25Apr Atomos Ninja 2 4 track audio
The Atomos Ninja 2 showed up yesterday and I had a little bit of time to play around with it last night. The Canon 5d mark III firmware upgrade won’t be released until next week, but having the Ninja 2 early gives me a chance to dig through the menus and get used to it’s controls.
Although batteries are included in the kit, they needed to be charged right out of the box. Luckily the NP-F975 7200 mAh batteries I use on the torchled bolt also happen to fit the Ninja 2. According to the specs a 7200 mAh battery should actually run the Ninja 2 for up to 20 hours. Of course adding a battery that big to the unit also doubles the weight so I suppose that’s the trade off.
The only thing I really had time to test was the 4 track recording mode. If you click on the audio level meters on the bottom left hand side of the screen you get this menu. Orange indicates that the tracks are armed and ready to record. Inputs on the left hand side come from the hdmi source while inputs on the right hand side come from the 3.5mm input jack on the left hand side of the screen.
From this menu you can choose to record 2 tracks, 4 tracks, or no tracks. You can also adjust the gain applied to the 3.5mm jack and select what audio is fed to the headphone output as well as make adjustments to headphone levels.
For the test, I recorded a couple of 30 second clips in both Prores 422 and DNxHD 220x. On a side note, you have to activate the DNxHD codec on the Ninja 2 before you can use it. The process is free, but you do have to plug a few numbers into Atomos’s site in order to get the activation code. Also, you’ll want to download and install the codec for DNxHD, you can find that here.
I haven’t spent a lot of time working with Avid DNxHD files, so i’m not sure if there is really any advantage to the codec over Prores. I’ll have to spend a little more time doing research and testing things out. A number of people I spoke with at NAB thought that Prores LT and DNxHD 145 were both the best choice for most things and only recommended Prores HQ and DNxHD 220x for heavy grading or green screen work.
The nice thing about the files generated by the Ninja 2 is that when you pull the files off the hard drive both formats are wrapped in a .mov container. No separate audio tracks to sort through. When you drop the files into your premiere pro timeline you get 4 individual mono audio tracks instead of two stereo tracks. This saves you the hassle of having to split out audio tracks or use fill left/fill right functions to get the channel you need.
I haven’t had a chance to hook up an audio adapter to the Ninja 2 and test the 3.5mm input jack, but that’s next on my list of things to do. Right now i’m still working on the full review of that Sony CLM-V55 clone monitor. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to this sometime next week.
April 25th, 2013 at 10:38 am
If anything, ProRes (likely due to being a newer designed codec) should hold up better than DNxHD under heavy grading/effects:
http://www.fallenempiredigital.com/blog/2013/02/28/avid-dnxhd-vs-apple-prores-vs-gopro-cineform-recompression-generation-loss/
Although even then, it took five rounds of generational loss to visually show a significant difference.
Either is a more-than-good-enough intermediate codec, but methinks there’s no big advantage or disadvantage to DNxHD unless you’re cutting in Avid (since you get to sidestep using AMA).
April 25th, 2013 at 12:04 pm
The nice thing about the DNxHD option on the ninja is that if you just need to record a lot of footage and need smaller file sizes, the DNxHD 36 should deliver about the same (or a little higher) image quality as the ALL-I codec used on the 5d mark III. Stick a 240GB SSD in and I don’t have to worry about changing out media during a day long shoot. That’s also a great option on legal jobs.
When I need to shoot some green screen or do heavy grading I can always drop in a 750GB drive and shoot Prores 422.
Thanks for the link I’ll read through it this afternoon.
April 25th, 2013 at 7:03 pm
I see your workstation is PC based, don’t know if you already know this, just in case your client wants a prores file…
http://www.cinemartin.com/cinec/
April 25th, 2013 at 7:22 pm
I don’t normally get many request for prores, it’s usually MXF or cineform, but I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.
April 25th, 2013 at 10:53 pm
Since the fw hasn’t been released yet, is the Ninja2 recording all the 5D III screen information?
April 25th, 2013 at 10:56 pm
Right now it just records the boxed image with black on all 4 sides. I suppose you could crop in or scale to 720, but the new firmware will be out next week.
April 26th, 2013 at 10:45 am
Hey DeeJay!!!! The 5Dmk3 firmware leaked! > http://www.eoshd.com/content/10217/canon-5d-mark-iii-uncompressed-hdmi-firmware-update-v1-2-1-now-available
April 26th, 2013 at 11:29 am
Thanks for the heads up, but it looks like it’s already been pulled down from drop box.
April 26th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
@DeeJay yeah it was overwhelmed in downloads lol….. Here’s another link > http://www.cinema5d.com/news/?p=17558#more-17558
April 26th, 2013 at 2:04 pm
Thanks for the update, I’ll check it out tonight.