Recording issue with Ninja - now fixed!

L

Lili

New member
When we decided to buy the Ninja we knew that we took a certain risk. But we decided to expend 995 $ from our R&D budget and take that risk. And of course the dream didn't come true.

The Ninja came in. We use a Sony HVR-Z7E in 1080i50 mode. Format a brand new Hitachi 7200/500 G drive. The software is nice and very easy to use. Set the audio input thru HDMI. We shot a 15 minutes footage in Prores 422. Everything is working fine with the buttons, very pleasant to use the touch screen.

Then we copy the files into our Mac and Final Cut Pro. Since the drive is FAT32 you get 4 Go files split from the footage. Then the HORROR appears :
- some files will have accelerated audio
- some files won't have audio
- some files will have unsynchronized audio.

We updated to the last firmware 1.04, try many other brand new Hitachi drives. We try the analog audio inputs too. But no way to fix the problem.
Our clients are pharmaceutical companies and we do a lot of interviews with green chromakey for them. We won't take the risk to shoot a CEO interview with the Ninja.
 
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thats too bad to hear, I thought the ninja was a really great recorder. It seems that others are having good luck with this recorder. Have you tried other modes, say 24, 60i. And have you tried contacting the company for insight into the issue. I think your post may be a bit over the top, to accuse the company of releasing a product that doesn't work. You may want to rethink what you write in these threads as it's forever. Chances are, it may be a fixable issue.
 
You're right, my post is angrily written after losing a lot of time. We have a lot of workflow everyday and can afford to lose our time. I've tried everything. Didn't have respond from Atomos support but I'am wondering why my Ninja was delivered with 1.0 firmware. Since Melbourne is in the opposite side of the globe.
 
Sorry to say this, but if you had enugh time to generate the same "slam" post here and on DVinfo.net, where I just finished reading it under a different username, I'd think that time could be better spent contacting the manufacturer to sort out a problem with a $1000 piece of hardware. I know that's how I'd have spent the time, anyway
 
Lili said:
To much pressure from shareholders ?
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This statement makes no sense. I wasn't aware that a small niche company making basically just one product sells stock to shareholders listed or unlisted on any stock exchange. Irrelevant to the problems you are having.

And as far as firmware, the dates of firmware releases makes perfect sense why you would have been shipped a v1.0 product. March 22, v1.0, April 1, v1.03, April 6, v1.04, very short timeframes here. Not a realistic expectation to have the units updated before shipping. Users buying these should be tech savvy enough to perform the firmware update. The firmware is being updated rapidly so users benefit.

I bought a SmallHD monitor and updated the firmware on it since the a new release had come out within the past few weeks prior to purchase. They aren't pulling stock off shelves and updating them just to ship out.

Contact the company and use tech support and find out why the problems exist and how to fix them. That's what professionals do. I doubt your pharma clients go on boards and complain by naming your company and state why they aren't happy.
 
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Lili said:
The thing is support@atomos.com never reply to my mail reporting the dysfunction ! all the mails before the purchase and after.
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I'm sorry to hear of your problems with the audio. I'm not aware of any emails from you and I personally check the support email address. If you need to contact me please PM me on this forum and I will respond to you personally. We are aware of some remaining audio problems with the Ninja, which have come to light recently. We are working on fixing these and we will do this in the same responsive ways we have fixed other issues with our two software updates since the Ninja started shipping.

The audio problems are difficult to track down, because they occur rarely, and most people have never seen them. We are working on a fix for these and will post a fix for them as soon as we can.

For the sake of other readers of this forum, and to redress the impression that your somewhat angry post might have given, I would just like to mention that we have shipped many hundreds of Ninjas to end users in the first three weeks of the product's commercial life, and the feedback we have been getting has been overwhelmingly positive.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
Here is the PERSONAL mail I received this morning from who know which support service it is:

"We have some issues with audio which we are investigating. We will be releasing a firmware update to fix these soon.
We are sorry about the inconvenience.
Best regards
Atomos Support"

Why do you release a product with known issues?
 
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Lili said:
Here is the PERSONAL mail I received this morning from who know which support service it is:

"We have some issues with audio which we are investigating. We will be releasing a firmware update to fix these soon.
We are sorry about the inconvenience.
Best regards
Atomos Support"

Why do you release a product with known issues?
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It seems the audio issue surfaced "after" the product shipped (among a few folks). It doesn't say that they had "known" about this potential issue before shipping.
 
Why do you release a product with known issues?
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Of course we didn't release a product with known issues - apart from the ones that were documented in the "read-me" letter included in the case for users. As we told you personally, we are investigating the causes of this as I write and we are confident that we will fix this RARE issue quickly. We are sorry about the inconvenience, and would ask you to either wait for the fix, which will be available soon, or return your product for a refund if you are unhappy with this solution.

Finally, should we assume that all private correspondence with you will be posted on this forum?

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
Finally, should we assume that all private correspondence with you will be posted on this forum?
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It's done here all the time, People like to share their expeiences with different companies and how they respond to issues. It can be a good thing for you. It shows your a company on the up and up, and not some fly by night crap shoot. Many of those pop up too.

Use it as an opportunity to show your customer service practices.
 
