KAIROS Production System Gains Powerful New Mainframe

Improving functionality for video production, rendering and distribution, Panasonic has announced upgrades to KAIROS, its next-generation live production platform.  Opening new doors to creativity, KAIROS Core 1000 (AT-KC1000) is an additional and even more powerful mainframe option to expand video streams, processing power and increase video and still image recording capacity.

The KAIROS IT/IP video processing platform offers an open software architecture system for live video switching. It delivers complete input and output flexibility, resolution and format independence, maximum CPU/GPU processor utilisation and virtually unlimited mix/effect (M/E) scalability through unlimited “layers” that users can freely create and move around thanks to its intuitive and easy-to-use GUI.

With the increase in demand for remote video production, major production companies and corporations in Europe and the United States have already selected Kairos, including Creative Technology (CT) in the UK and Northern Europe offices, Mediapro in Spain, AED in Belgium, RTL2 and KST Moschkau – Innovation Center in Germany, and LiveX in the US.

Panasonic will now offer the new KAIROS Core 1000 (AT-KC1000) alongside the current, compact, KAIROS Core 100 (AT-KC100) for live video production applications.

The new KAIROS Core 1000 mainframe offers more processing power, thanks to increased CPU and GPU capabilities. It enables the platform to be utilised in a wider and more complex range of productions, pushing further its “unlimited video layers” concept, and its capability to manage different scenes at the same time and broadcast them via a variety of outputs. With the GPU’s higher video processing capacity, the number of layers that can be used increases significantly, allowing full use of the multi-layered video composition and output in high resolution – including 8K video.

KAIROS Core 1000 also expands the system’s standard outputs to 20 HD or five 4K outputs, and also offers 4K support and the CANVAS function as standard. The powerful Canvas feature allows the use of non-standard resolutions and formats, for example, making Kairos the best solution to drive 32:9 LED walls or 9:16 content for smartphones, on top of classic 16:9 outputs.

Video streaming capabilities are also increased, with KAIROS Core 1000 expanding RTP/SRT/RTMP/RTSP streaming to eight inputs.

With KAIROS Core 1000, the recording capacity of still images and videos (RAM players, clip player) has been significantly increased. The RAM player’s capacity (uncompressed) increases to 64GB and approximately 170 seconds of HD video (or 42 seconds of 4K video) can be saved. The clip player (compressed) increases its capacity to 180GB and approximately 55 minutes of HD video (or 14 minutes of 4K video) can be saved. A total of 12GB of still images can also be saved.

The Panasonic KAIROS Alliance Partners program includes IP COTS hardware manufacturers and leading vendors of graphics, automation, and media servers. Partnering with companies that actively support KAIROS allows Panasonic to easily expand functions and inter-operability to external devices by adding application software.