When it comes to A/V, there has never been a better time to be a small church. One look around what is available in the A/V industry will tell you that smaller production is all the rage. Manufacturers are making smaller/cheaper switchers, cameras, and audio consoles. This means you can stretch your A/V dollar further now and get more for it. One of the great things about this trend is that it leads to innovation in very affordable products. Take, for example, the newest addition from Atomos, which takes your standard Ninja V/V+ monitor/recorder, already a great product, and slaps an AtomX CAST four-input HDMI switcher on it, transforming it into a fully functional switcher, multiviewer, and recorder. Then price it competitively against the other four input HDMI switchers, and you have the Atomos Ninja Cast.
While we await our review unit, which is tied up with a paperwork issue somewhere between Dresden, Germany, and our home base in Raleigh, NC, here’s what we can tell you.
The options opened up by the small investment of the Atom X CAST are well worth the price and won’t completely drain your church’s filmmaking budget.
Ninja V/V+
Atomos, based in Melbourne, Australia, is known for its robust line of combination monitors and recorders. The value here is that many cameras can output a higher bit rate, color space, and sometimes resolution than what they can capture natively in the camera. Also, by off-loading the recording, the hard work is being done by the recorder, extending camera battery life and reducing overheating. Add to that the suite of functions built into the Atomos monitors like false color, focus assist, and vectorscopes, and it becomes easy to see the value of a product like the Ninja on your camera. However, the Ninja also records to SSD, either in Apple ProRes or Avid DNx, so it’s edit ready and on a hard drive, making it fantastic for your church’s post-production workflows.
Atom X CAST
This add-on to the Ninja V/V+ is the secret sauce behind the Ninja Cast. It’s a dock-like interface that adds physical buttons for switching cameras and four HDMI inputs, one HDMI output, power, and USB-C. The X cast also features four function buttons that navigate menus and settings. While not mentioned in the documentation anywhere, it’s safe to assume Atom X CAST doesn’t function without the Ninja V/V+. Considering the Atom X Cast alone retails for $399 if you already own a Ninja V/V+, then this is a no-brainer. The options opened up by the small investment of the Atom X CAST are well worth the price and won’t completely drain your church’s filmmaking budget.
There is a lot to like about the Ninja CAST; it’s a small four-input HDMI switcher which can switch, record, stream, and has a built-in display.
This small form function switcher has a few advantages over other similar switchers in the same price range. First, it is frame rate agnostic, so you can mix and match frame rates on the inputs up to 60p. Second, because the built-in monitor is a Ninja, you can look at any of the inputs full screen and use the onboard tools to look at things like false color, focus assist, and waveforms to ensure your focus and exposure are correct in every shot. Third, the HDMI output on the Ninja V/V+ is still active while docked and can function as a program, preview, or multiview, depending on your needs. Keep in mind this is in addition to the program out on the Atom X CAST. So while the five-inch onboard touch screen is excellent, it isn’t your only option you can drive a full-size display for multiview and still have a program out. Last, the USB-C output allows you to connect the Ninja CAST to a computer, and it shows up just like a webcam. This makes it compatible with all the standard video conferencing suites like; Zoom, Teams, Skype, and broadcast platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. However, it also opens up some great options for two-person church streaming operations by bringing the Ninja CAST into something like OBS. At that point the options are pretty much endless, a second operator can handle adding graphics and overlays, giving you broadcast-quality video streams. Because the Ninja Cast is doing most of the heavy lifting in the video processing department, processing power on your computer is not nearly as taxed as it would be if it were trying to handle four video streams, switch, overlay graphics and stream all the same time.
There is a lot to like about the Ninja CAST; it’s a small four-input HDMI switcher which can switch, record, stream, and has a built-in display. I’m not sure there are other products on the market, in this price range that can boast as much functionality for a small church streaming set-up, a mobile streaming operation, or a church film team.
A few questions I do have while we wait for our review unit, which I can’t find in the documentation, is what can it record natively? Does it only record the program feed, or can it record isolated inputs like some other small switcher that recently hit the market? While isolated recording isn’t a deal-breaker at an MSRP of $949 for the entire system, it is still a great value. However, if it can record isolated inputs, then the Ninja CAST would sit alone on the top of the mountain as the best value small form factor switcher on the market today.
