Pros say Sony A99 video is superb

Not picking sides, but at least get the details straight (since they are right in the video)...

Charles Michel says two things very clearly (just not in english, thank god for subtitles lol)...

"I shot many of the images in the A99 video handheld without accessories and they turned out great..."- Voila! the camera was used without external recorders and performed great.

"However, the reason I converted the camera into a professional video camera is simply that, I wanted to see what the camera was capable of." - the camera was also outfitted with an array of accessories typical of professional use, like a rail system, follow focus control, matte box, and an external recorder. This is what you should expect to see in a pro setup. That is clearly the Ninja recorder, but isn't required.

Dumping direct to the Ninja makes the only sense for a professional looking to squeeze the most from the footage in post/grading. AVCHD is fine internal but admittedly at lower (highly efficient AVCHD) bitrates... or record live throughput via the HDMI output and capture uncompressed RAW video. The latter example is why the Ninja external recorder is really the expected setup. If ths statement was made that this was setup as a pro camera without an external recorder that would have been a red flag... not the other way around...