Atomos Samurai and Scarlett-X - VOTE HERE!

[Adam Howden]

Hi All,

So I'm starting this thread and copying Atomos in on it so they're got an idea of the appeal of their Samurai product as a companion to the Scarlett-X. The Samurai http://atomos.com/samurai/ looks like a great little and light weight solution for those of us that don't want to shoot 4K all the time. The Sound Devices Pix240 has auto start stop trigger and carries clip names and timecode which is great, but it's twice the price of the Samurai. Also the with Samurai you could just use a couple of say 160GB SSD drives at around $200-$250 each for around 1.5Hrs of Pro Res HQ recording at full HD.

What I want to know is, can Samurai introduce the 'matched - clip name recording' like the Pix240 as a firmware update and hopefully they'll sell like hot cakes for both Epic and Scarlett-X?

Chime in, let's get this happening! :-)

[Brian Iannone]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you lose all the benefits of recording in RAW if you use an external recorder? To me, that makes no sense at all... Why shoot with SCARLET if you're going to abandon the RAW capabilities?

[Joel Kaye]

You'd probably shoot both simultaneously or use the Atmos for quick turnaround projects.

BUT - native support in NLE's is finally making the RED workflow doable. Premiere, AVID and Vegas either are or close to R3D native. And sending to Resolve is currently very cool.

[Scott Miller]

Serve your market. Look at Arri, in reality, most everything I read or people I talk to are recording and delivering ProRes off of it. AND nothing else. With an Atomos/SD whatever you still have the 4K/5K RAW footage on hand.

I am seriously budgeting to get one of the 2 options because sometimes clients want 1080P deliverable. Debayered R3D will still be amazing if you setup everything right before output. Will it remotely compare to the R3D file... no. Will you get more gigs.... more likely yes. 1 or 2 gigs you would not have got will pay for an Atomos @ $1500.

But I would never shoot without a RedMag in and recording even if there was a Samurai in the food chain.

My opinion..... YMMV

[Doug Beatty]

Or if you are a Canon DSLR user that just upgraded, you could go that route. Choosing the right tool for the job is part of the fun!

[Noel Evans]

Why shoot with SCARLET if you're going to abandon the RAW capabilities?

One answer could be: Person A calls me from the US (Im in Aus) and says we need some B roll of location X or we need you to shoot an interview with Mr Y. We need 1080P @ 24fps in either prores or DNxHD. Now, the question I have is why do I want to go through the RAW workflow that costs me time = money, when I can avoid that whole step?

My question though is what is baked in if you go through to Samurai etc - Is the camera delivering a LUT'd rc709 signal from the HD-SDI?

[Mike Van Laanen]

Scott, do you know if this recorder or the SoundEffects recorder will record 120 fps or the 300 fps capability of the Epics?

[Enrique Blein]

My question though is what is baked in if you go through to Samurai etc - Is the camera delivering a LUT'd rc709 signal from the HD-SDI?

This is really important: what kind of image would you get? a flattish looking "ex-raw" image or a "Lut'd" one that you can show a client? I would invest in the Sound Devices also because it has XLR inputs.

[Adam Howden]

Hey Mike, I've been doing some reading on the Atomos site and I'm almost certain you cannot record those higher frame rates. The Samurai is built to record 1080p @ 24p,25p and 30p. I think the best you could do is shoot at 1080/30p and slow down via cinema tools to 25p or 24p.

[Adam Howden]

Hey Brian,

Noel has pretty much hit the nail on the head. All jobs are different, I can be out shooting on an Epic one day, an Alexa the next then down to a Sony-EX3 the day after. The RAW format whilst great add's a lot of time and money to your post budget. When most work doesn't really require RAW. A 1080p Flat looking ProRes file would give you plenty of quality and lots of versatility. Also, why offer a client full RAW recording if they can only afford to pay for Pro Res, unless you love the project. BUT some projects you shoot for money and some project you shoot for love. Sometimes a project has both money and love, but not always :-)