Based on your questions from my last video on the new Legalize
option on the Ninja V, mixed with requests I receive from
time to time asking how to set up the Ninja V with X camera,
I've decided to make this rapid-fire Ninja V setup guide.
Let's get undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and I move naturally at 24 frames per second.
OK, so let's jump right into this guide, and let's start with
the input tab because I first want to address the many
questions I had on the previous video regarding the behaviour
of the new Legalize toggle, and if you have no idea what
I'm talking about right now, that means you didn't see
the last video on the 10.3 firmware update on the Ninja V.
You should probably go watch that now.
OK, so make sure that you don't have any
of these other buttons pressed because otherwise,
we can't access the red menu. For instance, if you have
the yellow button pressed, then it's the yellow menu.
So, take any of those off, press the red menu button, and we'll
start on the input tab. This is where a lot of you were
having problems because I was showing you,
"Look, you can turn Legalize on and off."
and some of you were saying comments even like,
"Well, that's because you're not even shooting in Log."
And, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding here about how
the Ninja actually works with a camera 'cause I also
get questions all the time asking if I can record 4:4:4,
if I can record 10-bit if your camera doesn't support it.
It's important for you to realize that
the Ninja doesn't change anything about the camera.
So, it doesn't really matter what buttons you
press on the Ninja, it doesn't make your camera
shoot in Log or not shoot in Log or shoot in 10-bit or 8-bit.
None of that's going to be the case.
So, my camera is in Log, and it was in Log yesterday when
I was demonstrating this, and regardless of what
you press in the Ninja, it's not going to change that.
So, this little toggle here that many of you were
confused about which says, "Log/HDR",
turning that on and off doesn't put anything into Log,
and it's actually just for HDR processing.
And, I think this seems to be the most common
confusion about this. Now yes, you are correct
that if you turn that on, the Legalize option that
I was just talking about in my last video goes away,
but that's OK because what this is for is for processing
HDR directly in the Ninja V.
It was actually, you know, like a proud thing that we're talking
about Atom HDR and all that stuff when it came out.
It's basically to save time so that if you just wanted
to set this up, record it that way and then put it
in Final Cut, your HDR workflow is already, mostly, done.
But, if you're just trying to capture whatever
the camera is putting out, you don't need this.
In fact, I wouldn't even turn that on because it's
just a waste of time and it adds confusion,
and it disables things like the Legalize option.
But, let's talk about those toggles a little bit.
So, the one over on the left and the one over on the right,
if you press the one on the right, it tries to figure
everything out for you automatically, HDR Auto.
If you turn that off, you can turn this on,
and then you have to manually dial in what you're sending it.
Again, this doesn't control anything on the camera.
This is up to you to input what the camera is sending.
So right now, we've got Sony S-Log2 and S-Gamut,
and this doesn't do anything to the image.
In fact, it's going to be difficult for you to see,
but if you can, kind of, observe the image around the outside
as I turn it off and on, you might notice a slight flash
as we turn it off and on, but once it settles, it returns
to the exact same image, and I've done tests by
recording this on and off, and different settings, and all
the outputs are exactly the same once you record them.
But, what it does do is enable some options
in this monitoring menu.
So, if we go over to the monitor tab here,
you see how we have Native and LUT?
I have a LUT on right now. Let me turn that off
so you can see what the... looks like natively.
OK, so we have Native, and we have LUT, and if we go
back to the input menu and we turn this on
and then go back to the monitoring menu,
it, it might be a little bit confusing
because you're like, "Why do I have to jump back and forth
between the two different menus to actually see what it does?"
but that's how it works. Now, we have Rec.709, HLG and PQ,
and these are ways to process the image already in
the Ninja V, so when you record it, they're processed and done,
and then you can deliver them that way, or you can probably
even deliver them out of the HDMI port for broadcast.
So, we've got Rec.709, which, obviously,
gives you a much more contrasty finished image.
You've got HLG, which is designed for HDR,
and then we've got PQ, which is the same thing depending on
if you're in HDR, you know what these are.
If you don't plan of doing HDR workflows, again, you can ignore
them, but those are your different HDR image processing.
And, in case you don't believe me,
because some of you were quoting the manual,
and you also seemed to have some confusion about that,
I'm going to read right from the latest Ninja V user manual.
If you go down to the Video Input section,
which is where we were over here,
and you read the Camera Output part,
which is the thing along the bottom, it says,
"For the best image processing results, it is essential
to match the Ninja V settings to the camera input settings."
This is what you guys were quoting when you asked me,
"I thought we were supposed to turn that on?" But if you
move over to the Log/HDR explanation here, it says,
"Turn on to enable HDR image processing inside the Ninja V.
Bring the control of post into your shoot - record,
preview and review using HDR." So, that's what it's for,
and if you want to record the file exactly as it's coming
out of the camera if you want to record the same thing that your
camera would record internally in an SD card, turn that off.
Or, you can turn it on and set it to Native,
but why have it on? Because now, when it's off,
you can turn on Legalize, and that gives you the benefit
of the, what the whole previous video was about.
And if you have it off, well now, the Ninja V is going
to record the exact same thing that the camera would record
internally into the SD card, but then you introduce
those problems where you can't monitor correctly,
and Ninja thinks that it's a legal range when it's not.
Again, watch the previous video, but hopefully,
that's an answer to that, that was causing some confusion.
You only turn that on if you plan on doing in-Ninja HDR
processing or Rec.709 processing.
But, if you just want to capture what your camera
is normally doing, just leave it on "off".
That's my best advice for that.
Now, let's move through some of the rest of the tabs,
and I'll give you some general tips of how I set things up
to make it easier. So, in the output tab, we have a few other
options right now. I don't have an HDMI cable coming out of the
output, but this is where you could choose if you wanted
to scale it down, so if you wanted 4K coming out,
or if you wanted 1080 or change that, you could do that.
Also, you can enable your HDMI timecode option there.
Also, down here, you have HDR options so that
the HDMI that's coming out, you can make that HDR
broadcast-ready delivery as well, and you'll have the same
options between, like, HLG and PQ and that kind of thing.
If you go to the Record tab,
this is where you set your codecs,
obviously, I'm using DNx. If you don't have
this option available, it's because you didn't activate it.
You only get ProRes, but if you want to use DNx,
you have to activate the device and then it unlocks
the DNx mode. It doesn't cost anything, but it is
an extra step. A lot of people asking about the different
quality options, like, which one should I use for which purpose?
What I would recommend is looking at the data tables
for the different, whether it's ProRes or DNx,
and it will show you the different bit rates
and the different quality. The most common question
is whether standard ProRes is enough or if you should use
the higher quality one or if the lower quality one is fine.
I would say that if you're doing YouTube or anything like that,
standard quality or even the LT version,
whatever it's called, is probably fine.
You don't need the higher quality one.
But space is kind of cheap these days, so if you
want to preserve these files as, like, masters, then I'd probably
do the higher quality one because, on a 1TB SSD,
you still get, like, three hours of run time,
so it's up to you, but no you don't need
the highest quality for, like,
an 8-bit YouTube output. You're not really going to see
a difference. Let's move on to the File tab.
Now, there is something new here in the latest firmware which
I didn't mention in the previous video, which is that instead of
Scene/Shot/Take, you can change it to Rolling Scene/Shot/Take.
For the most part, though, there's--
you can't do any damage in here. Just set this up however you
want your files to be recorded.
Nothing to really worry about there. OK, now, Meters.
This tab does have some things that can go wrong for you.
I've had some people tell me that they're not getting
audio from their camera into their Ninja via HDMI.
As you can you see when I talk, you see how we've got
levels here, coming on track 1 and track 2?
If you enable too many tracks, which you can do by
pressing Record and, or if you enable the Analog,
what might happen, these are prioritized from left to right,
and some programs will only start playing the first tracks
in your track list automatically, so,
track 1 and 2.
So if you have Analog turned on,
Analog refers to the microphone inputs on the device itself.
So, if you have a microphone connected to the Atomos,
you need Analog turned on, and you see these levels go.
But, if you're bypassing audio from your camera into the Ninja,
it's actually best if you turn those off
because otherwise, they'll write to track 1 and track 2,
and then you might not even hear your audio.
So, instead, it'll go now, 1 and 2 from the camera
is the priority recording, and then you'll hear it.
So, I would turn off Analog if you're bypassing audio.
And this will work regardless of your configuration
on the cameras. So, right now, I don't have a microphone
connected to the camera, so what we're picking up here
is just the in-camera microphone.
But, if I attached, say a shotgun microphone
to the camera and then connected to the microphone in,
well now, that's what would come through there.
Basically, however you have your camera setup,
that's the audio that's gonna go through and into that.
Or, another way of looking at that is if you plugged
your headphones into the camera and listened to that,
that's what getting transmitted over HDMI.
And that'll generally come through on track 1 and 2 there.
So, press Record on that to enable it.
And if you press the headphone button above it,
that will make the headphone port out on the Atomos.
That's what channel you're monitoring.
Also, about that same problem I mentioned earlier
about some players getting confused,
I would leave Audio Embed set to off.
There's a bit more to this if we jump over to the audio tab.
[pump hissing]
These two, Left Gain and Right Gain,
are for controlling the input volume
of the microphone that you connect directly to the Ninja.
If you're connected to the camera, again,
these are irrelevant, and you want to control
the gain on the camera itself, and that'll control
how loud the signal coming over HDMI is.
So, you don't control it here. Also, same with the input here,
which says Mic Level or Line Level?
That, again, is for the device that's connected
directly to the Ninja. However, the Audio Delay
does do something, and if you're recording from a Sony camera,
I think pretty much all of the recent gen ones, a7 III,
the a6600, and even, even with other Atomos devices
like the Shogun 7, for example, they're all the same.
You want to put a two-frame delay for the Sony cameras.
It might be different for different cameras
like your Panasonic might require something different,
but that's basically when you're routing the audio over HDMI,
there's a difference between how quickly the audio is being
processed and how quickly the video is being processed,
and I found, in my experience, it's about a two-frame delay.
So if you set that to two frame,
and then you do, like, a clock test, you'll find it's much more
closely in sync than if you have it on a zero frame delay,
which is how it comes normally. But you might have to play with
this depending on the camera you use,
but if you're using Sony,
I think it's safe to set it to two.
OK, what else do we have? Let's go over to Media,
that's pretty standard. Plug your device
in there and format it. Timecode-
OK, so I'm, I don't want to go too deep into timecode here
because timecode's one of those things where if you need it,
you, you'll look into it. If you don't need it,
I don't want to waste your time with it. But, if you enable
HDMI timecode and you have it on Auto Restart
for the Source over here, then it works, kind of,
like the camera's timer, which I find useful for the type
of stuff I do where sometimes I just record one-off clips.
That way, I might be able to do a demo here,
but if I press record, and as you can see,
it sets the time up from zero, and then if I stop recording,
it resets back to zero for the next clip.
So, that's the way I would set it up if you just
wanted a basic count-up as I record similar to what
the camera would do natively. OK, next up, Date.
Obviously, set your date and time,
and for this one, I actually recommend checking it
somewhat frequently, not the date so much, but the
time because I do find that the clock drifts a little bit.
Let's see. I set this, like, two days ago.
It's still on time now, but if I checked it in, like,
two weeks, it probably would be off by several minutes.
And you want to keep that up because it's easier when you
look at your metadata, you're trying to organize your files,
you'd rather have an accurate date and time for your files.
It'll make it a lot easier to understand,
especially if you do multiple clips in a day.
You don't want it to say 1 o'clock when you actually shot
it at 7 o'clock. It'll be harder for you to, like, organize
your storage. Battery shows your battery life.
AtomX, that's if you have modules installed and info.
OK, now, if we go to the monitoring menu,
the yellow button, obviously this is where we can turn
everything on, you know, like zebras or whatever, but if we
hit the menu over here, now there's a few more options.
Now, we've already talked about the monitor one.
You can see now that we only have Native and LUT because
we have the Log/HDR thing turned off,
but we're not limited in any way.
We can still record natively just what the camera sees,
or we can put on a monitoring LUT if we want.
And that's basically all you should really need
unless you're trying to do HDR processing
right in the device, which I never try to do.
But if you try to do that, then that's what it's for, but all
the people that were commenting, I don't think that's what you
were trying to do, so leave that thing toggle off.
Really trying to drive that point home.
And then LUTs, we talked about this a bit.
You can load LUTs in here. You can load LUTs
just for monitoring, like, this one,
the Atomos Range Fix, which I included in the description
on my previous video, which, so, first you have to choose
the LUT, so now the LUT's chosen, but then you have
to Monitor and then actually tap LUT,
and then, now you can see it.
And Display, what do we get here? So the Backlight,
Lift, Gamma, Gain. I generally don't monkey with those at all
because my goal is usually to try to create a similar image
on here as to what I would see on the backscreen,
and if I change these, then I'm not accomplishing that anymore.
And so, I think that's pretty much it.
I mean, that's the basic operations of this thing.
The main hurdle that you guys were facing seems to be
that whether to enable that Log thing or not,
and then the other one was audio. So, hopefully,
between those two bits of instruction there,
it should resolve a lot of the issues that you were having.
I would say treat the Ninja a lot more simply.
I know it seems complicated, but I think that you'll have
better results if you just approach it with only
turn on what you need on and try and get a very similar
thing to what's coming out of your camera, because again,
that's what it is. It's recording the HDMI in,
it's not, you know, a change 'em device, where, like,
you turn something from Standard into Log 4:4:4, like,
that's not what it's going to do. So, don't treat it
like that. Treat it basically like a screen recorder,
which is what it is with monitoring tools.
I mean, heck, you can plug your PlayStation
into this and record that, and you wouldn't be asking
the PlayStation, "How come, how do I correctly process the log?"
I mean, so, so I get how it's confusing because of all
the picture profiles on the camera, but just treat this
as a basic recorder, and it'll produce great results for you.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found this video
entertaining or at least helpful. And if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.