I’m going to start out this review by saying that I spent over a thousand dollars on my
Atomos Ninja Inferno video recorder (with a reviewer discount) last fall and I believe
it to be the best investment I have made in my production setup.
But, like with anything, it isn’t perfect.
There’s some quirks, and I really feel like the ecosystem around it has not matured, and
we’re going to review it today after almost an entire year of use.
Let’s jump in right after this.
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Full disclosure as always: I received a slight reviewer’s discount on my purchase of this
recorder from Atomos last fall.
Atomos is not paying for this video, they have not purchased ads on this channel, and
are not seeing this review before it is posted nor has any input into what is said or how
things are said.
There will also be a recording drive that I mention later in the review that was sent
on loan for review a few months back and has been sent back - but same rules apply to them,
as well.
Now, onto the review.
Generally speaking, I believe a video recorder to be a pretty solid investment for anyone’s
video production setup.
I actually should have already released a video covering my top 5 reasons that one might
want to invest in a video recorder.
Check that out if you haven’t already.
A video field recorder such as this one is a mini computer with a screen that takes your
camera’s video signal and records it to a SSD, but there’s so much more functionality
to it.
Atomos regularly releases new recorders in their Ninja and Shogun lines, with upgraded
features and various sizes.
The new one that a lot of YouTubers have been getting this year is the 5-inch “Ninja V”
- but feature wise they will be quite similar.
From what I’ve been able to asses, the difference between the Shogun and Ninja lines primarily
include that the Shogun can capture RAW (and now ProRes RAW) via SDI and has better audio
support, whereas the Ninja can’t capture RAW and can only capture via HDMI - though
there’s hints of ProRes RAW support being a possibility… somehow....
In the Ninja V.
The Ninja Inferno is a 7-inch field monitor and video recorder that can capture up to
4K 60FPS, be that UHD 4K or full DCI 4K.
It can also capture up to 1080p 120FPS.
It can record in full 4:2:2 10-bit color space if your camera supports it.
Support for non-standard resolutions such as 2560x1440 and 2K (2048x1080) is not really
there and you’ll either end up with no signal detected or it will adapt it to 1080p.
It can also capture HDR, wide gamut and a variety of Log formats, as well.
It features a wonderful 1920x1200 IPS screen with Rec 709 color gamut and 1500 nits HDR
capability and 3D LUT support.
It’s also a touch screen to control everything.
Around the frame you have rubber bumpers to help it survive drops, vents which will get
quite warm during use, quarter-inch twenty thread taps for mounting, a power button,
headphone jack,power input, and the secure audio connector.
The back holds the SSD via their “Master Caddy II” system, just a plastic caddy you
screw to the SSD, and two Sony NPF style battery slots.
I love this, as I get to keep using the same ecosystem for batteries as much of my other
equipment.
It comes with a padded protective case, a power supply, and one master caddy for a SSD.
I got mine with the Accessory kit, which came with two batteries, a charger, another power
cable, a big Pelican-style case to keep it all in, a few cables, a sun hood, and 4 more
SSD caddies.
Sadly, this did not include a HDMI cable nor an audio breakout cable.
I was stupid and bought the official one separate upon realizing this, which was like a hundred
dollars for some reason.
But you can apparently buy generic ones cheaper.
There aren’t much more by way of accessories for these devices, however.
There’s a cage you can buy - but no one seems to have a reasonable proper multi-drive
dock.
Or much of anything else.
This surprised me, as something that’s supposed to be used in big production situations - I’d
love a big like 4-bay SSD caddy dock that connects via USB 3 or USB C. But that doesn’t
exist.
GDrive or someone has a two-bay dock that is insanely expensive, but that’s it.
I might have to try to build my own using a bunch of USB to SSD adapters and a USB hub
and some Lego pieces or something.
We’ll see.
For now, I’m just using a StarTech SATA to USB C adapter.
The screen is great.
