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
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the playback speed to 75%. Alright...
I'm done.
