HDMI Atomos Ninja Hard Disk Recorder 795$

David Shapton said:
Thanks for your enthusiasm! There's some very advanced stuff inside the Ninja and Samurai that makes it all possible.

You can't record 4 tracks using HDMI and analogue audio in: I'm sorry if we gave that impression - it's quite clear if you look closely: there is a touchscreen menu that lets you select between HDMI audio input and Analogue.

The Samurai only has SDI. You'll have to have a Ninja and a Samurai if you want to record from both types of source. We wanted to keep the cost down and we guessed that most users will want one or the other. It's a hard decision to leave things out, but the priority was to have a range of products that are available to fit most scenarios.
Dave
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I was wrong about this: you CAN record from all four audio inputs at once.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
I'm guessing that if the Ninja cannot remove the pulldown from an HDMI signal which is 60i, then FCP will have to reverse telelcine to get it back to 24p? If this is the case, this is a step backwards from the DVX100 days when we at least had advanced pulldown? Reverse Telecine will re-compress the files I'm guessing? The Samurai will at least bypass the HDMI problem.

Barry_Green said:
Some recorders (like the NanoFlash) can remove the pulldown automatically when they record. I don't know if the Ninja can do that or not. In FCP you have to run a separate tool called "Cinema Tools" on each file to strip out the pulldown, although I imagine there's probably some way to batch-process it -- I don't know, I'm not an FCP user.
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bgundu said:
I'm guessing that if the Ninja cannot remove the pulldown from an HDMI signal which is 60i, then FCP will have to reverse telelcine to get it back to 24p? If this is the case, this is a step backwards from the DVX100 days when we at least had advanced pulldown? Reverse Telecine will re-compress the files I'm guessing? The Samurai will at least bypass the HDMI problem.
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Yes, it would represent a step back and you'd have to use the reverse telecine and then recompress. And, if they don't allow PsF recording on the Samurai, you'll have to do the same thing with it too.

David, since you're listening, let me try to explain it so you folks can hopefully implement some really excellent support here -- all of the variable-frame-rate Panasonics, from the original VariCam on down, embed a frame flag in the timecode stream somewhere that identifies whether the current frame is an "original" or a "duplicate". When outputting variable-frame-rate footage, sometimes frames are duplicated on the output (for example, if you were outputting 2fps video, each frame would be output thirty times to round out the required 60p frame rate of the HD-SDI or HDMI video signal). So the duplicates are marked. What would be very nice is if the Ninja and Samurai could read that flag and discard duplicated frames and only record the valid "real" frames.

When it comes to 24p-in-60i, the cameras all output 60i using 2:3 pulldown. Again, the cadence is marked in the user bits somewhere, so your software could identify which are the valid/legitimate fields and which are the unnecessary/duplicate fields, and could keep only the valid fields. That would allow users to record a true 24p progressive image, with no loss in quality and no need to run "cinema tools" or other reverse-telecine processes.

In the case of the AF100, it can actually output a true 24PsF signal on its HD-SDI, so it would be nice if the Samurai was compatible with recording 24PsF too.


Please have your engineers look over these notes and see if they can implement this, as it would be oh so nice!
 
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Thanks Barry. I'm glad you said this and not me. I'm sure I would have mucked it up!

Barry_Green said:
Yes, it would represent a step back and you'd have to use the reverse telecine and then recompress. And, if they don't allow PsF recording on the Samurai, you'll have to do the same thing with it too.

David, since you're listening, let me try to explain it so you folks can hopefully implement some really excellent support here -- all of the variable-frame-rate Panasonics, from the original VariCam on down, embed a frame flag in the timecode stream somewhere that identifies whether the current frame is an "original" or a "duplicate". When outputting variable-frame-rate footage, sometimes frames are duplicated on the output (for example, if you were outputting 2fps video, each frame would be output thirty times to round out the required 60p frame rate of the HD-SDI or HDMI video signal). So the duplicates are marked. What would be very nice is if the Ninja and Samurai could read that flag and discard duplicated frames and only record the valid "real" frames.

When it comes to 24p-in-60i, the cameras all output 60i using 2:3 pulldown. Again, the cadence is marked in the user bits somewhere, so your software could identify which are the valid/legitimate fields and which are the unnecessary/duplicate fields, and could keep only the valid fields. That would allow users to record a true 24p progressive image, with no loss in quality and no need to run "cinema tools" or other reverse-telecine processes.

In the case of the AF100, it can actually output a true 24PsF signal on its HD-SDI, so it would be nice if the Samurai was compatible with recording 24PsF too.


Please have your engineers look over these notes and see if they can implement this, as it would be oh so nice!
Click to expand...
 
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Thanks for such illuminating clarity on this topic, Barry! This is all good information and I'll share it with my colleagues.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
The deal beaker for me is no 1080 25p for pal countries. They are neglecting a big part of the world with this...
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1080p25 is coming - just wasn't finished in the first release. It will be part of the basic spec within weeks of initial release.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
Is this a firmware issue or something else?
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Yes. It's taken longer than we thought it would, or wanted it to. But it's in very good shape now. We'll be announcing availability soon and also giving full details of the Samurai.

Dave
Atomos
​
 
Great news. Does the new firmware take into consideration how Panasonic sends it's flags in the video stream?
 
Great news. Does the new firmware take into consideration how Panasonic sends it's flags in the video stream?
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It's a bit early for that; initially, we want it to work with the widest range of cameras. When we're a little further along, we can certainly look at how we can improve individual manufacturer/model support. We'll base that on what we figure is the demand for a particular feature or facility, and taking into account what is actually technically possible.

Dave
Atomos
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That Ninja manual is superb - well written and thoughtfully laid out. And occasionally hilarious - from page 17 (pg19 of the PDF)

"We want you to be able to upgrade your firmware with confidence, so we have built-in a recovery mechanism in case your Ninja should ever “brick” itself."

Congatulations Atomos, good manuals are a rarity these days. I'm very much looking forward to buying one of these.
 
Very impressive! The Samurai sounds like a killer deal - just wish it had a HDMI input too. A choice of codecs would have been a big plus too.
 
Subhadip said:
Very impressive! The Samurai sounds like a killer deal - just wish it had a HDMI input too. A choice of codecs would have been a big plus too.
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Well, you can buy an HDSDI Samurai and an HDMI Ninja for the price of some of the other recorders out there (especially when you look at what's included - touchscreen, batteries etc). BTW, we can implement almost any codec, and whether we do will depend on demand, but we've found that ProRes is by far the most requested at this time.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
Subhadip said:
A choice of codecs would have been a big plus too.
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I believe David has said in the past that codecs can be added via firmware updates... it's just a matter of whether there is enough interest to justify costs of doing the coding. Personally, I'd love to see Cineform.

[Edit] David posted at the same time I did :)
 
David Shapton said:
we can implement almost any codec, and whether we do will depend on demand
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I'm on PC and even though prores can be read on a PC, I would prefer a native PC codec. Some possiblities to consider are UT Lossless Video Codec, Blackmagic's MJPEG codec, and perhaps a high bit rate MPEG2. I would love to hear other people's suggestions.
 
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