I was looking at the Ninja till i saw this video.

I'm thinking that due to there being a higher bitrate and less macro blocking, all those individual pixels aren't being squished into a pixely block and instead have their own information that isn't sucked into compressed blocks, which gives the appearance of more noise.

I would just really like the Samurai to get out soon. Don't want to deal with doing any reverse telecine of the current ninja for anything 24p.
 
David Shapton said:
Yes, The Samurai will have real-time reverse-telecine, but software-base dpulldown removal can be pretty fast, as long as the software automatically recognises the start of the cadence.

I've used ProRes in Premiere and Vegas, and it all seems pretty responsive to me. It's a very processor-friendly codec.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Dave Shapton
Atomos
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When is the Samurai available in the US?
 
David Shapton said:
We will be making a specific announcement about availability soon.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
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I will stick to my solemn pledge to work as a dignified beta tester in Germany if you send me a Samurai next week or so. Really. I do it. Promised.... ;-)

If you do not need a dignified teutonic beta tester (sob!) remember to send the first unit to my cine rental house - MBF Frankfurt. They have my order since your first announcement and the sales guy has soar nerves already from me calling him every second day...

(is "soar nerves" allowed as an expression in the language of the Anglo-Saxons, btw.?)
 
It's not every day you get a solemn pledge from a dignified Teutonic beta tester!

Thanks for your offer; it's much appreciated. However tempting, though, we won't release the Samurai until it's completely ready. Keep an eye on the website for announcements.

Thanks again for your enthusiasm, and, yes, "sore nerves" is a perfect expression in modern Anglo-Saxon!

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
Come on guys... What's the point of hounding them for a date? Look what backlash they got for the ninja launch. They will probably announce a date as soon as production starts. Until then I'm sure they're busy beta testing.
 
bgundu said:
Come on guys... What's the point of hounding them for a date? Look what backlash they got for the ninja launch. They will probably announce a date as soon as production starts. Until then I'm sure they're busy beta testing.
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I'm not hounding for a date, just a quantifiable estimation - and the point or the purpose of my post is to enable me to plan my up-coming production accordingly. There are other options out there and I don't want to spend more than I have to. That's the point, bgundu. I'd suggest to not post if your post isn't helping. So the question remains, a month, two? I'll be shooting within that time-frame and I'd like to know what to plug into my budget - purchase of two Samurais or rental of something more expensive.
 
If they actually give a quantifiable estimation, they put themselves in a no-win scenario. If they deliver exactly on that date, they survive, but if they miss it, people get angry. Look what's happened to Birger, to Red, to all these companies that pre-announce dates. It's a no-win game for the manufacturer.

In today's zero-patience marketplace, the only rational plan for announcing dates is when you know for a fact you can hit that date.

and the point or the purpose of my post is to enable me to plan my up-coming production accordingly
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See, that's the problem right there. Never, ever plan an upcoming production around an unreleased product! You're only asking for a world of pain. First of all, the odds of the manufacturer actually delivering the product on your timetable is questionable. Second, them delivering in adequate quantity is a totally different problem. And third, let's face it -- first-release version 1.0 products frequently have issues, and you don't want to be the person discovering those issues in the middle of a production!

If you've got a job, I think the only responsible course of action is to ignore unreleased products and set your schedule and budget based on what's available now. If somehow a new product springs on the market in time and gets vetted by others to show that it's reliable, then hey, you have options you didn't otherwise, so you're better off. But if you instead make plans based on unreleased products and then, for whatever reason, the unreleased product doesn't deliver exactly what you need exactly when you need it, then you are screwed.
 
bgundu said:
Come on guys... What's the point of hounding them for a date? Look what backlash they got for the ninja launch. They will probably announce a date as soon as production starts. Until then I'm sure they're busy beta testing.
Click to expand...

That's the best policy.
 
TheReverend said:
This test is a perfect example of what ProRes offers versus AVCHD. There is a distinct lack of macroblocking in higher motion scenes. That being said, in full motion it is VERY difficult to tell a large difference. Of course with CC and other filtering, macroblocking can become a major issue. Your mileage may vary.

That being said, how much value does that add? It really depends how important your material is. The monitoring from the Ninja gives alot, the ProResHQ is a slightly higher quality, and the redundancy is beyond value.

On the other hand if you don't have budget, you'll get by just fine with SD cards and AVCHD.
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That's the best summary of what a recorder means (or not) for someone with an AVCHD camcorder yet. For me it was all about redundancy, then the side benefit of a far quicker transcode (still need to reverse telecine to get back my 24p), and finally, last, the picture quality increase.

Now that increase can be big or small depending on where you sit in the post process. I only notice it on high motion scenes, and/or on a huge (100+") screen. The in cam codec is quite good, but it certainly falls apart a touch with rapid motion and with fine detail like swaying trees, etc. I notice it a lot when keying (420 vs 422 is a big step up), and it helps a bit when grading - but if you're not doing much of either the average person won't notice - especially of the web is your target for delivery.

The Sony FMU is $700, the Ninja is $1050 or so with a 500GB drive. Both can rescue you by creating a backup as you work - which was my goal as flash memory can and does fail (as can hard drives of course). I figured I'd rather have ProRes 422 added on and a confidence monitor for a few hundred more than spend the astronomical price Sony is asking for that FMU. If you're shooting important footage, that backup can be essential.
 
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PDR said:
Well it' s hard to judge from vimeo, but probably because it preserves more of the signal . You would see this effect even more, if you record uncompressed.

Both fine detail and noise are dropped by the worse MPEG2 compression .

The prores capture is probably preserving all the fine detail and grain, and when vimeo processes it, the end result is what you see as "noisier"

While you can selectively denoise in post, you cannot recover details that were never recorded by the MPEG2 compression
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I see that too on the Sony FS100. Along with the extra detail comes more noise. I noticed that the AVCHD encoder (on the FS100) takes a licence plate, for example, that is all white but with subtle gradiations of shadow and makes it totally one white color. The Ninja footage showed the gradiations.

It may look like "noise" but it's actually more picture detail that you can never get back, as PDR says. You can always de-noise....
 
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