DSLRBodies

Most recent Nikon cameras—and those of most other makers—today produce "clean video" on their HDMI ports, which excites the video world. Theoretically this means that you can record uncompressed (or lightly) compressed video and get broadcast quality video out of your camera.

Note: Nikon claims that the D600 produces clean HDMI video, but that's not quite correct. Nikon scales the D600's 1080P output smaller, meaning "clean HDMI" on a D600 is a smaller-than-1080 signal area that has black bars around it. This makes it impossible to weave with 1080P output of other cameras. If you want a unique not-1080 format that plays in 1080 with black bars, then what I write below can be applied to the D600, as well. Not sure why you'd bother.

As I've discovered, the dream is possible, but to get to its promised land is not a journey without perils.

First up, we have the cameras themselves. Nikon has done a woefully poor job of documenting how to get the best possible video from their DSLRs, or even the steps you have to go through to get clean video out the HDMI port in the first place. That's something I fix in my Complete Guides, but the quick and dirty is this:

1. You should probably take the internal storage cards out of the camera. This isn't technically necessary any more with most cameras, but there are things you can do if a card is in the camera that can reset the HDMI output to 720P or cause other issues, and that won't happen if no card is in the camera. 
2. You set your frame size/rate via Movie Settings, as usual.
3. You need to turn HDMI/Advanced/Live view on-screen display to Off and HDMI/Advance/Output display size to 100%. These are not the defaults!
4. Depending upon what you're trying to do and what quality you desire, there may be more HDMI/movie settings you'll want to make. One to pay attention to is whether you want to output full or limited range on Nikon cameras. If you're new to video, you're going to get caught by this one eventually. Best choice for many, but not all, is Limited range, as it puts black and white points within broadcast video safe limits.
5. If you're doing long takes, you must set CSM #C4 Live View (monitor off time) to No Limit.
6. You generate the HDMI stream by using Video Live View (i.e. move the Live View lever to video, press the Live View button)

Okay, so let's assume that we've got the camera set right, what do we record to? Right now there are a half dozen or more basic options readily available on the market and available from places like B&H. The ones I've tried, from cheapest to most expensive, are:

• Blackmagic Shuttle (right in photo). (Warning, the Shuttle only records uncompressed video, the Shuttle 2 also records Avid DNxHD compressed video, for which you'll almost certainly need an Avid codec to do anything with, and which may require you to transcode [recompress into another format] to edit, depending upon what you use.) The Blackmagic Shuttle uses expensive SSD (solid state hard drives), and only certain ones at that. Basically, the Shuttle is a dock for a drive with some connectors and recording/playback controls on it. Its function is simply to record or playback video (though it has HDMI passthrough if you'd like to hook it to an external monitor). The Shuttle has a basic battery in it, too, so it's portable. But that battery is built-in and thus you have to feed AC power to the unit to recharge, making that portability a bit compromised.
• Atomos Ninja (on camera in photo). This is a more complete solution in that it has a touch-screen LCD and dual removable battery capability, meaning it's a real portable solution (while using it you can be charging more batteries on the supplied dual battery charger and hot swap a battery for a new one when it goes low). The LCD provides direct control over all functions and some information during recording, and it also supplies a playback option. The Ninja will take regular laptop hard drives, though you need to be careful not to bump the unit if you're recording to rotating media. It records in various forms of Apple ProRes, which is a common codec and supported by virtually all Macintosh editing solutions.
• Aja Ki Pro Mini (left in photo). Yet a different approach. The Aja has two CompactFlash cards on it, and records in a variety of Apple ProRes formats to them. But these cards need to be very specific ones, generally 90MBs or faster, of which the Sandisk Extreme Pro make up half the supported card list. The Aja is designed for more sophisticated video productions, and has XLR audio connections, which means it can serve as a basic mixer amongst other things this implies. The unit is not battery powered. The interface is more complicated than the Blackmagic, but more informative, too.   
• [The above were current when I originally wrote this article several years ago. To see currently available HDMI recorders, use this link [advertiser link].

I'm not going to get too deep into features and capabilities here, as this isn't a Video Pro site, and the models keep updating for the various off-camera recorders. The main thing to note is that all of the above units I refer to are capable of recording the Nikon clean HDMI if you get everything right. 

Note: since this article originally appeared, additional options have appeared, and Aja, Atomos, and Blackmagic Design have all upgraded their products and have more choices. In particular, Nikon Z6, Z7, and D780 users should probably start their shopping with the Atomos Ninja V. For other cameras, one thing to look at is whether they support 10-bit output and HDR monitoring (or HLG), as some recorders can support this, other can’t.

Yeah, there's that “get everything right” statement again. I already dealt with a bit of the camera confusion, but there's plenty at the recording end, too. With all three units I found that I had to update firmware (even bought new after the cameras came out), as the companies keep scrambling to keep their units up to date as new cameras get launched with new little gotchas. Moreover, all these companies could use some more work on their manuals. Blackmagic's latest manual is straight-forward enough, but it assumes you know what you're doing ;~). 

