Atomos Ninja Now Shipping According To Press Release - SDI Samurai at $1495.00 USD

bgundu said:
Thanks Guy. Have you tried interfacing it with FCP?
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Yes, even editing directly off the Master Caddy on a 7200RPM drive is fluid with ProRes HQ. HD Footage plays back smooth and scrubs instantly. I've connected via FW800 to the Master Caddy Docking station. For same day edits, this rocks. Now to just get 24p and 30p....

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Okay, on this whole "which other codecs to add" conundrum... it's stuff like this that makes me nervous about relying on a third-party codec. I thought Vegas was the neatest editor on the market, until Sony bought it, then it went straight downhill.

Who's to say what Cineform will be, a year from now, three years from now? What if GoPro decides to make their own recorder, and won't extend licences to other manufacturers anymore? I dunno, I think I'd just feel safer with something like DNxHD because it's open source and there's no licensing fees, and they can't take it back now, it's out there and it's free.

or, as said before, a codec based on the free/open-source JPG2000.
 
Ooooooh dnxHD....

Too bad. Cineform would have been our savior... it was absolutly incredible.
 
Well I've never had any real experience with dnxHD but free and open source is a definite plus.
Are there any technical differences between dnxHD and Cineform that new users should be aware of?
 
It's not free necessarily if you're a manufacturer who's going to distribute dnxHD with a product:

THIS LICENSE IS AN INTERNAL-USE-ONLY LICENSE AND DOES NOT PERMIT DISTRIBUTION OR CREATION OF DERIVATIVE WORKS. IF YOU ARE A MANUFACTURER INTERESTED IN A SOURCE CODE LICENSE THAT PERMITS DISTRIBUTION AND/OR CREATION OF DERIVATIVE WORKS, PLEASE CONTACT AVID.

I also believe that the "free use" of dnxHD by end users only applies to decode and not encode - but I'm not sure about this.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
DNxHD is very similar to JPEG. Every frame is independent and consists of VLC-coded DCT coefficients.

Header consists of many parts and may include quantization tables and 2048 bits of user data. Also each frame has two GUIDs and timestamp.
The frame header is packed into big-endian dwords. Actual frame data consists of packed macroblocks using a technique almost identical to JPEG: DC prediction and variable-length codes with run length encoding for other 63 coefficients. DC coefficient is not quantized.

Basically you just could use JPEG (like in the free Black Magic codec) with the highest settings to get the same results.

IMHO acquisition with any codec is a no-no - if you absolutely have to, Cineform, RedRaw or any other wavelet based codec (JPEG 2000) is okay.
At a time, where a disc drive costs about the same than a SR tape, there is no reason for compression anymore.
Gemini, Cinedeck, Cinemartin and a few others already have uncompressed solutions with RAID drives at the size of a on- camera monitor - media is cheap and available at the next computer store of the shelf.

So why fiddle with lossy codecs, transcoding, downloading cards, reduced color resolution andwhatnot?

IMHO codecs are for delivery.

Frank
 
Frank,

While i agree with you, you have to consider, the only really safe viable recording medium are SSD's. and at uncompresed data volumes, the cost/storage price increases. The gemini for example, at 444 uncompressed on a 256gig SSD, only records about 26 minutes.

Thats alot of space. Some compression is ok. Wavelet like you said.
 
Do the Ninja go into monitor mode after hitting rec? It would be great to have this option and even overlays so that the image can be displayed along with rec, stop, menu and such buttons.
 
Two questions about the Samurai that may have been answered already. Does it record and stop when you hit record and stop on the camera? Will the timecode sync with the timecode on the camera without using freerun?
 
D10S said:
Two questions about the Samurai that may have been answered already. Does it record and stop when you hit record and stop on the camera? Will the timecode sync with the timecode on the camera without using freerun?
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There is a flag that can be set in the HD-SDI data stream when you start recording, which can be used to trigger an external recorder. I really, really, really hope Atomos decides to implement support for that. Triggering recording by using advancing timecode makes multicamera or time-of-day timecode shooting impossible.

