Atomos – manufacturer of a camera-mounted recorders – is now shipping its latest recorder/monitor, the Samurai Blade. The Samurai Blade offers a 1280 x 720 SuperAtom IPS touchscreen, at 325ppi 179-degree viewing, 400nit brightness and multi-frequency (48/50/60Hz) operation – depending on video input – giving smooth monitoring and playback. Every screen is calibrated to SMPTE Rec 709 color space and a D65 white point with 100 percent gamut from factory. On the fly, screen calibration is built into every Samurai Blade so users can be accurate in any shooting environment.
Samurai Blade adds essential setup tools with full waveform monitor functions, including vectorscope, RGB and LUMA parades with transparent overlay and bottom right, lower 3rd or full screen positioning.
“With AtomOS 5 now offering waveform as well as monitor assist, I believe we have really raised the bar in the affordable monitor and field recorder segment,” said Jeromy Young, CEO and founder of Atomos. “We’re the first to combine professional monitor functionality with recording and deck playout, all in a space-saving, camera-mountable unit.”
Like its Ninja-2 and Samurai predecessors, Samurai Blade allows the recording of 10-bit images straight from the camera sensor directly to inexpensive HDD or SSD drives, captured using Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD codecs. Waveform, vectorscope and monitor assist tools such as tri-level focus peaking, zebra, false color and blue-only offer a comprehensive test and shot setup tool kit. The Samurai Blade has standard BNC connectors.
Also shipping are the Ronin portable recorder, monitor and deck, and the Connect-AC converters. Ronin is a rack-mountable system for both fixed-facility and on-location production, based on the Samurai design. It can operate on location with battery or DC power, but it also has AC power built-in, standard HD/SD-SDI BNC connectors and balanced XLR inputs and outputs.
The Atomos Connect, a portable battery-powered HDMI/HD-SDI converter with built-in test pattern generator and audio tone, is now joined by its fixed-facility counterpart, Connect-AC. Stand-alone or rack-mountable, Connect-AC converters are powered by a standard figure-of-8 IEC cable and offer all the functionality of Connect while rendering ‘wall-warts’ a thing of the past.
