Atomos Ninja Star won't capture from Isadora or Jitter

noiselvr

I just purchased an ATOMOS NINJA STAR with hopes of capturing/documenting my video generated with Isadora and Jitter.

I am running Isadora on a 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3 with 8gb ram. The device takes a micro hdmi input, so I from Thunderbolt- HDMI-micro HDMI via an adapter.

At best, I can capture 20 second clips before the Ninja Star loses it's "lock" on the video stream. A tech support representative from Atomos told me that The Ninja Star (as well as other Atomos products) require a certain quality or consistency of video signal in order to capture properly. Isadora and Jitter do not output a signal that meets these requirements. The Atomos representative wasn't well-versed in Isadora or max/msp/jitter, so I figured I'd put this up here and see what people have to say.

A couple interesting points/concerns:

1- The tech support representative said that ALL Atomos products essentially function in the same way. Has anyone successfully captured video from Isadora with a different Atomos product such as the Ninja Blade or Ninja 2?

2- The Ninja Star has no problem capturing my display in other instances. As I type this, I can record my display fine.

3- The Ninja Star did not properly capture from Jitter or Isadora, but failed with each in DIFFERENT ways. With Isadora, I would capture a maximum of 20 second clips. I noticed the "lock" would fail almost immediately after I full screen my video stage. The video on my display would not be affected. With Jitter, the Ninja Star negatively affects the quality and behavior of the imagery I am generating. The clips I capture will also be broken into chunks of generally 20 seconds or less. The quality of these clips is more varied than those from Isadora.

4- Can anyone recommend a method for capturing live video from Isadora and Jitter that will work, look as good as it does on my display, and not cost me over $1000? The only method I've tried that works is a Blackmagic Hyperdeck Shuttle with a DVI extender and an SSD. That's more $ than I can spring for.

Thank you in advance to anyone who may offer any insight into this.

noiselvr

UPDATE:

After much trial and error, I found that the Ninja Star will capture video from Isadora with aspect ratio's other than 16:9\. For instance 4:3 captures fine, as does 1.66:1 (which is entered as 166 by 100 in the Isadora preferences). I wonder why this is

Fred

This seems quite strange, Isadora does not override any display settings in you computer (AFAIK). Did you try with the disable vertical re-trace setting off? Do you have the latest firmware in the ninja? It seems in the history of the ninja firmware thye have changed the EDID stack a few times to accommodate some devices, it could also be worth trying older versions of the firmware.

What video card do you have? How long is the HDMI cable (recording typing or a static monitor is different to encoding fast moving images- maybe the encoder is not quick enough)?

Have you tried all available resolutions?

I have recorded a lot of laptop output but I use another computer with blackmagic capture hardware.

Skulpture

Could you explain your set up and out, how does isadora output to the device? it's quite a new product, Ive heard of it but not looked into it.

Thanks.

lpearse

Using the Atmos Ninja, I have had to ensure that the computer's video output conforms to 1080p 29.97 or 23.9378, while the HDMI on my Macbook pro defaults to 1080p 30.

But then again, I've been using the older 1st generation Ninja.

john

For many years I wanted to have a hardware recorder for Izzy. These days I record video with a Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle in ProRez 422. It can record at 720p at 60fps or 1080i at 30fps. I'll use it at 720p and I get great results. You have to make sure you use an approved SSD from a list that Blackmagic has so the read/wright times are high enough to work. When plugged in the Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle it will act like a second monitor if your on a mac at least. I go into my display settings in system preferences and what ever I set the display size to is what the HyperDeck Shuttle will record. So for example if the display is 720p the HyperDeck Shuttle will see it as a broadcast standard and record it. On the Izzy side, at least for me I can do anything I want to size wise. Part of what I like is that I can get super creative over laying multiple videos at different resolutions and speed playback and as long as my display size is a broadcast standard I will record it;-) One last note about my Izzy experience with the HyperDeck Shuttle. One day at random wile running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 my HyperDeck Shuttle stopped passing video through. I never figured out why this happened even though I messed with Drivers and talked to the company. Now I run Izzy on 10.8.5 because of the problem I'm telling you about and that problem doesn't exist for me. Every thing video passes through and is recorded properly;-)