AJA Video Systems KONA 3 video capture and playback cards were employed as part of the postproduction workflow on the ABC series pilot Cougar Town.

Cougar Town, a single-camera comedy slated to air in the ABC fall season lineup, stars Courteney Cox, who will also executive produce for the series along with Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence. For the pilot, the Cougar Town editorial team employed AJA's KONA 3 for playback during offline editing, while post house and consultants DigitalFilm Tree used the KONA 3 to create digital dailies, and for ingesting material into Apple Final Cut Pro for online editing and final delivery.

"We first started using the KONA 3 on the final season of Scrubs," explained assistant editor Tim Serda. "We were using it to un-squeeze our anamorphic picture for playback to a Sony 19-inch NTSC broadcast monitor and a consumer 40-inch Sony LCD HDTV. At that point the main question was how to work in 16:9 in a 4:3 world, and the KONA 3 provided the perfect answer. So it was very natural to carry it over to the pilot for Cougar Town, and I know we'll continue to use it on the series."

"The KONA 3 works perfectly, and is extremely easy to use. It just makes everybody's job easier," Serda continued. "For Cougar Town, which was shot on the [Panavision] Genesis, we were able to output to a professional HD monitor at a full 1080i resolution with no problems, and in real time. The images were solid, with no anomalies whatsoever."

Hollywood-based post facility and consultant DigitalFilm Tree handled the pilot project from acquisition through delivery. Footage for Cougar Town was acquired on a Panavision Genesis and recorded to an HDCAM SR deck at 4:2:2, and then digitized via the AJA KONA 3 to create DVCPRO 1080p editorial dailies. The KONA 3 was also used as the main display engine on a CRT monitor during final color correction in Apple Color, and for mastering to a Panasonic D5 deck for final delivery.

"The AJA KONA 3 gives us the flexibility we need at the quality our broadcast clients demand," commented DigitalFilm Tree president Edvin Mehrabyan. "We handle large-scale projects captured via the latest and greatest digital cameras such as the Panavision Genesis and Sony F35, and the quality that the KONA 3 gives us is critical to our success."

"We just started using the KONA 3 card last year when we made the switch to HD," said John Michel, editor for both Scrubs and Cougar Town. "AJA has a longstanding relationship with Apple, and we know for a fact that this card is the best thing to use with Final Cut Pro workflows. This card streamlines our current workflow and prepares us for what's coming down the line."