I took receipt of my Atomos Ninja V (Adorama, Amazon) on October 6 that I might record 10-bit 4K DCI 30 4:2:2 out of my Fujifilm X100V (Adorama, Amazon), pairing it with a 1TB Team Group SSD, and encountered Skippy. On October 13, I pulled the trigger on a 2TB Crucial BX500 from Amazon for $159.99 BTAX, and continued encountering Skippy. The problem became most apparent while I was performing capture tests ahead of my first production.
I made a note to troubleshoot Skippy’s continued appearance, thinking it could be the cable, my SSDs, my camera, or my copy of the Ninja V itself…
To rule out the SSD, I reasoned I could test out an NVMe SSD housed within a SATA3 enclosure, but that would be a rather niche purchase. I educated myself, instead, on SSDs, learning they are not all made the same!
On December 18, I took receipt of my Sony A7S III (Adorama, Amazon), and, on December 21, I hooked it up with my Ninja V for the first time. With the 1TB Team Group SSD inserted, the Ninja V reported that I could record 45 minutes and 5 seconds of 4.2K30 12-bit ProRes RAW, at least in theory. In testing, however, I found Skippy kept rearing its head
On December 23, I opened up a new 2TB Samsung 860 EVO I purchased for $199.99 BTAX (Amazon.com), and set up my A7S III for yet another capture test. This time I was able to record for two hours before terminating the test so I could take the camera out with me
On December 25, I set up an endurance test. I returned home after visiting with my folks, and found Skippy, with my Ninja V reporting 00:12:49 recording time remaining. Recording had ceased altogether. I resumed recording on the Ninja V, and checked later to find it had successfully written to the point it could write no more. I initially assumed this meant it had written the drive out to capacity, but upon further investigation, discovered 101GB of free space remaining. Switching the Ninja V to a different recording format did not free up any recording time at this point.
On December 27, I conducted an endurance test at 4.2K60 RAW from my Sony A7S III, writing to my 2TB Samsung 860 EVO. The Ninja V and Sony A7S III passed, recording until the point the Ninja V would not write any more. I did observe the temperature warning icon on my Sony A7S III, which I ran with the monitor off and collapsed against the rear of the body throughout the recording run.
Hopefully, my experience troubleshooting Skippy appearing on my Ninja V helps you. I was prepared to go all out in my quest to get the Ninja V playing nicely with my cameras, and even considered shelling out for Atomos’s HDMI cables. Ultimately, the HDMI cable that came bundled with my Xbox One proved sufficient to handle the data rates of 4.2K30 RAW from my Sony A7S III. Granted, I’ll probably want to pick up a coiled HDMI cable ahead of any field work!
Reference
Atomos recommends these drives: https://downloads.atomos.com/ninja-v/Supported-Media_NINJA.pdf
Further Exploration
If there’s something more you’re curious to learn, let me know in the comments, and I’ll get back to you!