NAB Spotlight: Atomos Talks Shogun 7 and HDR

Transcript

Anthony Burokas: Hello, my name is Anthony Burokas and we are here at NAB 2019. I'm here with Dan in the Atomos booth. Dan, tell me what you've got going on, this NAB.

Dan Chung: What haven't we got going on? We have lots going on. We have the Shogun 7, brand new, and it's a true HDR 7-inch monitor. And it may look familiar. It may look very similar to our previous monitors. But if you look at the actual screen next to our previous generation, you'll see just how much better it is. What we've got here is a local area dimming backlight with 360 zones.

Anthony Burokas: Wow!

Dan Chung: And that allows us to have really deep blacks. But not just black with no detail. Gorgeously rich, textured detailed blacks and then you've got highlights that as you can see look at all these highlights here. I mean camera quality doesn't pick it up properly. But to your eye you can see all the detail here and the clouds going on. And then before, we had a AtomHDR mode. Okay, so what you've got is everything on screen at the same time. Right from the shadows, the deep shadows, all the way up into the highlights and you can get a really good idea of what your picture looks like. And this is a really good match for the very latest, top-of-the-line home televisions, or professional HDR monitors. It's obviously better than quite a lot of HDR TVs out there, so. But this is showing you like the absolute max that you're going to be able to achieve from your sensor.

Anthony Burokas: So if you're shooting HDR and you really need to get a sense of what that camera is going to capture, you're going to need something like this as opposed to before, it was, let's just make it bright enough to see outside, now--

Dan Chung: No, no, but you can still look at an image and examine it this way. It's a bit of a manual process. You have to slide the slider around to see where you are. Here you see it all in the one.

Anthony Burokas: Okay, I see.

Dan Chung: And it's just an amazing image to look at. And even if you're not going for an HDR finish, it's still showing you, without having to mess around with LUTs or anything else, it's showing you the total range of your sensor. So I know if that's not blown out there, it's not blown out when I grade it in 709. Now am I going to be able to make it look like a HDR image? No, but the amount of information there, I can totally see it. Same in the shadows. So the only other way to see the whole range from 15 stops plus a dynamic range on a camera would be to look at a Log image. Look at a Log image, that's kind of flat and horrible and you don't really want to work with it. This way you're seeing the same amount of dynamic range, as long as your Log sensors giving you up to like--

Anthony Burokas: But it actually looks like a real image.

Dan Chung: But it looks like a real image.

Anthony Burokas: Right, right.

Dan Chung: So, yeah. In 709 I am not going to make it look just like that. But I can, I know that whatever's there is recoverable, which is an amazing thing. And I can know how much noise is going on in the dark areas and, whether there's a slight out of color tint in my white, I'll see that. I can work with that. It's not just blown out white. You've seen it before. Like your whites might be going a little, slightly off-color, 'cause you exposed slightly too high in 709 but you didn't see it on your monitor at the time because you couldn't, 'cause it was already just white-white. Then you get it into your edit suite, it's not quite right. Now you're going to be able to see it. It's going to be--

Anthony Burokas: See it for real.

Dan Chung: This has also got switching.

Anthony Burokas: Oh, really?

Dan Chung: So it's got four SDI inputs. Same as Sumo 19, you'll be able to switch between four different HD sources on SDI. And they'll be asynchronous, so you don't need the genlock or anything like you need currently on the Sumo. And we're bringing that same functionality finally to the Sumo. Thank you for everybody who's borne with us. It's a little bit later than we hoped. We've learnt a lot about being able to switch and what it takes. It was technically a little bit of a bigger hurdle than we had thought. We are finally there. It works on the Sumo 19. And it's coming into the Shogun 7 as well.

Anthony Burokas: Wow.

Dan Chung: So that will be a fully functioning switcher. And not only do you get your four HD ins, we also record the program out as well, so five.

Anthony Burokas: Five, so is it actually recording five feeds?

