AJA to showcase at IBC 2022 ColorBox, a solution that brings colour versatility to live and on-location shoots

The new colour processing solution ColorBox is the AJA big launch for IBC 2022. In addition, the company has also unveiled a powerful integration with LucidLink e Teletransmissão.

Nick Rashby, president, and Tim Walker, senior product manager, unveiled the AJA most relevant announcements for IBC 2022 (9 – 12 September). Their presentation once again underlined the importance that broadcast companies are giving to the return of the show, held at the RAI in Amsterdam.

Caixa de Cores, a solution aimed at ensuring colour accuracy in all productions by benefiting from advanced algorithmic processing and LUTs, will take centre stage on the AJA stand. Aimed at live broadcasts, events, on-set productions and post-production processes, ColorBox enables a range of HDR and SDR conversions e allows DITs to easily load, modify and save looks, as well as create reference images for dailies to ensure colour accuracy across all production stakeholders and creative providers.

Designed to support a wide range of look management approaches on set and in live production environments, ColorBox features 12G-SDI input/output e HDMI 2.0 output for support of 4K/UltraHD 60p 10-bit YCbCr 4:2:2 e 30p 12-bit RGB 4:4:4 signals. ColorBox includes the AJA Color Pipeline (ACP) mode with a 33-point 3D LUT processor com tetrahedral LUT interpolation, four user-configurable embedded 1D LUTs and two user-configurable 3×3 matrices. ColorBox users can also benefit from an integrated RGB colour corrector and ProcAmp, extensive libraries of LUTs, matrices and images, powerful capture and retrieval functions, ancillary metadata management (ANC), and other features controllable through a web browser-based interface.

An integrated USB OTG port allows users to easily configure Caixa de Cores wirelessly via a third-party USB WiFi adapter. 12G-SDI and HDMI 2.0 outputs provide up to 4K/UHD video for local monitoring, and an additional 12G-SDI loop-through output is available to connect the unaltered source to other devices.

Five modes, UHD and capture

In total, the AJA ColorBox offers five modes: AJA Color Pipeline (ACP), Colorfront, ORION-CONVERT (optional licence), BBC HLG LUT (optional licence) and NBCU LUT. Each is tailored to different needs, with the AJA model presenting itself as a flexible tool to suit different needs or the Colorfront option more geared towards SDR broadcast productions.

Beyond the expected high-density, ultra-low latency 4K/UltraHD processing, the AJA latest development is notable for offering extensive frame grabbing capabilities, which include pre-processed image capture ou post-processed output capture for reference stills with overlaid metadata such as video payload identifiers, pipeline settings and customisable user text. These frame captures can be saved locally and exported to the configuration PC running the web browser-based ColorBox user interface.

Nick Rashby, president of AJA, believes that colour processing has become critical to the success of productions, creating a demand that ColorBox answers: Wwe’ve delivered an unparalleled and flexible image processing toolset in this device. ColorBox streamlines color management and display for environments ranging from TV, episodic, film, live event and commercial production to creative, editorial, and finishing studios, and we’re thrilled to bring it to market.”

Caixa de Cores comes to market with a wide selection of integrations with third party partners, including Assimilate and its Live Looks and Live Assist; Pomfort’s Livegrade Studio and Livegrade Pro; and CyanView e Skaarhoj’s RCPs.

LucidLink joins forces with AJA and Telestream

Another of the AJA new features for IBC 2022 is the integration of LucidLink Filespaces, a SaaS solution that will provide “fast” access to all types of data through AJA Diskover Media Edition, and via Telestream GLIM e Vantagem. In this way, LucidLink will bring together two systems to create workflows never before seen in broadcast.

LucidLink’s centralised data repository provides immediate access to data, combined with AJA Diskover Media Edition, which helps catalogue and find the right file; in parallel, users can use Telestream GLIM for data review and Vantagem para transcodificação. The combination of these three legs offers significant flexibility: LucidLink allows remote workers around the world to share and access data at speeds normally reserved only for high-speed on-prem storage. On the other hand, AJA Diskover Media Edition on LucidLink allows organisations to very quickly index extremely large file systems stored through LucidLink and gives users visibility to data no matter where it is located, but without the security risks associated with full and potentially destructive access to data.

Central to this workflow is access to Telestream’s Vantage platform via AJA Diskover Media Edition v2.0, which allows remote workers to access centralised tools to generate proxy files or transcode media assets for delivery. Users can select files and send them to a local or cloud-based Telestream Vantage system to proxy or transcode assets, regardless of the location of the user, file or Vantage system. Together with AJA Diskover Media Edition’s global index, the plug-in speeds workflows by eliminating round trips between applications and streamlining file management.