HD-SDI can transport timecode down the data stream, which the recorder could then record directly, making both the internal and the external recordings have frame-accurate timecode. I hope Atomos supports it that way.
 
editman said:
Do the Ninja go into monitor mode after hitting rec? It would be great to have this option and even overlays so that the image can be displayed along with rec, stop, menu and such buttons.
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I'm pretty sure I saw in one of the videos on the website that it does, but I do not own one so I am not sure.
 
So why fiddle with lossy codecs, transcoding, downloading cards, reduced color resolution andwhatnot?
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Hi Frank

So why fiddle with lossy codecs, transcoding, downloading cards, reduced color resolution andwhatnot?
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There are several reasons not to use uncompressed, even at the highest levels of production. The data rates are too high. Your computer disk system would be maxed out. You would not be able to process multiple layers in real-time.

Codecs like ProRes (which are designed for production, not delivery) hit a sweet-spot where they give performance that is effectively visually lossless, and yet reduce data rates enough to make editing viable on reasonably-specced equipment. Yes, storage is cheap, but with uncompressed, you need between six and ten times as much for the same thing you could achieve losslessly anyway. You certainly can't record those rates to a single drive.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
D10S said:
Two questions about the Samurai that may have been answered already. Does it record and stop when you hit record and stop on the camera? Will the timecode sync with the timecode on the camera without using freerun?
Click to expand...

It does i believe.
 
Sorry David, but I disagree.
I work with uncompressed HD - when ever possible - since years, and it´s a piece of cake.

Date rates are not that bad,

1080i and 1080p HDTV uncompressed;
8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 95 MB per/sec, or 334 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 127 MB per/sec, or 445 GB per/hr.

8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 99 MB per/sec, or 348 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 132 MB per/sec, or 463 GB per/hr.

8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 119 MB per/sec, or 417 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 158 MB per/sec, or 556 GB per/hr.

1080i and 1080p HDTV RGB (4:4:4) uncompressed;
10 bit @ 1280 x 720p @ 60fps = 211 MB per/sec, or 742 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24PsF = 190 MB per/sec, or 667 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 50i = 198 MB per/sec, or 695 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 60i = 237 MB per/sec, or 834 GB per/hr.

So even a 90 minute feature in 10 bit 4:4:4 is less than a TB - just bought a TB drive that was cheaper than a 60 minute HDCamSR tape.

As you can see, storage is no issue, as long as you are not on a laptop.

If you work with 1080i or 1080p 10 bit HDTV uncompressed 24fps it`s only 127 MB per second - even a software raid can do that without maxing out.
My DIY 4 TB raid (was under $1500) pumps out between 450 and 480 MB/sec. so speed isn´t a problem ether.
Premiere CS5 handles multiple layers without any problems on a halfway moder NLE workstation - even with effects.

So I´m doing all that since years in everyday production, and I can tell you if you tried uncompressed once, you never want back.

But to each his own.

Frank
 
Thanks for those figures, Frank - that's a really useful comparison!

I don't think we're really disagreeing with each other greatly. I've worked with uncompressed, and would not disagree that - ultimately, it's the best. But we're talking about portable, battery-powered devices attached to small cameras, and it's here that I'm questioning the need or advisability for uncompressed. In fact, we've seen Ninja users on this forum saying that they're amazed to see that you can edit direct from a Ninja drive (ie, a drive that has Ninja-encoded ProRes that's attached to a computer via the Ninja docking station).

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
Hmm, I'm a little tired, and a bit sleepy from the pint of Ben & Jerry's I just ate, but aren't those numbers off by a factor of three for 4:4:4, because it's bit depth per channel?

Edit: apparently not, duh, but the numbers are wrong anyways:

(8 red bits + 8 green bits + 8 blue bits for a total of 24 bits per pixel) x 1920 x 1080 x 24 / 8 bits/byte = 149MB/s
 
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