Dan Chung: It's four plus one, yeah absolutely. And you'll get all your XML data for cuts. If you want to take the four clips into Final Cut they'll all line up perfectly with the cuts marked. Good to go. And you can just manipulate. If you want to change 'em you can change 'em in Final Cut like that.

Anthony Burokas: Wow, that is incredible.

Dan Chung: So we're really happy about that. On top of that this has got for the first time, I know we're talking a lot about this, it's got Dolby Vision Live playout. So if you have a Dolby Vision TV, you'll be able to connect this and you'll be able to watch your RAW or Log footage represented live in Dolby Vision using all their back lighting technology on the TVs. So again it's probably better than you're ever going to be able to do in a 709 world. But for the same reasons it's going to show you everything that's going on your image but on a big TV.

Anthony Burokas: But on a bigger TV so you're really--

Dan Chung: Yeah, you can really see into it. Very impressive for your grandmother at home. She's going to think you're an amazing cinematographer. But, on a practical sense, on the high end it means that people shooting for Netflix and Amazon will be able to playback dailies and actually have them just play out in Dolby Vision so the director can see exactly how that Dolby Vision picture's going to look. Obviously, that's the starting point. That's the base point and then obviously, it'll then go off into post and it'll get graded and everything else. But you'll know what relatively the balances of everything are and how it would play out. And then for maybe everybody else who isn't shooting Netflix and Amazon, it's still going to be the best picture that you're going to see on the screen. But be aware you're not going to be able to just bring it straight into Rec709, it ain't going to look like that. But it is a tool that will allow you again, to see everything at once.

Anthony Burokas: That is awesome, that is awesome.

Dan Chung: So that's Shogun 7.

Anthony Burokas: That's the 7 and then the other big news is the 5.

Dan Chung: So we have Shinobi SDI, which is here. So this is a monitor only, 1000nit, lightweight. It's everything that's in the Shinobi HDMI that we launched a few months ago. But with SDI input, and SDI loop through as well. So, great for small cameras, camcorders, broadcast cameras. But also, you know, Arri Alexas and RED cameras and anything that needs a small SDI monitor, that's there--

Anthony Burokas: That's bright and lightweight.

Dan Chung: And it's still got the HDMI, so you can still connect to your DSLR, so if you're that kind of guy or girl who, doesn't actually own a camera but just works as a gun for hire, goes between different sets, works different cameras. You've got one monitor you can take it with you put it on any camera, you know where you are at any point in time. So that's your common point of, Oh I know where I am and because we have all the presets for all the main manufacturers, you can just dial that all in, you'll be set, you'll be good to go. Obviously, we believe, external recording to an Atomos device has benefits. So, it's not for everybody, but for those who want that there it is.

Anthony Burokas: There it is.

Dan Chung: And, super bright, daylight viewable just like the Shinobi. We love it to bits and I think it's going to be a very popular product, for us. On top of that, Ninja V, which has been around for a while, gets an SDI module, to boot. So that will be SDI in and out, either two in or two out, or one in one out on a little module that clips into the back into the expansion port. If you're familiar with the product, there's a little strip of contacts at the bottom of the battery port. It'll connect into that and give you SDI. So this becomes the, sort of, tiniest ProRes SDI and HDMI recording deck, monitoring device, whatever. So, we love that too.

Anthony Burokas: Yeah, you get, I mean like everything in a very lightweight package that records and if you don't need the recording you've got it over here. And don't forget our old existing products too If you want value for money and you want to get into ProRes RAW, you want to get into the best level of recording and you perhaps don't quite have enough for this or you want to spend your money elsewhere. Don't forget you've still got the Shogun Inferno, Ninja Inferno. Great products, now even better prices.

Anthony Burokas: Awesome! Well thank you very much.

Dan Chung: You're welcome.

Anthony Burokas: My name is Anthony Burokas, we are here at the Atomos booth at NAB 2019, thanks for watching.