Atomos Samurai Blade User Manual EDITION 1: JUNE 2013 Have you registered your Samurai Blade 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 Samurai Blade 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 Samurai Blade: your 10-bit HD-SDI Recorder/Monitor/Player. It’s the most compact portable recorder available, with extremely long battery life, a high-resolution screen, waveform monitor and vectorscope. Samurai Blade preserves the pristine uncompressed video quality from your camera’s sensor by directly encoding it into Apple ProRes® or (optionally) Avid DNxHD® as it records to HDD/SSD, making it instantly compatible with your NLE timeline.
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 accessories to suit your set-up, like HD-SDI cables and tripod screws. All other parts necessary to use the Samurai Blade 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 Samurai Blade. You can use either traditional “spinning” disks, or the new solid state ones. Choose 2 ½” spinning drives if your Samurai Blade 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 HD-SDI cables (not included) Standard 1/4” Camcorder Mount HD-SDI cables are robust physically and electrically: you should rarely have problems with signal transmission unless your cables are either damaged or too long. Please remember that HD-SDI cables use locking connectors and will not simply pull out if they are jerked or tripped over. They are therefore a significant trip hazard, and also a hazard to your equipment, which may be damaged if the cables are mishandled.
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 Samurai Blade 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 Samurai Blade and powering up Battery Battery number 1 Gently slide down into battery slot/s and lock into position. Push latch to release battery The Samurai Blade 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 Samurai Blade and powering up Turning ON power to the Samurai Blade 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 Samurai Blade 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 Samurai Blade Home Screen.
6. Master Caddy and Screw Mounts Master Caddy Slot Master Caddy On the left hand side of the unit (as you face the screen) is a slot for Samurai Blade Master Disk Caddies. To insert a caddy, gently push until it clicks into position. The Master Caddy is hot-swappable, so you can do this at any time – even while the unit is turned on. But don’t do it while recording or you will get a corrupted file that may be unplayable.
7. Using the Samurai Blade Using the Samurai Blade The Samurai Blade is controlled via an intuitive touchscreen interface. Icons and buttons have been designed and laid out in a specific way to ensure operation is simple and fast. The HOME SCREEN displays all necessary technical and functional information. Everything important for operation and adjustment is no more than one touch away.
7. Using the Samurai Blade cont. Home Screen and Menu Functions Rec (Record) Samurai Blade 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. 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.
7. Using the Samurai Blade cont. File Naming 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 Samurai Blade cont. Battery Indicator 1 2 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 Samurai Blade cont. Audio In AUDIO DURING Playback mode When you enter into Playback mode on the Samurai Blade it will only output channels 1/2 on the headphones, please bear this in mind when you select the audio channels for recording. Located in the bottom left corner of the main screen you can see the Audio Monitoring Levels, with access to Audio in. You can see 12 digital channels (via SDI input) and 2 analogue audio channels (via the Stereo Line in).
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8. Monitoring and Recording cont. SmartControl To enable this set Timecode to HD-SDI then set the camera manufacture 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. Samurai Blade Start and Stop record control can be triggered by the following methods: in the timecode menu.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Waveform Monitoring New to AtomOS5 and the Samurai Blade is Waveform Monitoring which can be enabled with only a few button presses.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Waveform Monitor Types Vectorscope Inside the Waveform Monitoring menu, two types of Waveform Monitors are available for use: The Vectorscope display shows emperical colour information of hue (shown as a phase vector), vector and color strength (measured by outward distance from the centre). It is invaluable for setting camera white and black points, identifying areas that are desaturated and for determining if your shot requires color balancing.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Monitor Assist AtomOS5 features SmartMonitor tools that help with making your shot picture perfect. Easily access Zebra bars, Focus Peaking, False Colour and Blue Only Exposure.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Focus Assist Types Zebra Inside the Focus Assist menu, four types of focusing tools are available for use: Zebra lines show the parts of the image that are over exposed relevant to the % level set. 95% is usually used for objects, windows and surfaces. 75% is used for checking over exposure of human faces this will indicate reflective or shiny areas on the face.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Blue Only Exposure Focus Assist Settings Displays a black-and-white image that is based on the blue channel of the input signal. Used to observe the noise content of a video image and the judge the overall exposure quality. From within the Waveform Monitoring menu, press the Settings icon to access the display settings for for Focus Peaking, Zebra, False Colour and Blue Only Exposure.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. SmartLog How to use in Playback mode SmartLog gives you the ability to tag your clips during recording (or playback, more on this later). To review and use the Cut and Tag feature in playback mode, press on the Play icon on the bottom of the screen. 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 • Press this once • You will be shown a please wait screen (the length of time will vary depending on your recording time and amount of flags applied) • Then it will return you to the previous screen You can carry on recording but please remember before you eject the drive to export your XML files.
8. Monitoring and Recording cont. Organising material on the disk Samurai Blade uses a naming convention: unitname, scene, shot and take You can see along the top you have scene and Shot with a large underlined number, this is the current selection. BLADE_S001_S001_T001 This was recorded on a Samurai Blade unit called BLADE, 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.
9. Timecode Using Timecode Time of Day Touching the timecode display on the home screen, just abouve the three 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 Samurai Blade 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.
11. Playback & Playout Using the Playback and Playout features The Samurai Blade 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. Once a file has been selected for playback, you will see the following options: Pause mode 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 The Samurai Blade has the ability to play back a single clip in loop mode via the HD-SDI 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 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 or USB 3.0. Eject the Master Caddy from your Samurai Blade 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 Samurai Blade disk. You’ll see the folders in the Samurai Blade drive. Select the folder containing the footage you want to import: Importing Samurai Blade footage into Final Cut Pro You can import Samurai Blade footage into Final Cut Pro (FCP) in just a few simple steps.
12. Connecting and Editing SmartLog with FCP X 2.
13. Using Samurai Blade with external power supplies AC Adaptor (included) This connects on the battery slot on the back of the Samurai Blade. 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 Samurai Blade. To update the firmware (that’s the software that runs inside your Samurai Blade), 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/samurai-blade-firmware/ • Locate and download the firmware upgrade 1.
16. Samurai Blade Technical Specifications Construction note: Your Samurai Blade 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. If you wish to extend the temperature of operation in high temperature conditions, you can choose an SSD drive, and set the TFT brightness to a minimum. The top and bottom aluminium surfaces next to the tripod screws are the heat sinks.
