Atomos Samurai User Manual Version 1.0 – Nov. 2011 Have you registered your Samurai yet? Upgrade to 3 year warranty* now. Website: www.atomos.com | Sales: sales@atomos.com | Support: support@atomos.
Contents Safety Instructions Warranty & Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1. What’s included. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Warranty & Conditions Notice Software License Agreement Copyright © 2011 ATOMOS Global Pty Ltd (‘referred to as ATOMOS’). All rights reserved. All information in this document is subject to change without notice. No part of the document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, without the express written permission of ATOMOS. A reference to ATOMOS includes its related entities, subsidiaries and parent company.
Introduction Thank you for choosing the Atomos Samurai: your 10-bit HD-SDI Recorder/Monitor/Deck. It’s the most compact portable recorder available, with extremely long battery life, a high-resolution screen, uncompressed-quality playout and real-time pulldown removal. Samurai preserves the pristine uncompressed video quality from your camera’s sensor by directly encoding it into Apple ProRes® or (optionally) Avid DNxHD® as it records to HDD/SSD, making it instantly compatible with your NLE timeline.
1. What’s included Your Samurai arrives as a complete system: you don’t have to add anything except 2.5” storage media (you can buy additional packs of empty Master Disk Caddies from your Atomos Reseller) and some cables to suit your set-up like SDI BNC cables and tripod screws. All other parts necessary to use the Samurai (including Mini-BNC to BNC adaptor cables) are included in the carry case. Atomos does not sell storage and your package will not contain any spinning disks or SSDs.
2. What you also need 2 ½” Disk Drives These are the raw storage medium for Samurai. You can use either traditional “spinning” disks, or the new solid state ones. Choose spinning drives if your Samurai is going to be attached to a tripod or if it is not going to be subject to excessive vibration. For harsher conditions, choose a solid state drive.
2. What you also need cont. SDI cables (not included) SDI cables are robust physically and electrically: you should rarely have problems with signal transmission unless your cables are either damaged or too long. Please remember that SDI cables use locking connectors and will not simply pull out if they are jerked or tripped over. They are therefore a significant trip hazard, and also a hazard to your equipment, which may be damaged if the cables are mishandled.
3. Mounting disks in the Master Caddy Mounting drives in the Master Caddy This is simplicity itself. Just insert the disk into the caddy, and secure with four screws. The caddy is light and the disk just needs to be held securely. Don’t over-tighten the screws. There are no connections to make because pushing the caddy into the Samurai or the Docking station makes all the connections for you. Spinning disks and SSDs are very sensitive to damage from static electricity.
4. Connecting the Samurai and powering up Batteries Battery number 1 Gently slide down into battery slot/s and lock into position. Push latch to release battery The Samurai is a battery powered device, and has a special feature to ensure that you never have to interrupt a recording to change a battery. We will come to this shortly. Like all batteries, you will need to take care of them.
4. Connecting the Samurai and powering up cont. Turning ON power to the Samurai The start button is located on the right hand side of the unit (as you look at the screen). Momentarily press the circular button on the right side of the Samurai as you look at the screen to power up the unit. After a couple of seconds you will see the Atomos logo, and then the Samurai Home Screen.
6. Other physical features Master Caddy Slot Release and remove Master Caddy On the left hand side of the unit (as you face the screen) is a slot for Samurai Master Disk Caddies. To insert a caddy, gently push until it clicks into position. To eject it, use the latch on the right hand side of the Samurai (as pictured) The Master Caddy is hot-swappable, so you can do this at any time - even while the unit is turned on.
7. Timecode Using Timecode Time of Day The Samurai has comprehensive file-based timecode support, and can be triggered from HD-SDI timecode. With this selected, each new clip that is created will contain embedded timecode accurately showing the time of day that it was recorded, according to the inbuilt. This can be set in Menu > Date & Time Touching the timecode display on the Samurai’s home screen, just below the four main coloured controls, will take you to the timecode setup screen.
8. Pulldown What is Pulldown? 1080p23.98 or 1080p24 Many professional and consumer cameras available today do not send true 1080p24, 1080p23.98, 1080p25, 1080p29.97 or 1080p30 signals down their SDI or HDMI outputs. Instead they send 1080i59.94 in NTSC regions (eg USA, Japan), and 1080i50 in PAL regions (eg Europe) In order to convert the signal from the internal recording format to 1080i5994 or 1080i50, they use a process called 3:2 or 2:2 pulldown. Camera Setting Pulldown Samurai Receives 1080p23.
9. Using the Samurai Using the Samurai Samurai’s Touchscreen The Samurai is controlled via an intuitive touchscreen interface. There are large, obvious controls for Record, Play, Monitor, and Menu, as well as the following information: Samurai features a very high quality 800x480 pixel video touch screen. Most of us are now familiar with the idea of touchscreens, but there is an important difference between Samurai’s screen and those you might find on a smartphone.
9. Using the Samurai cont. Recording Choosing your recording format Recording is the main function of the Samurai. You can select the recording format by touching the top right hand corner of the touch screen where the format is indicated. There are 5 ways to start and stop record. 1. Main Touch Screen IMPORTANT: You need to match the format you are recording internally on the camera with the format recorded on the Samurai.
