Ninja with the D800

Philip Goetz

Well-known member
So. The HDMI out on the D800 is progressive. Right? Does anyone have experience using it with the ATMOS NINJA 2? Wondering what 1080 24p looks like.
 
Lots of people have done tests and can't see enough (or any) difference to justify the HDMI uncompressed recording.

The real advantages are:

1) It's being recorded in an editing friendly codec

2) You can record longer than 20 minutes

It's hard to complain that Ninja doesn't add to the quality, what would should be doing it praising the perceptual quality of the H264 codec that's built in.

Where you will see the most difference is (or should be) lots of movement in the frame that starts to overload the 24mbps codec, or higher ISO where the is much more noise to encode. In some ways the H264 will smooth the noise (so look less noisy) but what you end up with is more macro blocking.

For regular shooting on a budget you won't see enough difference to justify the price tag.
 
The Ninja 2 is not out yet....everything so far is with the ninja 1.

The tests I've seen, when settings are set up properly, is the ninja retains an ever so slightly sharper image.

But recording uncompressed will stand up to hardcore color grading in the long run. I've seen lots of tests on this and yes just shooting to the cards is VERY impressive compared to what I've seen in the Canon's. But no one has really done a low light/ dark lit scene both ways and shown color grading. I'm willing to bet thats where you'll see the ninja shine.
 
The Sarlacc;1986152588]The Ninja 2 is not out yet....everything so far is with the ninja 1.

The tests I've seen, when settings are set up properly, is the ninja retains an ever so slightly sharper image.

I would like to see some Uncompressed capture out of the D800 HDMI using something like the BlackMagic Shuttle. Would be interesting if shot correctly.
 
I was planning to shoot a low light test yesterday with the Ninja1 and the D800E and couldn't get a clean signal to the Ninja, then I realized I had updated to the latest firmware B 1.01, looks like Nikon crippled (intentionally or unintentionally???) the clean HDMI out, I am in contact with Atomos customer support and posted on my blog a snap of how the signal looks now :( hugely dissappointed
http://www.mikekobal.com/blog/?p=4994
 
Lots of people have done tests and can't see enough (or any) difference to justify the HDMI uncompressed recording.

The real advantages are:

1) It's being recorded in an editing friendly codec

2) You can record longer than 20 minutes

It's hard to complain that Ninja doesn't add to the quality, what would should be doing it praising the perceptual quality of the H264 codec that's built in.

Where you will see the most difference is (or should be) lots of movement in the frame that starts to overload the 24mbps codec, or higher ISO where the is much more noise to encode. In some ways the H264 will smooth the noise (so look less noisy) but what you end up with is more macro blocking.

For regular shooting on a budget you won't see enough difference to justify the price tag.

agreed 100%, I have it and only plan on using it on full crew narrative things, not worth it on run&shoot because the h264 is actually pretty good already.
 
Nikon has really been pushing the clean output from the D800. I think this should be resolved quickly enough.
 
False alarm, sorry guys! Alex Andrews just posted the correct settings-not sure how this happened-`Live view on-screen display’ option needs to be set on “off” and everything is fine!
 
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