Enhancements to Atomos Recorders

[Hangs4Fun]

Been gearing up for a 4K RAW workflow and had an idea that should be easy for Atomos to implement (I already submitted it to them, but curious what you guys think).

Similar to how they created the Master Caddy II that allows us to use SSD 2.5" SATA drives and then use them in recorders like my Ninja V. Why couldn't they create a Master Caddy III that lets us use NVMe M.2 2280 chips that are now much more affordable?

1. Not only are they affordable at around $100 to $200 per 1TB,
2. but they can do sustained writes speed from 2,500 mbps to over 3,500 mbps, a magnitude of 7 times faster than typical 2.5" SSD drives.
3. ALSO, they are the size of a memory stick and could easily allow 2 to be inserted on the back of a Ninja V (maybe 3), and potentially upto 4 on the backs of your larger recorders.
4. Our media storage of drives would be even smaller than they were with Master Caddy II
5. Would eleminate the need for Atomo's support drives page, which is grossly outdated and not a good indication a drive could work since it isn't based on transfer speeds at different modes

Don't get me wrong, Atomos has some great solutions and the Ninja V is heck of a value.  I'm just thinking that now NVMe prices are down to reasonable, they could have a solution that exceeds their write speed requirements for anything, including 16bit 8k RAW linear (no ProRes, just straight linear RAW).

Any way, what do you think?  Is there any enhancements you would add (8k support, 4K/120p support, etc)?

[LightShooter]

Great idea, was wondering what could solve the write speed issues with SSD drives. This will likely add $100-200 to the price for the NVMe bus

[LightShooter]

On 8/29/2020 at 12:23 PM, LightShooter said:

Great idea, was wondering what could solve the write speed issues with SSD drives. This will likely add $100-200 to the price for the NVMe bus

Those NVMe would smoke the CFExpress card write speeds yet are at SSD prices.

[IronFilm]

Video Devices (aka Sound Devices) already let you use mSATA drives in their video recorders years ago. 

[LightShooter]

8 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Video Devices (aka Sound Devices) already let you use mSATA drives in their video recorders years ago. 

You missed my point.  NVMe can do sustained rates from 2,500MB/s to almost 4,000MB/s.  

mSATA even the high performance only get write speeds UPTO 500MB/s

So NVMe can do sustained writes from 5 to 8 times faster than mSATA.  With 4K RAW 60p you need a ton more sustained write speeds than SSD can even burst to, so i was trying to think of a way to get faster throughput.

mSATA is also just SATA which is much easier and cheaper to manufacturer into small electronics.  To do NVMe you need crazy bus speeds to support them.

Also with the Ninja V, they dont just have you plug the hard drive in by itself (like those mSATA devices do), so also I was thinking Atomos could create a safe cartridge holder for the memory stick like NVMe sticks similar to how they made the Master Caddy II holder.  That way we could safely have a couple NVMe in storage as we swap out drives.  

Hope that makes more sense