This is what you need when you’re working live in 8K

AJA grunt helps realtime 8K operation

An announcement that SGO has integrated AJA KONA cards into its highest of high end systems gives a brief glimpse into the sort of hardware needed to work in 8K in realtime.

NHK’s BS8K channel has been live since the start of December last year, broadcasting around 12 hours a day of 8K content over its satellite network to what one expects is still a relatively small but growing section of the Japanese population.

Handling 8K is, of course, beyond a lot of kit on the market at the moment, and certainly its requirements come into sharp focus when you start talking about realtime finishing, which is where SGO’s Mistika Ultima 8K system comes into play. And a key component of it being able to work at 8K Full UHD at 60p uncompressed in turn is the AJA KONA 5 audio and video I/O card which SGO has integrated into the system

The card is an 8-lane PCIe 3.0 capture and output card featuring 12G-SDI I/O and HDMI 2.0 output. Offering 8K and multichannel 4K, it enables simultaneous capture with signal pass through when using 12G-SDI — four ports help to minimise cabling — and offers HDMI 2.0 output, as well as deep-color and multi-format HDR support.

SGO likes to bill the Mistika Ultima as the most advanced hero suite on the market and also featuring an HP Z8 workstation, it’s certainly got the grunt to work across the 8K format. There’s going to be a bit of a trickle down benefit to other users as well, the company being impressed enough with the KONA 5 that it is planning on integrating the cards across its complete line of finishing systems