RedShark News
Just the ticket for better TikTok vids? We catch up with
Atomos CEO, Peter Barber, on the IBC2025 show floor.
article here
Video technology is democratising the business of media
creation which sounds like a good thing for creators, but leaves tech vendors
scrabbling for margin. Is it possible to retrofit broadcast gear for the
creator market?
Atomos is far from the only vendor attempting this trick at
IBC (see Blackbird, Blackmagic Design), but is one of the most
overt in courting the TikTok generation.
“You want your dance video to look better than the next
YouTuber’s dance video,” says Peter Barber, CEO. “The creator market is
huge."
“What we're seeing is the evolution of the market. The
phones are always getting better but there's also an evolution where people are
using their phones and also wanting to bring the bigger cameras in. These are
creators who once filmed everything on their phone but who want to increase
their production value, get a better camera, a better lens, but they want to
keep their tool set the same. They realise that if they want to look better
than the other creator, who's also in the same space, they need to increase
their production value. And they do that with more professional cameras.”
A Ninja on the iPhone
Last year the Australian vendor debuted the Ninja Phone, a
10-bit video co-processor for iPhone 15 (and tablets) that lets you record from
professional HDMI cameras.
At IBC2005 this widget is paired with a Mavis Camera app and
the heavyweight cloud system of AMPP from Grass Valley allowing users to live
stream via Wi-Fi or 5G straight into the AMPP production environment, all from
a mobile setup.
Mavis Camera provides the control over recording formats,
frame rates, colour balance and focus, with monitoring tools. Atomos’ Ninja
Phone provides the connection to mirrorless and DSLR cameras. Contribution to
the cloud via AMPP allows additional live feeds to be switched, recorded, and
distributed as part of the production.
Atomos thinks this appeal to creators of behind-the-scenes
content, fan zone reactions, or corporate events, or anyone wanting to shed
bulky gear or complex setups.
“This has allowed us to turn on more features so not only
can it record ProRes to the latest iPhones you can use anything that's iOS 18
or newer as a monitor and a recorder and a streamer. It gives you the option to
do like either h.264 or h.265, recording or streaming from there. This is a
great way for creators to bring big cameras into their social media workflow.”
The larger more successful creators are also operating teams
of people involved in content creation and in running more sophisticated
postproduction.
Oh, what an ATOMOSphere
“That's also part of the reason why we built ATOMOSphere,”
says Barber referring to the ATOMOSphere cloud ecosystem for media storage,
backup, sharing, and review. At IBC this has new mobile UI
improvements and integrated speech transcription, as well as some special
offers to tempt new members.
“It’s an affordable, media-friendly, cloud-based platform
that fits a creator workflow cost effectively. We've also integrated
ATOMOSphere directly into the Ninja Phone as well.
“If you're a high-end production company and producing for
advertising agencies or a TV show with Netflix you need something like a
Framei.o with all of that level of distribution and approvals. But that's a
very expensive platform, and rightly so. They’ve spent millions and millions of
dollars to build that but not everybody needs it. We had a lot of feedback from
customers saying, look, we love Framei.o and for certain jobs that make sense,
but for other less complicated, less expensive projects we need something
else.”
Studio PRO-2710
Atomos is also showing its new Studio PRO-2710
reference monitor, the technology for which it acquired from a company
called eCinema.
“That's given us a legacy and the IP to build really high-end reference
monitors for colour grading. Typically, these are very, very expensive
reference monitors. What we're trying to deliver is a monitor that gives you
similar performance to those big monitors, but at a much more studio friendly
price.”
A unique aspect of the monitors is the lighting panel at the
back. Barber explains, “Because the lighting of your room actually affects your
perception of what you're seeing on the screen. By managing, balancing, and
calibrating your room environment along with calibrating the screen environment
actually guarantees the colour. This is something that the big post-production
houses and Hollywood have known for forever, and they obviously have the
infrastructure to build these dedicated suites, but if you're at a home studio,
how do you do that? That's why we've introduced this technology to bring it to
a much larger market.”
Shinobi 7 RX
An IBC show debut from Atomos is the Shinobi 7 RX, a
new 7-inch 2200 nit HDR monitor-only device with camera control and HDMI and
SDI inputs.
“Plus, it also has wireless monitoring. This now interfaces with our Atomos TX
RX video transmitter and receiver pack. You could actually walk around with it
as a director’s monitor, focus puller’s monitor on set or program or preview
display for video switchers. You can have camera control on Sony and Canon and
a whole heap of other cameras. All for 700 bucks ($700/ €699).
Asked how many creators he thought would be present at a
stalwart trade show like IBC, Barber was optimistic.
“Pre-Covid the industry was siloed. Broadcast here, prosumer
there. Now those lines are blurred. YouTube continues to be a platform for a
huge amount of content but Netflix and Amazon haven’t slackened either. There’s
a vast amount of content being made and if you want to beat the competition you
need higher production value at source. That is our bread and butter.”
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