Samurai reliable?

L

Lenilenapi

Carbonite Member
I've been reading a lot of reports of people having trouble with their Atomos Samurai's.
I've been thinking about getting one but am spooked now. Any reports from the field?
 
Where are the "lots" of reports? There have been current issues reported with specific SSD drives, but can you identify what the lots of reports are? We use the Samurai on commercials every week and find it very stable and reliable.



Lenilenapi said:
I've been reading a lot of reports of people having trouble with their Atomos Samurai's.
I've been thinking about getting one but am spooked now. Any reports from the field?
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With the new cable adapters and updated firmware, very reliable. And yes, the drive does make a difference. I have an SSD but end up using my HDD more often due to the much higher capacity even though it uses a little more power.

I've had zero issues using an HDD. Just stick it in and run it all day. It makes unloading easier too. Plug it in, go to bed and in the morning its done (rather than staying up and swapping drives.)
 
I'm running all older 320 series Intel SSD's (and 1 x WD 500gb spinner) rather than the 520 series Intel's which I had some early issues with.
 
Duke M. said:
With the new cable adapters and updated firmware, very reliable. And yes, the drive does make a difference. I have an SSD but end up using my HDD more often due to the much higher capacity even though it uses a little more power.

I've had zero issues using an HDD. Just stick it in and run it all day. It makes unloading easier too. Plug it in, go to bed and in the morning its done (rather than staying up and swapping drives.)
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I've had my Samurai since march and I 100% agree with Duke's statement. Early on Ed David found a retailer for replacement cables and they solved any problem I was having. The newer versions that Atomos sent us have been working perfectly as well.

As I noted in the other forum, a number of us have had problems with select SSD's bricking themselves when left overnight to download. Out of habit I no longer leave overnight with any drive.
 
CinemaElectronika said:
Any feedback or anyone using the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6GB SSDs?
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I haven't tried the Mercurys, but I wouldn't recommend 6Gb SSDs. ProRes is not efficient at compressing. You have to use a high data rate for good quality. For ProRes HQ you'll use up a 6 Gb drive in a few minutes. (My SSD is 120Gigs and my HHD is 320Gigs.)

I generally guess my drive usage by moving the decimal over two places and consider that actual hours of shooting time.

So 120 gigs becomes 1 hour and a third (20/60) of shooting time. As a rough estimator it works fairly well. In Narrative work most of the time is spent setting up. The two drives can usually cover a long day and just the HDD covers a normal day.
 
Duke M. said:
I haven't tried the Mercurys, but I wouldn't recommend 6Gb SSDs.
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Sorry, Duke... I've misspelled the specs of these drives.

There are 6G (not 6GB) SSDs. And their capacities are 120GB, 240GB and 480GB.
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/mercury+extreme+pro+6G

You are right... I am for 2 x 120GB SSD. Just wondering about reliability of these OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G Drives.

Thank you for posting.

H
 
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I've been using OWC's 3G and now 6G SSD's for a few years now in laptop, external drives, etc. It was actually a Mercury 3G drive that I mentioned I bricked in the Atomos dock.(The drive was not on the approved list so I take most of the blame for that one) Fortunately OWC has a great warranty policy and they immediately replaced it. Speaking of the Atomos dock, I always eject the drive/dock from the computer by unplugging the cable, not by pulling the drive out of the dock. Cant remember where I read to do this but it's now habit.
 
One more question. It seems like a lot of you guys prefer the hard drives for most purposes, and like the smaller 120G SSD's instead of the 240's.
Howcum?
 
Lenilenapi said:
Thanks guys , that's reassuring as I like the device and especially the weight as opposed to the PIX.
Here are the reports I've read. Wondering what your reaction is. Maybe its a specific situation or address problem with the camera?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/767073-REG/ATOMOS_ATOMSAM001_Samurai_HD_SDI_Hard_Disk.html

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/358/17#17
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From the issues people were having in the links provided I can honestly say I've never experienced most of them and since the new cables and firmware none at all. The issue they were having in the Creative Cow thread seemed to mostly be "user error" with settings using a switcher. Some of the B&H reviews do sound like a certain amount of Lemons made it out of the factory and I dont doubt there is a issue.

If I were buying a 2nd one right now I'd test the hell out of it (with approved drives) before using it on a job. I never trust any external recorder 100% and always record to cards in-camera simultaneously.

To anwser your other question. I use a 120gb SSD because I frankly didnt feel like spending $500 at the time for a 240gb one. I use my WD 500gb Black HD 80% of the time though. On sticks, walking, moving, etc. It only failed me once in a very bumpy car(audio went out of sync but the image was fine), so I save my smaller SSD for those type of conditions.
 
SSD's are so inexpensive these days, I'm not sure why one would risk the spinning ones. Even doing ProResHQ, you can fit almost 80 minutes when shooting 1080P24.
There's also the issue with spinning drive's thermal issues, etc.

I do have a BIG complaint about the Samurai, however: when the media fills-up, it doesn't complain, warn you, etc. (just stops). A small complaint: the monitor is absolutely terrible...ugly! It's nice to have touch-screen, real-time data read outs, but don't rely on it one bit for any exposure/color, even if just a sanity check. It's not even in the same hemisphere.
 
I've been working with my Samurai for a year now and it's been 99% fine.

Early on I had some clips with a couple green frames, which was scary, but one of the instances was fixed by re-transferring the clips to the computer later (the first offload had a few daisy chained FW devices). The other instance I had bad frames seemed to stem from wiggles on the SDI cable...I suspect early versions of the firmware was not as tolerant of glitches coming in the SDI.

I just make sure I'm always rolling to SxS backups. I've never had to use them, but just the same.

The Samurai is dead simple to operate, and I prefer it to the Pix because of this when I don't have an AC. I can also go most days without a battery change on the Samurai, another nice thing when you are shooting solo.
 
Thanks guys, That was what i was hoping to hear. One of things I like about it over the PIX is just shear weight.
 
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