9. Using the Samurai cont. The Play button will be dimmed and disabled if there is no disk or the disk is not formatted. Rec (Record) This is the icon you touch to begin a recording. Touch it again to stop a recording. While recording the Rec icon changes to a Stop icon. Once your recording has started you have the option to touch the Mon icon to view the signal you are recording.
9. Using the Samurai cont. Scene & Shot Samurai Info Allows you to select the scene and shot number that will be recorded next. To select press scene or shot at the top and the number you wish to use from the list below (up to 999). The number you choose will then be shown underneath the word Scene or Shot in a larger font and will be underlined. The take number is automatically increased with each take. Shows the software (firmware) version and unique device ID (DID) of your Samurai device.
9. Using the Samurai cont. Battery Indicator Storage Capacity Indicator Shows whether you’ve got one or two batteries connected. If there is no battery connected a number will not be displayed in the appropriate slot. Touching the Battery Indicator takes you to the Batteries screen where you can closely monitor the status of the Batteries. Located in the bottom right of the screen.
9. Using the Samurai cont. Audio In Located in the bottom left corner of the main screen you can see the Audio Monitoring Levels, with access to Audio in. You can see 12 digital channels (via SDI input) and 2 analogue audio channels (via the Stereo Line in). Each channel has a small rectangle assigned to it, when there is active sound coming in you will see the level indicator moving. Any shown in orange are set to be recorded.
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10. Monitoring and Recording cont. Using the Samurai as a field monitor/electronic viewfinder With a 5” high-resolution color TFT 800x480pixel screen, the Samurai makes a great field monitor. So good, in fact, that you don’t need any separate monitoring equipment. You could even say that the Samurai is a “Recording Monitor”. Monitoring Assist To make the Samurai’s screen even more useful, we are adding new “assist” features, which will appear in firmware upgrades.
10. Monitoring and Recording cont. Organising material on the disk Samurai uses a convention: unitname, scene, shot and take naming You can see along the top you have scene and Shot with a large underlined number, this is the current selection. SAMMI_S001_S001_T001 This was recorded on a Samurai unit called SAMMI, the scene selected was 1, the shot selected was 1 and it was take 1. Below is an example of your playback browser window showing file names.
11. Connecting and Editing Connect To access and edit your recorded material, connect the Master Caddy Docking Station to a Mac® or Windows® editing workstation via USB 2.0, USB 3.0 or FireWire® 800 port. Eject the Master Caddy from your Samurai and insert it into the Docking Station. After a short wait, the recorded video will be accessible to the target computer via a standard disk (exFAT) file system.
11. Connecting and Editing cont. Importing Final Cut Pro (version 7), Final Cut X , Adobe CS5 (with 5.51 update), EDIUS 6, Sony Vegas 10, Lightworks and AVID Media Composer 6 support imported files from your Samurai disk. You’ll see the folders in the Samurai drive. Select the folder containing the footage you want to import: Importing Samurai footage into Final Cut Pro You can import Samurai footage into Final Cut Pro (FCP) in just a few simple steps.
12. Playback & Playout Using the Playback and Playout features FAT32 Disks The Samurai has a powerful playback function that allows you to playback pristine Apple ProRes or (optionally) DNxHD recordings in real-time with controls to navigate quickly to any part of a clip, the ability to play recorded content faster than normal playback speed or step through the clip frame-by-frame to check your footage very accurately. If the disk has been formatted on Ninja it will use the FAT32 file system.
12. Playback & Playout cont. Scrub Bar Timecode This is the thick blue line along the bottom of the playback screen. A vertical white “now” line shows the current playback position. You can think of the scrub bar as representing the length of the clip. If you touch the scrub bar, playback will start from that position.
13. Using Samurai with external power supplies D-Tap Connector (available upon registration) This adaptor allows you to take the power supply from any source that has a D-Tap connection such as V-Lock The D-Tap also connects to the battery slot of the Samurai, please ensure it is in slot 1. There will be a D-Tap to D-Tap cable. Voltages up to 20.0V. AC Adaptor (not included) This connects to the Samurai on the battery slot on the back of the Samurai. Please ensure it is connected to slot 1.
15. Software updates Updating ATOM-OS (Firmware) Problems when installing ATOM-OS (Firmware) From time to time we will issue software updates for your Samurai. To update the firmware (that’s the software that runs inside your Samurai), there is a simple procedure you have to follow. Very occasionally, the firmware update process can go wrong. This might be because of an incomplete or corrupted download, or any number of other unlikely but possible causes.
16. Samurai Technical Specifications Samurai Main Unit Construction note: Light Weight 390g (without Batteries & HDD) 690g (with Batteries & HDD) Dimensions 140(W)x87(H)x41(D)mm Construction Aircraft grade aluminium for durability + portability. Fanless for silent operation. Operating Power 3.3W (Monitoring Only) / 6.8W (Rec, Mon & Play) Batteries and supporting accessories all 7.4v 1. 2600mAh - Up to 4hrs 2. 5200mAh - Up to 8hrs 3. 7800mAh - Up to 12hrs 4. AC Power via adaptor plate (option) 5.
Atomos Samurai User Manual Version 1.0 – March 2011 Sales & Technical Support Atomos – Website: www.atomos.com | Sales: sales@atomos.com | Support: support@atomos.com at omos.com © Katana Ltd Hong Kong trading as Atomos under license Sept 2010. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Atomos Samurai. User Manual V1.
