since 1993, AJA Video has been a leading manufacturer of SDI and HD-SDI video interface and conversion solutions, bringing high-quality, cost-effective digital video products to the professional broadcast and post production markets.
AJA Video Systems, www.aja.com
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