Just confirming the Atomos Ninja does record 1080 25p?

Sparky874

Sparky874

Well-known member
Hello all.
I am just about to purchase the Ninja but wanted to double check it can record at 1080 , 25 frames progressive. Is anyone out there shooting this format with the Ninja on their AF101 - and is it quite straight forward? Also out of interest, it would be interesting to know what setting you are settling on with the Ninja too.
Cheers!:)
 
According to the website:
The Ninja can and does record and store your 24, 25 and 30p images perfectly, “wrapped” in an interlaced signal. You will see some different frame-rates reported by your Ninja compared to the settings on your camera. This is normal.

For example, if your camera is set to 25p (in Europe) you may see 1080i50 on your Ninja. Or (in America and former NTSC countries) you may see 1080i59.94 on your Ninja instead of 23.98p.


You can use the interlaced signal produced by your camera as it is, or you can remove the pulldown using a “reverse telecine” program like Cinetools, supplied with Final Cut Pro, or our fast, simple “Stripper” application that will be available soon.
You can confirm whether your images have been subject to 3:2 pulldown by stepping through frames sequentially. The forth frame into the sequence will look like a double frame. It’s the result of two fields added together. The fifth frame will have the same properties as the forth, and then the sixth frame, which is the start of the next sequence, will look “normal”.
Running the process in reverse through software on your computer can remove the pulldown completely, leaving you with clean, progressive footage. We wanted to keep the cost of the Ninja as low as possible, so, rather add the cost of building this into hardware, we chose to leave you with the option to remove pulldown in our software.

So, I think you will find the recording to be 25p wrapped in 50i, and will have to do work in post to get it back to 25p.

Some recorders, like the Nanoflash, have PSF to do this as it is being recorded, but it looks like the Ninja doesn't have this feature in order to keep costs low.
 
Sparky874 said:
Hello all.
I am just about to purchase the Ninja but wanted to double check it can record at 1080 , 25 frames progressive. Is anyone out there shooting this format with the Ninja on their AF101 - and is it quite straight forward? Also out of interest, it would be interesting to know what setting you are settling on with the Ninja too.
Cheers!:)
Click to expand...

@Sparky874,

I'll put the bottom line first: Yes, you can absolutely record 25p out of the AF 101 and we already have a large number of people doing this with the Ninja. I'll explain how.

Even though with our next release (about a week away) we're supporting 25p directly, the only cameras that actually output 25p over HDMI that we know of are the RED ones.

But this doesn't actually matter, because if you set your camera to record 25p, it will output 25p in the form of a PsF (Progressive Segmented Frame) interlaced signal. This is how the early HDCAM recorders worked - to maintain compatibiliity with interlaced systems. This interlaced signal, however, is exactly the same to look at (and even to work with) as a progressive one, because each of the two fields making up the PsF frame come from the same, single, progressive frame. It's just that the first one contains the odd-numbered 540 lines and the second one contains the even ones. Put them back together on a timeline or on a display and they will look progressive.

You don't need to do anything to set up the Ninja with the AF101, because the Ninja will always record what it is given. Just set your camera to 25p and your Ninja will report 50i: but your footage will be progressive.

I've got a graphic that illustrates all of this if you'd like me to send it to you. Just PM me.

Best regards
Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
So, I think you will find the recording to be 25p wrapped in 50i, and will have to do work in post to get it back to 25p.

Some recorders, like the Nanoflash, have PSF to do this as it is being recorded, but it looks like the Ninja doesn't have this feature in order to keep costs low.
Click to expand...

Thanks for chipping in but the above isn't true. Please see my other post.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
Hi David, thanks for taking the time to help out. I'm purchasing it this afternoon from Production gear in London for a shoot all week at the Open golf next week and wanted to double check this. It's great to be able to bring the footage onto the timeline without having to worry about messing around with pulldowns etc - this is the first time I have used an external recorder. So to confirm, as long as I am shooting in 25p, and the setting on the Ninja is 1080 50i - the recording will be progressive. Cheers.
 
Sparky874 said:
Hi David, thanks for taking the time to help out. I'm purchasing it this afternoon from Production gear in London for a shoot all week at the Open golf next week and wanted to double check this. It's great to be able to bring the footage onto the timeline without having to worry about messing around with pulldowns etc - this is the first time I have used an external recorder. So to confirm, as long as I am shooting in 25p, and the setting on the Ninja is 1080 50i - the recording will be progressive. Cheers.
Click to expand...

Great news. Just make sure you use our approved disks (on the website) especially with the SSDs - only use Intel.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
Just out of interest David, when I record as 1080 at 50 frames a second in the camera - how does the Ninja see this? Thanks.
 
Sparky874 said:
Just out of interest David, when I record as 1080 at 50 frames a second in the camera - how does the Ninja see this? Thanks.
Click to expand...

The Ninja won't record 50p or 60p because this is twice the data rate of 50i and 60i. The disks won't keep up with it and you need substantially more processing power. It's a bit like expecting a 200 mph Ferrari to do 400 mph. The only way to do this would be to have a raid-array and all the stuff that goes with it. Sorry - just not possible at this price.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
Another quickie. Ninja arriving tomorrow. Does the Ninja pick up all the screen info that I have switched on the LCD via the HDMI output or take a clean picture regardless. I just realised a way around losing the monitor option from the HDMI, would be to get an external mounted on the camera which can take an HDSI input...Thanks
 
No, the AF101 (that's what you're using, isn't it?) gives a clean HDMI output, otherwise we'd have to record all that viewfinder stuff.

