Atomos - designers and manufacturers of smart production tools

  • >> Atomos Shogun - interview with Jeromy Young, CEO of Atomos

  •

    >> Atomos: Ninja Star and Shogun

  •

    >> Atomos Power Station - continuous power to camera and accessories

  •

    >> NAB 2014: Atomos introduce Ninja Star & Shogun

  •

    >> Cinema Rig: Samurai Blade & Blackmagic Cinema Camera

  •

    >> Atomos Ninja & Samurai Blade - Missing link camera to recorder

  •

    >> Killer Blade: Atomos Samurai Blade 10 Bit 4:2:2 recorder

  •

    >> Atomos Samurai: portable 10 bit ProRes & DNxHD SDI recorder

  •

    >> Atomos Ninja 2 ProRes and DNxHD recorder

Atomos burst onto the digital video scene at IBC 2010, Here they showed, for the first time, a new product, called the Ninja. This was an HDMI recorder which would record Apple’s ProRes codec at 10-bit 4:2:2 quality to either spinning drives or SSDs. On-show was a prototype of the unit - the concept drew a huge amount of attention and several months later the first of the Ninja’s shipped.

Since then Atomos have gone from strength to strength, building the original concept into an entire product line of external 10-bit 4:2:2 recorders: from the original HDMI Ninja, to the SDI Samurai, the Ronan series of rugged field recorders featuring XLRs and fitted power supply, and most recently the fantastic Samurai Blade and Ninja Blade.

More than just a recording device

The ProRes/DNxHD recorders are more than recording devices. Built into the Ninja and Samurai products is what is called Smart Edit - which enables you to log shots while recording or, later while previewing footage. The XML list which is generated can then be imported in Apples’ Final Cut Pro X and all the information you have marked for clips as Favorites and Rejects will then be read by Final Cut Pro X. This can be a great timesaver as effectively you can pre-edit your footage before you have even opened your NLE.

Atomos Ninja
Atomos samurai

See it. Believe it.

The Ninja Blade and Samurai Blade both feature a 1280 x 720 high quality viewing monitor which needs to be seen to be believed. Both devices feature Waveform Monitor/Vectorscope, false colour, peaking, zebras and audio display.

Furthermore, the devices can triggered from cameras to recorder, therefore providing dual recording: one in-camera and one external to the Ninja Blade or Samurai Blade. In many cases the internal compressed recording is a backup whilst the external ProRes or DNxHD recording becomes the high quality 10-bit master.

New killer products from Atomos

Announced at NAB 2014 are two killer products from Atomos:

(i) Shogun – The 4K and HD external recorder with in-built 1920 × 1080 screen. When paired with the newly announced Sony AS7 camera, 4K recording at extremely high quality will be possible

(ii) Ninja Star – the $295 HDMI ProRes recorder. Small enough to attach to any camera, ideal for high quality recording from cameras which traditionally would have recorded compressed images

Both of these products will be available very soon in 2014.

Atomos founders, Jeromy Young and Ian Overliese



More videos from the Atomos YouTube channel


Ninja Blade

Content Publisher Rick Young Ltd