ATOMOS CEO interview is.. just sad!

[ND64]

When I opened the link I thought the most alarming thing in the video is that how fast Jeromy is gaining weight! Then I saw a comment by a random user claiming to be former employee, was making fun of him referring to his smoking of white powder in his office, which CineD deleted. But the real sad part was the technical subject. When asked about the future, or "why people should buy your next product?" in a polite way, he had no answer but "higher frame rates"! He can't explain why external recorder is needed, in this day and age that even a $2500 camera records 6k60p raw internally. He just begs the camera makers to add even higher fps to the specs that their own outdated 14nm chip can't handle, assuming they're stuck with that node forever. Here we have a CEO that doesn't know what to do next, and is very honest about that (probably because his tech bro vibe overtakes his financial ego). 

The reality is that hardware part of the industry is becoming like the Hollywood part. As we now have either $100m budget movies or $500k ones, and everything between is gone, you either get the high end most expensive gear, or get the cheapest available that is good enough. Basically SmallHD vs. any hard to pronounce Chinese brand. We can't have middle ground when someone who's supposed to make money from the middle ground can't tell us why it should exist. 

 

 

[Andrew Reid]

I am curious how he came back to head the company?

After all that's happened.

[eatstoomuchjam]

Why should people buy any Atomos product?  They shouldn't.  Atomos is a terrible company who moved a while ago from selling customers a working tool and supporting it to trying to build new revenue streams from their existing customer base.

The whole reason to release a "new" Ninja V model seems to have been to release the same hardware again, but with a few licenses that were an additional cost on the original NInja V (such as H.265), but that nobody in their right mind was going to buy (why would I get a Ninja V to record in the codec that my camera already uses?)...  difference in price for the new monitor?  Basically the cost of buying those add-ons for the original.

It's also why getting the activation code for ProRes RAW for the Ninja V went from a simple basic website where you entered a serial number and it gave you an activation code - now the site forces you to register and wade through a bunch of ads (for things like add-on software licenses) before you can register it.  Meanwhile, you take the Video Assist 12G out of a box, plug in your camera, and start recording BM Raw.

And that's all in addition to the bad press, sexual harassment allegations, covid fuckery, etc.

If Atomos are struggling, they have only themselves and their own terrible choices to blame.

[ND64]

16 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

And that's all in addition to the bad press, sexual harassment allegations, covid fuckery, etc.

People would still buy their products with all the reputation wreck behind the brand if the product had a good value proposition, just look how Elon still manages to sell expensive cars.

[Ilkka Nissila]

14 hours ago, ND64 said:

People would still buy their products with all the reputation wreck behind the brand if the product had a good value proposition, just look how Elon still manages to sell expensive cars.

I think most customers only care about what they are getting for their money and not about the ethics of businesses. Those things can affect some people's decision-making, of course, but usually it is only the purse that they look at. Also if Atomos were to leave the market then wouldn't Blackmagic effectively have a monopoly? That would not be good for the consumer even if it were temporarily good for Blackmagic owners.

I don't have an external recorder but things that would be nice to have (and I believe are available from Atomos) include more physical connections, a larger, HDR capable screen, larger and less expensive storage per TB, less risk of overheating than internal recording in high quality, the option of recording to two media at the same time (e.g., Nikon cameras don't support video recording on two cards simultaneously but this can be done using external recorders by recording both internally and externally), custom LUTs, streaming accessories with wireless capabilities, tally indicators etc. I don't see how these products would become obsolete even though the quality of internal recording has improved. Most professional video setups I see at large events (such as sports events and concerts) use external monitors and often there are streaming setups as well. How competitive a particular brands' products are at a given time is a bit beside the point because if there is only one major manufacturer, prices will go up and development will slow down.

[Clark Nikolai]

One product they could make that would stand out in the marketplace would be something like a Ninja monitor-recorder that records internally to ProRes but has analog inputs for standard definition NTSC and PAL. A big thing with artists now is to shoot with old video equipment but most analog recorders save only to MP4.  The Ninjas only have HDMI and SDI inputs.

I've looked but can't find anything like it out there. Has anyone heard of something like this?

[BTM_Pix]

The Atomos stuff can be a bit fussy sometimes over its HDMI input source but this would do the trick to get it into a Ninja for example if you were using composite or s-video sources.

 

Alternatively, if you are using component output gear then this one would do the job.