Good luck with the Ninja! Don't forget the next release fixes the blocky playback.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
God you're still there David! Don't you ever stop working! David, is there a Ninja setting you'd recommend for the optium level of high quality recording? AND! Does the record button on the AF101 kick start the Ninja into record - or do you have to press record on the Ninja unit as well? That's all my questions for tonight! Promise!
 
If you turn VIDEO OUT OSD to ON, then yes all that stuff will be strewn all over your HDMI (or SDI) recording. So always make sure that setting is turned off.
 
Ozark said:
I was looking at the ninja till i saw this video. Can anyone confirm this test? I hope this is some sort of mistake!
http://www.vimeo.com/23046613
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I'm sorry but this comparison on Vimeo is nonsense. It doesn't stretch the codec at all. If the typical output from these cameras was terrible then no-one would buy them. Same with the FS100 and the AF101: most of the time you'll get really good images from them and you can't expect ProRes to make a miraculous improvement to something that's already pretty good. If a $1000 dollar recorder could make a $5000 camera look like a $50,000 one, we'd be putting the price up.

To make a comparison, you have to look at the sort of footage where the camera's codec is stretched. You have to push it far enough that there are block-errors and fringes, and general loss of detail. This is where ProRes shines. At 220 Mbit/s, it's visually the same as uncompressed, and I don't think anyone would suggest that a Long-GOP codec at 24 or 35 Mbit/s is as clean as uncompressed.

If you really want to see something that's difficult for low-bitrate codecs, shoot a waterfall, or grass blowing in the wind. And also try circular motion: most codecs don't have circular motion vectors so can't handle the interpolation between frames with circular movement.

Finally - don't trust any comparison on Vimeo. It's a great service for showcasing video, but you can't use it for detailed quality comparison any more than you'd compare prime lenses through the bottom of a beer glass.

We're in the process of collating all the user-feedback we've had from Ninja users and will be putting this on our website (which will probably take a month or so from now). If you want to PM me, I'll send you some comments confirming the improvement in quality that you get with a Ninja.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
Wow at that vimeo comparison. Contradicts everything Im seeing. The AF100 and choppy water? shoot with and without the ninja - you will see the difference there. A sit down well lit interview? Maybe not so much.


Ive been shooting on a ninja in humid, hot, dusty conditions of tsunami hit areas of Japan fwiw, not one issue.
 
David Shapton said:
The Ninja won't record 50p or 60p because this is twice the data rate of 50i and 60i. The disks won't keep up with it and you need substantially more processing power. It's a bit like expecting a 200 mph Ferrari to do 400 mph. The only way to do this would be to have a raid-array and all the stuff that goes with it. Sorry - just not possible at this price.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
Click to expand...
Surely the disks can easily keep up as you would be recording ProRes at exactly the same data rate? It's the Ninja that can't keep up with converting the uncompressed HDMI output to ProRes. It's nonsense to talk about needing a RAID array as you recommend regular HDDs for use in the Ninja & they can easily be written at ProRes HQ maximum bit rate of 220 Mbit/s.
 
nigelbb said:
Surely the disks can easily keep up as you would be recording ProRes at exactly the same data rate? It's the Ninja that can't keep up with converting the uncompressed HDMI output to ProRes. It's nonsense to talk about needing a RAID array as you recommend regular HDDs for use in the Ninja & they can easily be written at ProRes HQ maximum bit rate of 220 Mbit/s.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, no. This is incorrect. It's not to do with ProRes. It's to do with the data rates from the camera. It's easier to make this comparison using SDI instead of HDMI. But the same data rates apply to the Ninja.

Normal HDSDI, up to 1080 30p can be handled by a single-link HD SDI cable (sometimes called 1.5G, because the data rate is up to 1.5 Gigabits). To record 50p or 60p at 1080, you either need Dual 1.5G SDI cables or a single 3G (ie 3Gigabit/sec) connection. Whichever way you look at it you have at least twice the data rate and have to carry out at least twice the processing power to handle it. Hence the Ferrari analogy: you can't make it do double it's maximum speed by just pressing the gas pedal a bit more. And you can't expect ProRes to compress twice the amount of data into a file the same size, unless you're prepared to sacrifice quality, so, yes, you'd need a higher data rate - and hence a faster disk system - even if you were encoding these higher framerates to ProRes.

By the way, it's not just the Ninja - the same applies to any ProRes recorder, because they all have to obey the same laws of physics.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
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David Shapton said:
And you can't expect ProRes to compress twice the amount of data into a file the same size, unless you're prepared to sacrifice quality, so, yes, you'd need a higher data rate - and hence a faster disk system - even if you were encoding these higher framerates to ProRes.
Click to expand...
Sorry but you are incorrect. The Ninja records in ProRes & there is no higher data rate than 220Mbps for ProRes HQ & that is true whatever the frame rate or resolution. That is under 28MBps & easily handled by a regular single HDD never mind an SSD. The Black Magic Hyperdeck Shuttle records uncompressed video onto a regular SSD. Even if there were a double data rate ProRes Super HQ at 440Mbps especially created for 1080 60p video then a single disk could still handle that data rate. The bottleneck is not the disk.
 
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