How Long Can Atomos Hang On?

Andy9 said:
Which camera was this? I've had one card stop cos of a write error once (a7Siii) but the other one kept going.
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JVC600. It was a little more complicated. An error message showed up on screen, but the camera lcd showed it was recording and the red light remained on. After getting to a place I could stop. Message said the card encountered an error and would I want to recover it. When I did, both cards had that file missing.
 
Doug Bee said:
The reason they are in trouble is because of multiple allegations of corporate fraud perpetrated on their own customer base.

When the allegations came out it triggered a securities investigation and their own accounting company dumped them in the middle of an audit.

https://petapixel.com/2022/09/09/fo...was-fired-for-investigating-securities-fraud/
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Good to know. I bought a Shinobi a few yrs ago but they won’t be getting my business again until they get their act together.
 
I think they need to get more creative with their products. For example, why do I still have to buy an Odyssey 7Q+ to get uncompressed video out of legacy cinema and broadcast cameras like the Sony F35? Why do I have to resort to cheap H.264 analog boxes off of Amazon to record some legacy analog video? Atomos should have a legacy recorder with upscaling, modern codecs, and all the legacy professional ports to work universally with any legacy source. Similar things can be done with a mix of recorders and upscaling units at a high cost but having such a product to be a modern all-in-one professional solution would be far more useful than another monitor revision.

Admittedly, a breakthrough that I hope takes place with AI is upscaling and bitrate conversion for letting AI change 8-bit to a much smoother 10, 12, or even 14 bit in order to make cameras like my original Sony A7S into a clean non-pixelated 10-bit+ solution rather than having to upgrade to the A7S III or newer and with possible 8K scaling on top of that. If Atomos could get some feature like this into a monitor-recorder then that would not only be a video gamechanger but also the must-have product to beat.
 
Zack Birlew said:
I think they need to get more creative with their products. For example, why do I still have to buy an Odyssey 7Q+ to get uncompressed video out of legacy cinema and broadcast cameras like the Sony F35? Why do I have to resort to cheap H.264 analog boxes off of Amazon to record some legacy analog video? Atomos should have a legacy recorder with upscaling, modern codecs, and all the legacy professional ports to work universally with any legacy source. Similar things can be done with a mix of recorders and upscaling units at a high cost but having such a product to be a modern all-in-one professional solution would be far more useful than another monitor revision.

Admittedly, a breakthrough that I hope takes place with AI is upscaling and bitrate conversion for letting AI change 8-bit to a much smoother 10, 12, or even 14 bit in order to make cameras like my original Sony A7S into a clean non-pixelated 10-bit+ solution rather than having to upgrade to the A7S III or newer and with possible 8K scaling on top of that. If Atomos could get some feature like this into a monitor-recorder then that would not only be a video gamechanger but also the must-have product to beat.
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All of the above is extremely niche, man...no money or interest in that at all (besides from the random Joe and Jane here and there).

They need other products that are truly creative and that people would want to buy, like the DJI Pocket 3 (insanely hot rn).

Not saying to make a gimbal/camera but other fun stuff where their background in screen technology and computing could be used.
 
NorBro said:
Not saying to make a gimbal/camera but other fun stuff where their background in screen technology and computing could be used.
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Like a built in Ultimatte type live compositing mode? That would be pretty cool! Surely the modern device CPU/GPU chips should be able to handle these kinds of features, even the AI stuff.
 
IDK too much about that or what goes on in studios where something like that could be used, but if BM thinks it's a good idea then probably, def
 
Poor reliability, and appalling repair service don't help. I know a lot of people who've had Atomos monitors go down, and the repair costs have been essentially the same as replacement costs - so they've sworn off buying them again.

I'm in the same place myself. Ninja V died and I was told they can absolutely repair it - and was then quoted a repair price that was $40 less than buying a whole brand new unit (which is ludicrous). Not only that, after pricing the repair at an untenable level, they refused to let me transfer the software licences I'd bought for the broken unit over to a new one if I bought it.

I actually live only 20 minutes drive from their head offices, but even with that proximity (and visiting the offices directly) even getting a monitor to their repair company (which is actually an outsourced third-party company) was a pain.

