When award-winning director and actor Stephen Chow hosted a press event in Beijing last December to promote the upcoming feature film “The Mermaid,” he shared the excitement with fans via a live broadcast. Experts from Feiyang TV, one of China’s largest production companies, were enlisted to record and broadcast the event live in 4K to local news stations. Equipped with 4K and HD OB trucks, Feiyang TV’s crew – led by General Manager Xiaolin-Zhang – arrived on site with the newly released AJA Ki Pro Ultra 4K recorder and 20 AJA Ki Pro Rack recording devices. 

Ki Pro Ultra enabled seamless recording for Zhang and team, who captured 4K 50p ProRes HQ to 1TB AJA Pak media drives. “Ki Pro Ultra is compact and powerful, and surpassed our expectations. It simplified our workflow from production to post while delivering amazing quality footage,” Zhang shared. “The design and form factor were straightforward, and I could see what I was capturing with its built-in HD LCD screen. Everything was efficient and easy to access, because of the industry-standard inputs and outputs that are compatible with the rest of our 4K gear.”

Following the live broadcast, the crew leveraged footage recorded to the Ki Pro Ultra and Ki Pro Racks to produce and cut a video feature of the event, which will be posted online after “The Mermaid” hits theaters in China this February. Zhang shared, “Our Ki Pro Rack units allowed us to quickly transfer ProRes footage from AJA KiStor drives into Final Cut Pro for immediate edits in HD. We couldn’t have been nearly as successful given the timeline demands without using AJA’s Ki Pro products.” 

Feiyang TV’s total truck fleet comprises 60 Ki Pro Racks, and the company continues to build out its Ki Pro arsenal thanks to multiple successes on projects including the Beijing International Film Festival Opening and Closing Ceremony, Beijing Music Festival Arts Foundation Live Show, Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival. Zhang concluded, “With AJA gear, we are always ready to produce high quality video at minimal cost; we continue to use it because we get efficient and stable performance every time. We knew we’d have nothing to worry about with the reliability of this kit, and look forward to tapping the Ki Pro Ultra more in the future as we begin building our next-generation 4K OB truck.”

About Feiyang TV

One of China’s largest production companies, Beijing-based Feiyang TV has provided services for multi-channel and multi-camera live broadcasts since 2006. The company also specializes in in 4K and HD OB trucks, lending its services to broadcast programs, live-event production and corporations in China. http://www.feiyangtv.com/

About AJA Video Systems, Inc.

Since 1993, AJA Video has been a leading manufacturer of video interface technologies, converters, digital video recording solutions and professional cameras, bringing high-quality, cost-effective products to the professional, broadcast and post-production markets. AJA products are designed and manufactured at our facilities in Grass Valley, California, and sold through an extensive sales channel of resellers and systems integrators around the world. For further information, please see our website at www.aja.com.