It’s high quality, IPS, a bit reflective but has been incredibly useful for monitoring
myself as a solo shooter.
It has all the usual assist features you might expect - focus assist, zebra-ing, LUTs and
HDR recreation support, different framing modes, etc.
You can even hook it up to your computer and use it as a color grading monitor, even for
HDR, which is neat.
Quality-wise, the recordings are fantastic, as well.
It supports various ProRes modes out of the box, HQ, 422, and LT and if you register your
Ninja on their website, you can manually activate DNxHR and HD recording in HQX, HQ, SQ, and
LB modes.
It was a tad inconvenient to have to manually activate it - I’m guessing they have to
pay per license activation, so it was cheaper to eat the cost on the more commonly-used
ProRes and then save money by only paying for DNx licenses when people really want them.
Also, DNx records to a MOV container or wrapper instead of MXF.
This isn’t a problem for editing, of course, but might confuse some media players and prevent
them from playing it.
In the highest quality modes, video bitrates reach almost 1gbps, which is a LOT of data,
but the efficiency of the codecs make them easier to edit on a timeline than a camera’s
recorded H264 codec.
But the files are HUGE.
You can save on space by lowering the quality profiles to LT for ProRes or LB for DNx, but
I’ve never found the need.
Get you a fast, supported 1TB SSD or higher and you should be alright.
And again, quality is great.
I have used this with both my camera and my desktop and the sharpness is just amazing.
Plus for desktop recordings, it allows me to take my DCI 4K60 signal and zoom in a lot
to show tiny UI details without losing a lot of quality.
For my Panasonic G7 - my current primary camera - I get an added quality bonus, too.
The G7 only records to 8-bit 4:2:0 color space internally, but outputs 4:2:2 10-bit via HDMI.
So I actually get to record a more professional signal from the sensor, which is great.
It also captures HDR, wide gamut, and a variety of Log formats.
I’ve used it to capture HDR gameplay for different testing from my PS4 Pro and it looks
fantastic.
This is also what Digital Foundry uses for their HDR capture and analyses.
Pretty awesome.
Something worth noting, however.
If the signal coming out of your camera is too under-exposed, like a significant amount,
you might wind up with digital noise added in recording with the Atomos that could potentially
be handled a little better via the internal recording in your camera.
I encountered this a couple times with my G7 where I was dumb and it was far too dark
- there was much more noise than I’d ever seen from my G7.
This suspicion was kind of confirmed when Max Yuryev (I hope I didn’t butcher that
too too badly) posted a video about ProRes RAW vs S-LOG 2 from his Sony FS5.
When he under-exposed to a seriously destructive degree, his internal recording was noisy,
but somewhat usable as a super noisy clip, whereas the copy recorded into his Atomos
Shogun had multi-colored digital noise from the actual digital gain being applied to the
signal.
So just keep that in mind.
Physically, this thing is built like a tank.
I’ve never personally dropped it on concrete, but I forsee it surviving just fine.
And I’ve seen quite a few older Ninjas in the field that were all cracked and stuff
and still working fine.
It does get very hot, and the fan does make some noise.
I’d make sure it’s not directly next to a microphone, but otherwise it hasn’t been
loud enough to contribute to room noise and get picked up in audio otherwise.
It’s also VERY heavy, especially when loaded up with a SSD and both batteries.
This caused me a bit of trouble trying to figure out how to mount the thing onto tripods.
My videographer buddies kept recommending these little friction arms and swore by the
Aputure A9 (LOOK UP) one, but while the arms themselves stayed together holding up the
Ninja, the quarter-twenty mount to a clamp or tripod would always spin under the weight.
My buddy Technical DIY finally recommended this Impact super clamp system that works
way better and has no problem holding up this much weight.
I’ll have links to it in the video description.
This recorder can support 2 or 8 channel 24-bit audio via HDMI, depending on your camera,
or 2 channel balanced XLR analog input and output, as well.
This is what appealed to me initially, as I thought it might be a replacement for my
audio recorder, as well.
However, the poor documentation of its audio features - seemingly no user base using it
- and the expensive cable were quick turnoffs.
I bought the cable, and then the pre-amps, though providing phantom power, were not good
enough to power my Rode NTG-2, - the mic I was initially using when I got this.
MORE AUDIO TESTS
Another annoying thing with the audio is that even if you’re sending stereo audio to it,
it records to many different channels.
This results in my scratch camera audio being on the last two tracks.
To then sync up in Premiere, I have to manually re-assign channels and a lot of extra steps.
I just wish I could customize track order on the device itself.
Really annoying.
The rest of the operating system on this recorder supports a lot more features than I could
effectively showcase.
There’s tools to adjust shot and scene and take order, you can flag shots as good or
bad, medium, close or wide shots, etc.
Most of this involves metadata that is only native to Final Cut Pro X, but there is a
third-party tool… somewhere… to convert that metadata to Premiere.
Not something I mess with much.
You can also get a realtime visualization of how HDR will look from HDR or log sources,
how LUTs will look, downsampling, etc.
I also wanted to talk about the SSDs.
You have to buy your own, of course, and Atomos provides a massive list of drives they have
tested and what they’re compatible for.
Atomost has a direct partnership and endorsement with GDrive, which is made by WD, but these
are some of the more expensive drives.
I originally went with two of the cheapest drives on the compatibility list - a WD Blue
500GB and later a SanDisk Ultra II 1TB SSD.
These are what I used for the first 6 to 8 months.
They’re rated for full 4k 60fps recording capability and compatibility, but I had similar
issues with most of them.
While recording both 4K 30FPS and 4K 60FPS, with these drives, the recordings will randomly
get broken up into chunks, and sometimes there will be portions of the recording missing
in-between the cuts.
It’s as if the buffer is getting full and it can’t keep writing for a few seconds.
More often than not it was just a cut and no missing footage, but one time I had almost
an entire minute gone.
Quite frustrating.
I reached out to a couple companies, and I got to try out the AngelBird Atomos 4KRAW
SSD - a purpose-built SSD that fills the full caddy slot, has a wonderful metal housing
which I believe acts as a heatsink, and even has a cut out to grip when removing from the
Ninja Inferno.
This drive had ZERO such problems and was quite fast to transfer files off of it, as
well.
I was quite impressed with the build here.
They also let me try out their V90 SD cards, too, which performed great.
But these drives are still quite expensive.
I later found a Samsung 850 Pro SATA SSD on eBay for an affordable price and haven’t
looked back.
This thing has never had that cutout or drop with my Ninja Inferno, ever, to date.
So if you’re looking for cheaper drives, look for Samsung 850 and 860 Pros.
Not EVOs.
You can get some cheap on eBay because people think they’re dead because they have a firmware
bug that makes them act funky upon unexpected power loss.
But an hour of power cycling or less and you have a nearly-new working drive.
And I believe there’s even a firmware update to fix the bug once you get up and running.
Overall, like I said, investing in the Atomos Ninja Inferno was a great decision for my
work.
Over the past year, it’s been a huge help with video production.
It made producing my OBS Master Class way easier, it makes some desktop captures a lot
smoother, and has been helpful when I do need HDR captures, too.
It becomes basically the “brain” of your video cameras and makes you less reliant on
specific bodies.
Now that I’m realizing my initial planned upgrade path of going from the G7 to the GH5
may not have been where I go, part of me wishes I went with the Shogun Inferno, instead, which
can do RAW via SDI - but I can probably trade up eventually.
If you’re still not sure if a video recorder like this is for you, check out my video on
5 reasons you should invest in a video recorder, linked in the video description.
Down there are affiliate product links to buy the Ninja Inferno for yourself, along
with the like button and subscribe button so you can keep learning about awesome tech.
I’m EposVox, and I’ll see you next time.