AJA Video, a leading manufacturer of professional video interface and conversion solutions, today announced that Dublin, Ireland-based Egg Post Production is using the KONA 3 card to enable the 2K digital intermediate (DI) of the upcoming film "Eden." Directed by Declan Recks, "Eden" is the first film in Ireland to be finished in 2K.

KONA 3 is AJA's top-of-the-line uncompressed capture card for SD, HD, Dual Link HD and 2K for PCI Express (PCIe) Apple Mac Pro and G5 Power Mac systems, and was an integral part of the film's Apple Final Cut Pro editing pipeline. Egg Post Production worked with reseller Tyrell CCT to devise a workflow consisting of Quad-core Mac Pro systems, Apple Final Cut Pro Studio 2, Apple Color with a KONA 3 card used for 2K deliverables and a second KONA LHe card for monitoring throughout the process.

"Eden" is the film adaptation of venerable Irish playwright Eugene O'Brien's critically acclaimed play of the same name. The film is a portrait of husband and wife living in a midlands town, Billy and Breda, as they approach their tenth anniversary. Grasping for excitement, Billy fantasizes about a beautiful local young lady in town and dreams of a life of fantasy with the object of his desire. The color grading reflects these contrasting worlds with ordinary style and color for the hero's everyday life, and eye-popping looks for the extreme dream life when his imagination runs wild. The DI will be completed this summer, and will be released theatrically in early 2008.

"This is a relatively low budget feature and the traditional 2K route would have been out of the question for 'Eden.' Keeping our workflow on the Mac and tapping the power of AJA KONA 3, we were able to offer the same quality in a cost effective alternative," said Eugene McCrystal, colorist and technical director of Egg Post Production.

"Eden" marks the first 2K film to be finished in Ireland; the project is being completed from end-to-end at Egg Post Production. The project, which was shot on 35mm 3perf, will be scanned in at 2K on a Thomson Spirit scanner, and after the offline, visual effects, color grading and online are completed at Egg in 24fps, the project will be filmed out at Technicolor in London. Since the film was shot on 35mm 3perf, the 2K scans need to be cropped to 2.35:1 for viewing; in addition to the 2K cropping tool, the downstream keyer in KONA 3 allows Egg to do this very easily and in real time.

"The KONA 3 card is proving to be invaluable on this project; it enables us to simultaneously monitor our work in HD while projecting 2K images which is quite a feat in Final Cut Pro. This dramatically simplifies our 2K workflow, and makes the process indistinguishable to our clients from the HD workflow that they've become accustomed to," McCrystal continued.

"Egg Post Production is really pioneering advanced desktop workflows in Dublin's post production community. This is largely due to products like the KONA 3 from AJA enabling a small company to devise an economical solution for delivering a 2K digital intermediate which in the past has only been possible on systems that would more than triple their equipment overhead," said Bryan Malone of Tyrell CCT, the Dublin-based reseller that helped Egg design their workflow.

Egg Post Production has tested alternate video cards, but selected the AJA KONA 3 for its flexibility and reliability as well as the tight development relationship that AJA maintains with Apple.

KONA 3 is the ultimate uncompressed capture card for seamless operation with PCI Express (PCIe) Apple Mac Pro and G5 Power Mac systems and Apple Final Cut Pro. Supporting any uncompressed SD or HD format, including Dual Link HD and 2K, KONA 3 captures and plays back uncompressed 10-bit and 8-bit digital video and 24-bit digital audio, providing unparalleled power and workflow efficiency. KONA 3 also includes a variety of 10-bit broadcast-quality features, such as hardware-based up-, down-, and cross-conversion to and from HD, and adds a live hardware HD/SD keyer for compositing bugs, live clips, and other elements over video.

About Egg Post Production
EGG Post Production has become recognized as one of Ireland's premier post production facilities. EGG's 3 owner-directors, Eugene McCrystal, Gary Shortall and Gareth Young, each have between 15 - 20 years experience in the national and international post-production industry. With the assistance of a team of permanent and experienced staff, EGG has gained a reputation for high quality work and reliability. From the start, EGG has strived to deliver the highest quality work at cost effective prices with services including offline and online editorial, visual effects, HD color grading and projection and more for films, commercials and corporate projects.