My purchase of a field video recorder for my video production could be seen as one of
the best investments I have made to date.
It was a little pricey, but the functionality, benefits, and convenience I’ve gained from
using it have been invaluable to my work.
In today’s video, let’s cover 5 reasons I think you should invest in a video recorder,
right after this.
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A video field recorder is basically a tiny computer with a very high quality monitor
and a capture card built-in - but with much better results than you could achieve trying
to replicate that with a computer.
Examples of these would be the BlackMagic Video Assist, or the Atomos lines of Ninja
and Shogun products.
Personally, I have an Atomos Ninja Inferno that I purchased last year when I was shooting
my OBS Master Class.
A field recorder takes a video signal via HDMI or SDI (depending on your model and camera)
and records it to a SSD in a very high quality format.
Let’s jump into the list of reasons you should invest in one.
Number 1 - Longer record times Many professional DSLRs and mirrorless cameras
shoot amazing video these days, but they still frequently get limited by how long they can
record in-camera.
With a video recorder, as long as your camera produces clean video out via HDMI or SDI,
you can record for however long your storage drive can sustain!
Speaking of which, you can inherently get longer record times simply by recording to
SSDs with a video recorder instead of constantly filling up and swapping SD cards or those
insanely expensive CFAST 2.0 cards.
You can get massive 500GB to multi-terabyte SSDs and record for hours.
Especially on cameras like the Panasonic GH5 and GH5s where it’s already recording to
super high 400mbps files anyway, you get better run time with SSDs.
Number 2 - Higher quality video In many cases, you can actually get higher
quality video recorded to a video recorder than in your camera.
Most cameras record to H264 compressed files, which have their own artifacting and noise.
Video recorders typically record to the ProRes or DNx codecs, which are substantially higher
quality and much less prone to any sort of additional compression artifacting.
They’re not technically “lossless” btu they’re pretty darn close.
Some cameras like the previously-mentioned GH5 can record to 400mbps 10-bit files, but
they’re still H264.
You can get more runway with a ProRes file instead.
And in some cases, your camera might actually output a higher quality video format than
it records internally.
The cameras I primarily shoot with, the Panasonic G7 - it records to a 4:2:0 8-bit file internally
to the SD card, but it outputs a 4:2:2 color space file wrapped in a 10-bit signal - still
technically 8-bit, but 10-bit is more efficient and clean at compressing than 8-bit even with
an 8-bit source - which is higher quality in terms of color accuracy and reproduction.
This can be very important if you’re cropping in a lot, plan on pushing the colors a lot
in color grading, or chroma keying for a green screen.
Number 3 - Shot tracking & Faster Editing Recording to a video recorder instead of in
your SD card an actually improve your editing workflow, as well!
Most recorders come with tools to label your shots, flag which ones you wish to use, what
kinds of shots they are and so on - which can help speed up editing.
Plus, the codecs they use - ProRes and DNx - are much more resource efficient when on
an editing timeline.
Despite the massive bitrates, it’s much easier to edit footage from video recorders
than the H264 files your camera records internally.
Number 4 - It’s a field monitor These things aren’t just recorders (usually)
they’re also field monitors!
And sometimes big ones at that - my Ninja Inferno is 7 inches.
That’s a lot more space to see your shot and frame better.
Plus they come with all sorts of helpful features to make sure you’re getting the correct
shots - focus peaking to show what’s in focus, zebra-ing to show when things are over-exposed,
false color to map skin tones, HDR representation and viewing LUTs to see what your final shot
might look like.
That plus being a bigger screen that you can move around your shoot makes this a lot easier
to work with than your on-camera screen - especially if you are a solo creator.
Lastly, Number 5 - it can also be a color grading monitor.
These field video recorders are built with high-quality, color-accurate screens to be
as accurate as possible.
This means that you can hook them up to your computer via HDMI and use them as the best
color-grading monitor you probably have, unless you’re working at a full production studio
or something.
And certain ones like my Ninja Inferno can also support HDR and be used to work with
HDR footage if your primary monitors don’t support it, as well.
This is hugely beneficial.
As you can see, a video recorder can be a wonderful investment for your video production.
In a sense, the recorder becomes the “brain” of your camera setup and makes you a bit less
reliant on specific features of camera bodies.
Plus, it’s useful in every step of the production process, not just during video capture.
A lot of people were confused why I spent a thousand bucks on one of these to shoot
my OBS Master Class, but hopefully this helps showcase some of the reasons.
I used it for my lengthy camera recordings, for desktop capture of OBS that I needed to
zoom in very tightly on UI elements, and more.
It was probably the best investment I’ve made in a while for my setup.
Product links to a few recommended video recorders will be in the description below.
Down there, hit the like button and subscribe for more tech education.
I’m EposVox, and I’ll see you in the next one.