I found minor issues with the hardware in almost every case, too, despite each of them being built like a brick (like most pro video equipment is). My Blackmagic Shuttle has a tendency to drop the audio signal on the HDMI port. My Ninja likes to hold onto drives and not physically release them from the slot despite pressing the release button, plus the touch-screen isn't always responsive. It also dropped the signal once after an hour of recording. My Aja's fans means it needs to stay isolated from microphones. Nothing major, but these are not consumer devices and aren't vetted like those. There may still be some additional quirks I'll discover in extended use, indeed, I fully expect to find some.

One further comment: HDMI signals were originally designed for consumer electronics components, and we're making them do things that they weren't exactly designed for (HDMI cables don't have professional-type latches on the connectors, making the possibility of intermittent signal more prevalent when jostling equipment). In tens of hours of recording with these devices, both in test and in real video situations, I've seen multiple instances of the camera and recorder losing handshake. That can be extremely frustrating when you're recording something that won't get repeated (i.e. live versus staged). Update: if you’re dealing with 4K video, make sure you have HDMI 2.0 compatible cables.

So let's hook them up and see what happens, shall we?

• With a Blackmagic Shuttle (original), there's not much you can do. Put an SSD into the Shuttle, plug in the camera, put the camera in Video Live View, wait for the Video light to show on the Shuttle, then press the Record button. You'll be chewing through 12GB a minute and recording 10-bit 4-2-2 video plus audio (sometimes ;~). You'll need an eSata cable for your SSD on your computer to get your video over to your computer. Files are saved as Quicktime .MOV with no compression.
• With a Blackmagic Shuttle 2, you can select compression (AVID DNxHD), but only with the Shuttle 2 connected to your computer's USB port, so do that before you head out. You can have that put into an AVID or Quicktime container (and you'll need to download and install AVIDs codec for your computer to be able to play those). You won't chew through nearly as much drive, but you are recording compressed now, though a very high quality file results.
• With a Ninja you can do a lot of things on the unit itself, such as format drives and set compression settings. Multiple forms of ProRes are supported, including HQ, which results in compression that's essentially visually lossless. You get Quicktime .MOV files. Atomos supplies a drive caddy for your computer with the unit, so all you have to do is take your drive out of your Ninja (if it will let you ;~), and put that into the cradle attached to your computer. Now use your usual video workflow on that. The Ninja is nice in that you can review captured video in the field, plus it will accept regular laptop hard drives (Atomos supplies two empty drive caddies). 
• The Aja has a bunch of buttons and a small LCD on the front, and like the Ninja this allows you to do things like format cards, select compression, and other less common tasks. But you really need to study the manual and practice using those buttons, as the UI is a bit strange and the LCD slightly cryptic. If you've got an HDMI monitor hooked to it, you can perform review, as well. So, we put cards in the top slots, select our ProRes compression level (which will have you consulting the manual to figure out the sequence of buttons to press, at least initially), then fire up the camera and press the record button on the Aja. If you're recording analog XLR audio, you can do that directly into the Aja (and monitor via LED level indicators and headphone). When you're back at your computer, you just treat your CompactFlash cards like any other video media you bring into your workflow. 

So does any of this make any sense to do? And which one should you consider?

The big clamor was about uncompressed video. The Blackmagic Shuttle will do that for you, but are you really sure that's what you want? You'll chew through expensive SSD drives very, very rapidly, and that's going to mean huge files and backups (you are backing up your work, right?). For uncompressed, we're in serious Video Pro territory. You've got a massive RAID system that delivers high performance access to your files and think nothing of terabytes of data. If that doesn't describe you, don't go uncompressed.

Apple ProRes HQ is actually a very good compression format that results in very high quality files of moderate size. Basically figure an hour for 100GB. ProRes422 will get you almost two hours for 128GB and is still a pretty good format for recording high quality output (better than what the Nikon cameras output directly). Indeed, I think ProRes HQ lines up very well with the clean HDMI out of the Nikon bodies. Thus, the Ninja and Ki Pro Mini are both interesting choices. 

The Ninja has several key advantages:

• Direct review in the field without adding another monitor
• Dual battery backup
• Ability to use rotating hard drives (less expensive for long takes)
• All controls very clear once you figure out the interface

The Ki-Pro Mini has several key advantages:

• Uses CompactFlash cards (though expensive ones)
• Can act as an XLR audio input recorder in tandem with the video
• Has SDI capability, as well, should you have pro video cameras that use that

For me, the battery and self-contained aspects of the Ninja makes it my preferred choice, though I'll continue to evaluate all these units. I'm finding that I don't truly need uncompressed video. I also prefer the battery-powered portable solution (though you may need more expensive SSD drives in the Ninja if you're jostling it during recording).

One word of warning: you're in complex territory here. If you really need better video than what the Nikon DSLRs can do internally, then you need a lot of external components (video recorder, audio mixer, etc.). You're nearly in DIY (do it yourself) territory, as the current pro video world is a lot of small niche companies doing small niche products. You'll be spending a lot of time reading manuals, updating firmwares, connecting and securing cabling, and far more. If you thought still photography was an expensive hobby, video is more expensive and more nerve-wracking (more can go wrong). 

Support this site by buying from this advertiser: