Atomos Ninja-2 User Manual EDITION 3: MAY 2013 Have you registered your Ninja-2 yet? Upgrade to 3 year warranty now. Website: www.atomos.com | Sales: sales@atomos.com | Support: support@atomos.
Contents Safety Instructions Warranty & Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Ninja-2 is designed to a high standard but there are some things you should be aware of to prolong the life of the unit and for your own safety. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Warranty & Conditions Notice Software License Agreement Copyright © 2013 ATOMOS Global Pty Ltd (‘referred to as ATOMOS’). All rights reserved. All information in this document is subject to change without notice. No part of the document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, without the express written permission of ATOMOS. A reference to ATOMOS includes its related entities, subsidiaries and parent company.
Introduction Thank you for choosing the Atomos Ninja-2: your 10-bit HDMI Recorder/Monitor/Player. It’s the most compact portable recorder available, with extremely long battery life, a high-resolution screen, uncompressed-quality playout and real-time pulldown removal. Software updates for your Ninja-2 will be issued regularly. Registering your Ninja-2 now will ensure you are kept abreast of any updates. Software updates and information will also be available at: www.atomos.
1. What’s included We try to provide you with as complete a package as possible: you don’t have to add anything except 2.5” storage media (you can buy additional packs of empty Master Disk Caddies from your Atomos Reseller) and some cables to suit your set-up, like HDMI cables and tripod screws. All other parts necessary to use the Ninja-2 are included. Here’s the complete list Atomos does not sell storage and your package will not contain any spinning disks or SSDs.
2. What you also need Spinning Disk Drives (HDD) These are the raw storage medium for Ninja-2. You can use either traditional “spinning” disks, or the new solid state ones. Choose 2 ½” spinning drives if your Ninja-2 is going to be attached to a tripod or if it is not going to be subject to excessive vibration. For harsher conditions, choose a solid state drive.
2. What you also need HDMI cables (not included) Standard 1/4” Camcorder Mount There’s a lot of mythology about HDMI cables. Most people can’t tell the difference in picture quality between expensive ones and cheaper ones. There shouldn’t be any difference if as long as all the digits going through the cable arrive at the other end. And yet some supposedly “top end” cables can cost hundreds of times more than you necessarily have to spend.
3. Mounting disks in the Master Caddy Mounting drives in the Master Caddy This is simplicity itself. Just insert the disk into the caddy, and secure with four screws. The caddy is light and the disk just needs to be held securely. Don’t over-tighten the screws. There are no connections to make because pushing the caddy into the Ninja-2 or the Docking station makes all the connections for you. Spinning disks and SSDs are very sensitive to damage from static electricity.
4. Connecting the Ninja-2 and powering up Batteries Battery number 1 Gently slide down into battery slot/s and lock into position. Push latch to release battery The Ninja-2 is a battery powered device, and has a special feature to ensure that you never have to interrupt a recording to change a battery. We will come to this shortly. Like all batteries, you will need to take care of them.
4. Connecting the Ninja-2 and powering up Turning ON power to the Ninja-2 The start button is located on the right hand side of the unit (as you look at the screen). Momentarily press the circular button on the right side of the Ninja-2 as you look at the screen to power up the unit. After a couple of seconds you will see the Atomos logo, and then the Ninja-2 Home Screen.
6. Other physical features Master Caddy Slot Release and remove Master Caddy On the left hand side of the unit (as you face the screen) is a slot for Ninja-2 Master Disk Caddies. To insert a caddy, gently push until it clicks into position. To eject it, use the latch on the right hand side of the Ninja-2 (as pictured) Formatting disks - see page 13 The Master Caddy is hot-swappable, so you can do this at any time – even while the unit is turned on.
7. Using the Ninja-2 Using the Ninja-2 The Ninja-2 Touchscreen The Ninja-2 is controlled via an intuitive touchscreen interface. There are large, obvious controls for Record, Play, Monitor, and Menu, as well as the following information: Ninja-2 features a very high quality 800x480 pixel video touch screen. Most of us are now familiar with the idea of touchscreens, but there is an important difference between Ninja-2’s screen and those you might find on a smartphone.
7. Using the Ninja-2 cont. Home Screen and Menu Functions Rec (Record) This is the icon you touch to begin a recording. Touch it again to stop a recording. While recording the Rec icon changes to a Stop icon. Once your recording has started you have the option to touch the Mon icon to view the signal you are recording. Ninja-2 uses a unit name, scene, shot and take convention to name the clips. Select the clip you want to play by touching the file name and this will start to playback.
7. Using the Ninja-2 cont. Scene & Shot You will see Locked will flash on the screen. Press again to Unlock. Allows you to select the scene and shot number that will be recorded next. To select press scene or shot at the top and the number you wish to use from the list below (up to 999). The number you choose will then be shown underneath the word Scene or Shot in a larger font and will be underlined. The take number is automatically increased with each take.
7. Using the Ninja-2 cont. Battery Indicator Shows whether you’ve got one or two batteries connected. If there is no battery connected a number will not be displayed in the appropriate slot. Touching the Battery Indicator takes you to the Batteries screen where you can closely monitor the status of the Batteries. When a battery is running low its icon will flash.
7. Using the Ninja-2 cont. Audio In Audio In is in the bottom left corner of the screen, just below Headphone Monitoring Level. There are four small squares, each of which represents an audio input. Inputs 1 and 2 are the two digital embedded inputs which come via the HDMI. Inputs 1 and 2 A are the two analogue stereo line level inputs. Audio Frame delay will allow you to compensate for out of sync audio/ video with certain DSLRs, for example the Nikon D800.
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8. Monitoring and Recording cont. SmartControl SmartControl is a versatile set of functions used to control the starting and stopping of recording by automatic or external means. This section outlines the different methods to start and stop recording. Ninja-2 Start and Stop record control can be triggered by the following methods: 1. Home Page Touch Screen 2. Monitor Page 3. HDMI Rolling Timecode trigger 4.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Using the Ninja-2 as a field monitor and viewfinder With its 5” high-resolution color TFT 800x480pixel screen, the Ninja-2 makes a great field monitor. So good, in fact, that you don’t need any separate monitoring equipment. You could even say that the Ninja-2 is a “Recording Monitor”. SmartMonitor Focus Peaking Focus peaking allows the user to ensure their recordings are always in focus. The parts of the image in focus are indicated by the selected colour.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. False Colour Scale: SmartLog To help you determine the exposure range with more accuracy, please use the scale below: SmartLog gives you the ability to tag your clips during recording (or playback, more on this later). By the pressing the Favourite and Reject icons you can assign a “good clip” or “bad clip”.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Your final stage is to Export the XML flag: • Enter Play or Media Information • On the bottom right hand side there is an icon Export XML SmartLog: PLAYBACK MODE Once recording has finished you will see the green or red in/out points shown on the timeline of the clip once selected.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Organising material on the disk Ninja-2 uses a convention: unitname, scene, shot and take naming You can see along the top you have scene and Shot with a large underlined number, this is the current selection. NINJA2_S001_S001_T001 This was recorded on a Ninja-2 unit called NINJA2, the scene selected was 1, the shot selected was 1 and it was take 1. Below is an example of your playback browser window showing file names.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Atomos Anti-Shock Technology File Recovery Spinning disks are very reliable in a controlled environment where movement and vibration are minimal and within the capabilities of the devices. They are ideal for low-cost recording, but will suffer reduced performance if they are jolted or receive a sudden impact. From AtomOS 3.0 onwards, a file recovery feature is included, in the event of a disk being removed, or a battery running out, while recording.