....but when the individual that P'Md you is active on this site.....then it seems kind of rude. Don't you think?
 
yes and no, I certainly see your point Ian. But at the same time, I think he was also posting for support and input and to vent. I didn't agree with the accusations of releasing a product that was not ready, or the post title, which was in my opinion not the way to go about getting a response. I think that was definetly rude. I understand his frustration, and Im the first to admit anger at times gets the best of you. But the one thing I have learned, is that these threads are forever, and can come back to bite you. It's better to wait at least until your not so angry to post. It doesn't benefit anyone posting angry rants and accusations.:)
 
Without wishing to refer to any particular case, my point about posting private correspondence is that we might make private, non-standard arrangements with individuals to help them out and we would not necessarily want details of these arrangements published. We're always happy for information about the product and progress we make with it to be published here.

Just to make it quite clear: we do have a rare issue with audio in the current version of the Ninja. It doesn't affect most users, and when it does pop up, it certainly is a problem. We're working on this as a number-one priority. We've not been as responsive as usual for the past few days because of NAB, but we expect to have the fix done and tested within a few days.

We prefer to be transparent and honest about issues that we find - it's an important part of our culture, but it works both ways. If we're prepared to discuss issues in public, we don't expect to have banner headlines on major forums rubbishing the product and the company (all from the same individual) - but there's nothing we can do about this except to hope that customers will be the way that the VAST majority of them are, which is to be supportive, enthusiastic, and realistic about the ongoing process of building and supporting an incredible new product!

Anyway, we had a fantastic response at NAB, received several awards, and had some brilliant feedback from existing Ninja users.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
Look -- posting private correspondence publicly is one of the most obvious breaches of netiquette -- you just don't do that. People who go reposting private communications publicly, are likely to find that they don't receive much in the way of private communications anymore.

Secondly -- David has said that it was not a "known" issue -- it is through people using it that they've now become aware of it, and they're working to fix it. What more can you ask?

And if you ask that the product be absolutely perfect before it's released, then a) that's unrealistic, and b) just wait a few months for people to vet it. If you want a perfectly reliable absolutely rock solid product before you buy it, then don't buy the very first brand-new release from a brand-new company, because it's probably not going to be perfect right immediately upon release. It's such a common situation that in any computer-related issue everyone knows that you don't buy version 1.0, you wait for 1.1. If you can't possibly wait, then you take it upon yourself to accept that there might be some unforeseen issues that weren't discovered during beta testing, but which may show up in rare circumstances -- which is what has happened to Atomos here.
 
I'm buying a Ninja. I told myself that I had to wait until NAB was over so I wouldn't have buyers regret, and for the price point I don't see anything new, near this quality and function.
That said, I've read everything on this forum and others concerning the Ninja and Atomos.
David Shapton has answered every question with concerned professionalism and patience.
I hope Lili will post again when this problem has worked itself out.
 
Which is pretty much par for the course with software driven hardware across the board. It is hard to test every single scenario and there are so many variables to deal with, this is why certain things get by. Clearly if everyone is not having the problem, and it is happening rarely for them, then tracking it down becomes even harder. It's pretty much a known rule that when a new product comes out, if you want reliability, then don't buy the first version just as it ships. It doesn't mean that great products don't come out and have no problems, they do, but I can give many many examples of this not being the case. First one, when the 7D shipped, a firmware update was released because ghost images were being captured in certain circumstances. If you chose to be on the 'bleeding edge' of technology when it hasn't even had the time to be proven or tested by thousands/millions of people, then you should accept that things like this will happen and continue to happen.

Pertaining to your situation, if I were having that problem, what I would do is record in camera and out of camera and then just take the audio off of the in-camera takes. Yes, it is more work, but if you ultimately want the 4:2:2 (which given you said you are doing greenscreen work, then I would want that too), then at least this is a workable solution.
 
Just for the sake of completeness: We've replicated the problem that is the subject of this thread and will have a fix which will be released in a few days. Any affected users can PM me and I'll explain how to work around the issue in the meantime. The user that started this thread has posted damaging remarks in at least three separate places, but I'm happy to say that I've received a large number of emails and posts from satisfied Ninja users (some of whom had the same issue) objecting to the fact that this individual appears to have gone way outside what is acceptable for a user with an problem that has been rapidly and completely addressed.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
Dave, thanks for such a quick response and for validating and fixing the error and making it known. And apologies that you've run into one of these situations -- sometimes people think that our forum is a hammer that they can use to beat on manufacturers, and that is simply not the case.

Your dedication to find and fix this issue so promptly speaks well for Atomos.

And to anyone who is upset that such an issue might possibly have existed -- yes, there might be issues with a brand-new products from brand-new companies. Such is life. If you find that unacceptable, just wait a few months while the company finds and irons out each and every wrinkle. Atomos has shown that they are on top of it and are attacking and exterminating bugs. If you demand absolute 1,000% reliability from day one -- you might want to either wait until that has been established, or consider one of the products that has already been through this process (such as the well-established Nano or the Ki Pro). And -- seriously -- who does a job like this without recording to in-camera too? Really? I have a Nano and I never, ever run it without simultaneous in-camera recording. Put the tape in the camera, guys.

Anyway -- since Atomos has now fixed this problem, I'm going to change the thread title to something that is more appropriate, so a misleading title doesn't continue to hover out there and stain their reputation unnecessarily and unfairly.

Thanks for supporting the customer and listening to the complaints and fixing the problems quickly!
 
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