New options for field recording

Posted By Wes Plate on September 13, 2010 12:00 pm | Permalink
For while I've been interested in efficient ways to record long performances, like my daughters' dance company's two hour dance showcases. I'm always working alone so I don't have the luxury of an assistant who can help me continually swap P2 cards, offloading while I shoot. AJA's popular Ki Pro and the Convergent Design nanoFlash are well known solutions to this problem but I can't afford them for my charity projects.

Two new products shown at IBC have the budget producer in mind. AJA announced the Ki Pro Mini, a smaller version with a few less features than its larger cousin, but still packing SDI and HDMI inputs. Instead of recording to disk like the Ki Pro, the Ki Pro Mini writes its files to CF cards. And the mini has two slots, extending your recording time and also making a card swapping scenario possible. The Ki Pro Mini should be available in October for $1999.

The other device I same across is Atomos Ninja, coming soon from Atomos which was started by some ex-Blackmagic Design guys. The Atomos Ninja is a $995 field recorder that looks quite different from the other devices I've mentioned above. Featuring a 4.3 inch touchscreen display the Atomos Ninja records ProRes from an HDMI input to a standard 2.5 inch hard drive that you provide.

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This is an interesting idea since hard drives are just about as cheap as CF cards these days, but of course their capacity is much much larger, so you can record for hours and hours. The Atomos Ninja is expected to be shipping in December.