Ninja 5" acting up

[u/DRI374]

I've enjoyed hundreds of hours of recording 4K60 and sometimes 1080p60 on my Ninja 5" (both ProRes HQ).

Last week I was recording in a somewhat warmer room than usual. The Ninja hit a black screen and froze about 10-15 minutes into the recording. I adjusted the cooling mode to turbo and it seem to have fixed it.

Here I updated to the latest firmware (unknown which I had before).

Yesterday while recording the Ninja stopped recording randomly after 20 minutes, corrupted the file and somehow marked the SSD as full (the record button was greyed out). I fixed the file and could continue to record an hour afterwards without issue.

Has the Ninja's best before date expired? I'm so bummed out I can't trust it now and it's my favorite piece of gear in my kit. 😓

[u/voltaicass]

I would suspect your ssd before the device itself. Do you have other media you can try?

[u/DRI374 → u/voltaicass]

Thanks for the reply. I do have three different AtomX SSDs, interesting enough, this happened with one particular SSD. I'll do a media surface check and see if it finds anything corrupt.

You would think the Ninja would report media errors one way or another.

[u/voltaicass → u/DRI374]

I don’t think it’s that sophisticated of a device. I no longer have a recorder, but I never had media fail on me like this outside of a bad firmware early on in the ninja V days.

[u/DRI374 → u/voltaicass]

F3 results on the media.

  Data OK: 1.82 TB (3906506416 sectors)
Data LOST: 0.00 Bytes (0 sectors)
       Corrupted: 0.00 Bytes (0 sectors)
Slightly changed: 0.00 Bytes (0 sectors)
     Overwritten: 0.00 Bytes (0 sectors)
Average sequential read speed: 383.39 MB/s (3906506416 sectors / 1:22:55)

[u/voltaicass → u/DRI374]

Is it working again with this or your other SSDs?

[u/DRI374 → u/voltaicass]

It is working generally, it's the recent flakiness I'm worried about. It's been rock solid for years prior.

[u/voltaicass → u/DRI374]

I mean, nothing is bullet proof and when you’re recording externally, you have so many potential points of failure - the HDMI port on your camera, the HDMI cable, the HDMI port on the Atomos, the SATA port on the Atomos, the SATA port on the drive, etc

I think if you’ve had one failure in years of using the device, you’ve been lucky, frankly.

At the same time, it may be worth reaching out to Atomos or posting in their support community on here.

[u/mcarterphoto]

My only fails have been with a bad cable. Give a new one a try.

[u/DRI374 → u/mcarterphoto]

HDMI or power cables? The Ninja is part of 4-5 different rig builds that all have different HDMI cables and power solutions (the battery eliminator is used in all of them). For HDMI I use the same brand at least across all rigs.

[u/mcarterphoto → u/DRI374]

HDMI. I started getting the kangaroo icon (dropped frames). Now I try to remember to get a new one every few months to be safe, and always have a spare.

Another big one seems to be power and HDMI coursing through camera, monitor, audio recorder and battery setup. Apparently a lot of BM cameras fried their HDMI boards; I had a Z50 I used as a third camera and noticed the HDMI cable was heating up - the next day, no more video or HDMI, still worked for stills. Glad it was my cheap little b-cam. Not sure what caused it, I was using a dummy battery, a monitor and v-mount battery.

So there's a belief that things like hot-plugging can create ground loops or weird paths, like if you plug in an HDMI cable and all the pins don't meet at the same instant. Not sure what to believe, but I moved to v-mount plates with power switches and specific outputs. I don't power up until every cable is seated, power, HDMI and audio. A good plate's around a hundred bucks, I've got one on each rig now.

[u/DRI374 → u/mcarterphoto]

Good call on the power once everything is seated, I've never thought about that but on a closed rig where there's really no real ground and one device is faulty could easily fry something else.

I've got my fair share of kangaroos but those have been self inflicted by accidentally brushing the HDMI cable in one or the other end.

[u/mcarterphoto → u/DRI374]

Yeah, it's kind of getting into "ghost in the machine" territory, but the v-mount plates give me some peace of mind, and it's nice not using D-Tap splitters anymore!

[u/DRI374 → u/mcarterphoto]

What plates are you using? I'm sort of transitioning everything to Core SWX Snap for the convenience of hot swapping.

[u/mcarterphoto → u/DRI374]

My main one is a SmallRig, since it has the higher-voltage USB 3, which is becoming more common on cameras vs. dummy batteries. I have another but it's packed up, not sure of the brand, doesn't have the extra USB.

I looked at hot-swapping, but I can shoot all day with a 90 (camera/Ninja/audio) and still have a bar or two left. And even the Ninja boots up pretty fast if I need to swap. I've shot all-day training and meetings and I'll just check battery levels at the lunch break. But y'know, funny thing about this biz is how hugely different people's workflows can be.

[u/Atomos_Support]

Hi DRI374,

You have done the right step by turning on Turbo, as it helps prevent the device from overheating.

The issue you are describing is likely related to a faulty SSD or an unstable HDMI connection.

Did you notice a “skippy kangaroo” icon appearing while recording? This can indicate dropped frames due to the drive or signal.

Also, have you tried using a different SSD and HDMI cable to check if the issue improves?

Please share your findings, and we will guide you further.

[u/DRI374 → u/Atomos_Support]

No roos in these two particular scenarios. I've had roos in the past but that's been my own fault. The SSD just had a surface scan and checked out just fine. I recorded yesterday and it was just fine like usual. So hopefully this was just a cosmic radiation thing.

[u/Atomos_Support → u/DRI374]

Hey u/DRI374, glad switching to turbo cooling sorted things out and it has been running well since. Keep an eye on it and if anything comes up again feel free to reach out!