You can certainly add me to the list of people who won't be trusting them with my hard-earnt again.
 
Ive never recorded anything for more than 'scratch'

But on set the playback of cameras like the fs7 is so slow and scrubbing through so difficult (i still dont know if it is possible after a decade) that director friendly playback is super super useful.

Plop an atomos on set and the director releationship jumps in a good way. because playback becomes fun - finger scrub through

Do I like them as a company? probably not. Do I trust the build ? probably not.

Do I like the UI has chened through the generations? no

In terms of mointors Ive bought feelworld recently as I think that $200 price is disposable whereare $800 is too epensive for disposable.
 
Grug said:
Poor reliability, and appalling repair service don't help. I know a lot of people who've had Atomos monitors go down, and the repair costs have been essentially the same as replacement costs - so they've sworn off buying them again.

I'm in the same place myself. Ninja V died and I was told they can absolutely repair it - and was then quoted a repair price that was $40 less than buying a whole brand new unit (which is ludicrous). Not only that, after pricing the repair at an untenable level, they refused to let me transfer the software licences I'd bought for the broken unit over to a new one if I bought it.

I actually live only 20 minutes drive from their head offices, but even with that proximity (and visiting the offices directly) even getting a monitor to their repair company (which is actually an outsourced third-party company) was a pain.

You can certainly add me to the list of people who won't be trusting them with my hard-earnt again.
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Unfortunately that was exactly my experience trying to get a BM 5" video assist repaired. They wanted MORE than the cost of a new one!
 
It's sick isn't it? Repair is a great profit center. We did the same for products sold to Verizon and the like. Most repair costs were more than 50% of the cost of a new unit, and yes, one of the repair prices was actually more than the price of a new one.
 
From a consumer's perspective, you want that nice warranty, hassle-free experience during your 1/2/3/5/10 year included window, no questions asked.

From a company's perspective, it's probably a nightmare and something no one wants to do; fix old stuff.

In a way, maybe it's similar to turning down work or charging extra for it because you know the project is going to be a PITA. [For fixing electronics, maybe sometimes the parts that need to be ordered might even be more expensive from the people who make them - if not in house - so then the overall pricing of everything increases.]

So after that warranty window it's like they'll do it but it will cost you.

With that said, if these are quotes (ones barely less than a brand new unit) given during a warranty then that's just silly.
 
I had a similar experience with LitePanels years ago with one of my Sola ENG fixtures. It was going to be over $700 to repair the unit vs. maybe $750 for a brand new one.

With some of Apple's items, like AirPods and Watches, they don't even repair them when they're brought in to be fixed, they just completely swap them out.
 
I am a big ProRes Raw guy and so I use Atomos products constantly. Don't love the durability or price to repair and definitely wonder what will happen if the company goes belly-up.
 
I've rarely had a problem with anything I've ever bought and I can count on one hand the times I had to send in something to be repaired - but I'll also consider that maybe I just didn't use stuff enough (some stuff I did, like ten things, tons of use).

Atomos' were solid for me, the 5-6 I owned over the years.
 
This does bring up a good point, if Atomos goes under, who replaces them as a Prores RAW recorder? Does everybody just switch to BRAW with the Blackmagic Video Assist series? Granted, I'm seeing the writing on the wall with newer cameras getting RAW video internally in the near future but even for legacy devices, where are the premium recording options going to come from?
 
Presumably Atomos holds on until RED's patent runs out in 4 years, isn't renewed/extended (if possible), and Apple starts to license internal ProRes RAW to everyone, with of course their phones getting the best and making mobile video acquisition yet again even better.
 
I wish Atomos would have quality long gop mp4 recording option. I know I'm in the minority because I'm using it for backup purposes. The other related issue is that you can't delete individual files. If you forget to format the drive at the start of a day, the drive is mostly full and you've run out of space there is nothing you can do. Unless you have laptop and the drive caddy. Both of which you're unlikely to have on a shoot where you're there to only film, you can't copy off the video you filmed that day to be able to format the drive.
 
I was actually the guy who brought the adapter and laptop/external drive, lol - but admit in hindsight it was stressful and not practical most of the time.

This practice was eventually retired and replaced by having more SSDs once the prices weren't a consideration anymore.
 
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