Sony A7RV & Atomos Ninja (S-Cinetone profile)

Hello.

Ever since I upgraded to the Sony A7RV, I've had some unresolved questions, and since I'm a relative newbie to doing video and the Atomos Ninja, I'm still unsure about some things.

I like the new s-cinetone profile in the Sony A7RV, but this is not available on the Ninja. I'm reading that the Ninja takes the profile from the camera, so it shouldn't matter, but I do see that there are profiles on the Ninja itself, so I'm not sure if this is related to my next question.

On the camera, the image looks great, but on the Ninja the colors look wrong, so maybe this is a display issue.

Bottom line, I stopped using my ninja because I didn't want to risk getting bad footage, so I'm just shooting in camera, and losing all the benefits of the ninja.

Is it possible to set the ninja up to view and record the s-cinetone profile from my Sony and if so, how to I set it up?

p.s. on the A7RIII, I didn't have this problem shooting in HLG.

Best,

R

rdbot wrote:

Hello.

Ever since I upgraded to the Sony A7RV, I've had some unresolved questions, and since I'm a relative newbie to doing video and the Atomos Ninja, I'm still unsure about some things.

I like the new s-cinetone profile in the Sony A7RV, but this is not available on the Ninja. I'm reading that the Ninja takes the profile from the camera, so it shouldn't matter, but I do see that there are profiles on the Ninja itself, so I'm not sure if this is related to my next question.

On the camera, the image looks great, but on the Ninja the colors look wrong, so maybe this is a display issue.

Bottom line, I stopped using my ninja because I didn't want to risk getting bad footage, so I'm just shooting in camera, and losing all the benefits of the ninja.

Is it possible to set the ninja up to view and record the s-cinetone profile from my Sony and if so, how to I set it up?

p.s. on the A7RIII, I didn't have this problem shooting in HLG.

Best,

R

The S-Cinetone profile is meant as the final look of a video, with no need to grade and in fact is not meant to be graded and is not good for grading.

There is thus little reason to use an external recorder, whose sole advantage is to provide some flavor of high bitrate  RAW 12bit footage that is more suitable for grading and in fact must be graded.

If you like the look of S-Cinetone and do not need extended dynamic range, dump the Ninja.

What benefits exactly, if you do not grade, do you believe the Ninja provides?

rdbot wrote:

Thanks... I do like being able to record on SSDs as I can not afford the expensive CFExpress and SD Cards also add up and need to be changed. I like the false color and the bigger screen, though I believe you do lose some touch screen functionality for tracking if I'm not mistaken. There are some other niceties with audio levels and other features, but the down side it's not as portable and not as good for run and gun. For tripod shooting I really like it. But, maybe you can further explain what you mean as I didn't quite understand (newbie here :)).

You can afford the Ninja and not a CFExpress card? How long are your recording sessions? Given the much higher bitrate of the external recordings compared to the internal, it is not clear that you get less recording time from even a 128GB sd card than you would ever need in a day's shooting.

I agree that a bigger screen and the exposure and focus aids are useful. But you can get those with any cheap monitor and you could use the camera lcd for touch focus and tracking. There is no need to record externally. You could sell the Ninja and the SSD, buy a monitor and a v90 Type II sd card and save money and bulk.

Again, recording externally provides no image quality benefit if you want S-Cinetone, and that is what I was talking about.

On recording times: Using ProRes HQ 422 for 4K 24P on the Ninja you are recording at around 750 Mbps; but for the same resolution and frame rate internally you are recording at 100 Mbps. That is less than 1/7th the size of the clips for the same recording length. Thus, approximately, a 128 GB sd card gives you as much recording time as a one TB SSD.

Euhm... S-cinetone is backed in into the image. So the HDMI signal that comes to the Ninja is not a flat or Log profile. Disable luts on the monitor and you'll be fine.

S-cinetone is a color profile used for faster turnarounds or direct divering of a nice image (so hand of to a client that you know will mess up things in Slog-3) or a fast edit you want to make without dealing with log footage.

Livestream is also a good purpose with S-cinetone, styled look without doing something.

If you use S-cinetone on the sony, thats what you get. The footage is recorded with that look build in. So also over HDMI (or other cams SDI, FX6, FX9) you'll get the final image, no log. Your monitor/recorder shows or records this image as is. That is the whole purpose of S-cinetone: ready to deliver out of the box picture. Everything in documentation or video is very clear about that.

Why else use S-cinetone? If you want flexibility in post you'll go for s-log3. And then you have the choice, correct for screen and use a lot over the image over HDMI. And if you send the log footage over HDMI you can again on the monitor/recorder side choose to watch or record as log or use a lut for viewing. (recording log usually will mean: use a Lut at some point to watch footage a bit corrected).

rdbot wrote:

Hello. So what you're saying is the profiles I see on the ninja are only display profiles and if there isn't an S-Cinetone one, then just disable luts? Do you know what kinds of things are not available on the Sony when using the Ninja, e.g. what we were discussing about touch screen options? I guess I have to reassess whether using the Ninja is worth it in the end or getting a separate monitor like was suggested.

Best and thanks.

R