9. Timecode Using Timecode Time of Day Touching the timecode display on the Ninja-2’s home screen, just below the four main coloured controls, will take you to the Timecode setup screen (this is also accessible by touching Menu and then Timecode) With this selected, each new clip that is created will contain embedded timecode accurately showing the time of day that it was recorded, based on the internal Ninja-2 Time of Day clock.
10. Pulldown What is Pulldown? 1080p23.98 or 1080p24 Many professional and consumer cameras available today do not send true 1080p24, 1080p23.98, 1080p25, 1080p29.97 or 1080p30 signals down their SDI or HDMI outputs. Instead they send 1080i59.94 in NTSC regions (eg USA, Japan), and 1080i50 in PAL regions (eg Europe) In order to convert the signal from the internal recording format to 1080i5994 or 1080i50, they use a process called 3:2 or 2:2 pulldown. Camera Setting Pulldown Ninja-2 Receives 1080p23.
11. Playback & Playout Using the Playback and Playout features The Ninja-2 has a powerful playback function that allows you to playback pristine Apple ProRes or (optionally) DNxHD recordings in real-time with controls to navigate quickly to any part of a clip, the ability to play recorded content faster than normal playback speed or step through the clip frame-by-frame to check your footage very accurately.
11. Playback & Playout cont. Pause mode Once a file has been selected for playback, you will see the following options: Scrub Bar This is the thick blue line along the bottom of the playback screen. A vertical white “now” line shows the current playback position. You can think of the scrub bar as representing the length of the clip. If you touch the scrub bar, playback will start from that position.
11. Playback & Playout cont. Loop Mode LOOP MODE The Ninja-2 has the ability to play back a single clip in loop mode via the HDMI output. This can performed with captured clips at full broadcast quality or the final edited clips from your hard drive. To do this: • Go into Playback mode REMOVE OVERLAY At any time, you can hide all the visible controls by simply touching the screen (away from any controls) once. Touch it again to bring back the controls.
12. Connecting and Editing Connect To access and edit your recorded material, connect the Master Caddy Docking Station to a Mac® or Windows® editing workstation via USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. Eject the Master Caddy from your Ninja-2 and insert it into the Docking Station. After a short wait, the recorded video will be accessible to the target computer via a standard disk (exFAT) file system.
12. Connecting and Editing cont. Importing Final Cut Pro (version 7), Final Cut X , Adobe CS5 (with 5.51 update), EDIUS 6, Sony Vegas 10, Lightworks and Avid Media Composer 6 support imported files from your Ninja-2 disk. You’ll see the folders in the Ninja-2 drive. Select the folder containing the footage you want to import: Importing Ninja-2 footage into Final Cut Pro You can import Ninja-2 footage into Final Cut Pro (FCP) in just a few simple steps.
12. Connecting and Editing SmartLog with FCP X 2.
13. Using Ninja-2 with external power supplies AC Adaptor (included) This connects on the battery slot on the back of the Ninja-2. Please ensure it is connected to slot 1. The end of the adaptor will connect to a mains plug. Alternatively you can use any NP-Compatible Charger or power supply, as long as they use a “Dummy Battery”.
15. Software updates Updating AtomOS (Firmware) Problems when installing AtomOS From time to time we will issue software updates for your Ninja-2. To update the firmware (that’s the software that runs inside your Ninja-2), there is a simple procedure you have to follow. Very occasionally, the firmware update process can go wrong. This might be because of an incomplete or corrupted download. • Go to www.atomos.com/ninja-2-firmware/ • Locate and download the firmware upgrade 1. Extract the file ATOMNJA2.
16. Ninja-2 Technical Specifications Construction note: Ninja-2 Main Unit Your Ninja-2 is designed to operate in ambient temperatures up to 40°C/105°F. It features a fanless design which dissipates internal heat through the aluminium chassis. Light Weight 370g / 13oz (without batteries & HDD) 670g / 23.5oz (with batteries & HDD) Dimensions 115(W)x87(H)x41(D)mm Construction Aircraft grade aluminium for durability + portability. Fanless for silent operation. Operating Power 3.
