The following short press release went out on January 15,  2024: “Melbourne, Australia. Jeromy Young, co-founder of Atomos, has returned as Managing Director and CEO. Young, who was previously CEO of Atomos for over 10 years, retired from executive duties in November 2021.” We caught up via video conference. 

 

Jon: How is it that you are back at Atomos?

Jeromy: I am infatuated with our industry. It’s a place where you need to be at a reasonable technical level to even have a chance. I missed it. I missed running a company. I missed having people come on the journey of new ways to do things. I think it’s where I’m supposed to be.

The stars realigned. I don’t think too many people know about your time in Japan. Do you want to tell us about that?

I had been working as an engineer for BHP, a massive Australian mining and exploration company. When I was 22 years old, they sent me to work in Japan at Nippon Steelworks. To get extra cash, I taught English on the side. One pupil was the president of Canopus Video Corporation, a Japanese tech company. He wound up offering me a product management job working on DV Storm and Raptor video cards.
We were all working from 6:00 AM to midnight every day. After a couple of years of product management, I became international sales director. I thought that didn’t make sense because I’m an engineer. But it was a good experience. I spent seven years at Canopus, traveling to all corners of the globe. I returned to Australia when my grandmother became ill and took a job at Blackmagic Design. And then I started Atomos.

And why are you back after a few years’ leave?

I had been doing due diligence on investing in it again for about four months before rejoining. The management that was appointed after I left focused on connecting the Ninjas and all the monitor recorders to the Internet and camera to cloud technology. They built a good underlying infrastructure. It’s actually quite advanced. However, the way it was presented may have been a bit above the normal Ninja customer level where it gets real techy real fast. So that’s what I’ve been spending time on: simplifying it and bringing it back so any videographer or cinematographer can send files wherever they want to.

There are two parts to cloud connectivity: simple streaming to YouTube or social media, sending files for an editor to work on in a timeline (Cameras to Cloud), streaming as a source input for live production, which typically incorporates multiple cameras. I’m working on messaging for Atomos’ core customers that for their wedding and event productions, for example, they can offer TV style production with video, titles and graphics from three cameras, which is far better than a one camera locked off and send it to YouTube. They can make money from better production techniques, and they don’t have to use any other equipment—just the Ninjas they already own.

In the broadcast and entertainment world, collaborative workflows speed up the ability to finish and move the project on.

Whereas previously you were moving files and discs around. Now, you can send proxy files directly for grading and editing and collaborating. That’s a big win. We are currently working with a number of studios in Hollywood to turn these services on for them. There were earlier issues with the way that Atomos presented this cloud service. People doing these cinema productions—users, rental companies, and resellers knew the benefits of what Atomos offered in terms of internet connectivity, high quality 10-bit, HDR video, but it wasn’t being sold through the people setting up those sets. I’m adjusting the process so that companies like MelroseMAC, BandPro and other resellers who are in there setting up these systems can benefit as well—because their time and technical knowledge needs to be taken into account as they’ll be the ones presenting our systems to the directors, producers, cinematographers and DITs.

But you’re not giving up on recording internally to the Ninjas and Shoguns?

No, definitely not. When you focus on something new and don’t remember what was already there, you may wind up with many new customers who may not remember why the Ninja was developed in the first place. Yes, it enables your camera more; yes, it’s a better screen to be able to see what you’re really shooting. But there’s also reliability and the flexibility of being able to put it on any camera. Reliability means that if you remove a cable, it keeps recording. If you remove the disc accidentally, it rebuilds the file instantly. The Ninja adds real professional features that many cameras don’t have. It is often the main recording device and adds value to the camera.

We’ve also been a proxy recorder for high-end ARRI cameras. They’re already recording ARRIRAW or other large file formats. But our Apple ProRes or H.265 on a nice monitor that can be easily moved around is a really convenient onboard accessory.

We connect to most cameras correctly with protocols to control them. And then, getting connected to the Internet is a real benefit and you don’t have to get bonded networks. You don’t have to get separate streaming products. It’s all included in the Ninja now.
It used to require six or seven pieces of equipment, but now it’s all in one. It’s really the Swiss Army knife of on-set video production.

Was living in Japan and speaking Japanese important to your being able to sign up all the camera companies in the beginning?

Absolutely. I made capture boards with editing software, and they were making the cameras. So, I worked with all the product managers of these cameras—especially Canon, Sony and Panasonic. Their handheld DV camcorders were popular for wedding photography and ended up being popular for broadcasters and documentaries. So, I was working on how to move the files from their cameras into computers for editing. We knew their schedules, we worked with them, and when they announced, we announced the capture card. Many of those same product managers are now running the entire imaging departments at the camera companies.

In essence, the Ninja is the capture card of today. The cameras are still coming out thick and fast. So, we just keep on rekindling the same partnerships. My understanding of the Japanese culture obviously gives me a leg up to navigate. But I don’t think there’s any special treatment.

Where are things going?

We’re committed to 4K 240p. We’re committed to next generation, and we keep pushing that boundary. Maybe it’s not 8K 60p so fast. Maybe it’s 4K at much wider dynamic range. I think that’s where the bandwidth should be used. Better quality at the current resolutions is probably enough for most TVs and home viewing. But if we gave you a much better image, deeper colors, wider brightness range, then that would be a much better experience. That also lets the TVs move forward without having to offer something that no one really is shooting in. Every time I see an 8K TV, it always says upscaling — because there’s not really much content being streamed in 8K at the moment.

It’s also interesting that a number of high-end DPs have been shooting with lighter, smaller, faster, cheaper cameras and using your Ninja or Shogun to record in higher quality than that camera can do internally.

That’s right. Which is exactly the workflow that we envisaged 10 years ago for the Ninja. So, it’s great to see that. It’s great to see that the democratization of better-quality video is really what Atomos is about. We want to put it in the hands of people who couldn’t do what they end up doing without the combinations that we have. So, it’s great to see that continuing to gain momentum in the industry.

What trends do you see in the motion picture business?

Cost-effective changes. Connecting remote people together, having them see what’s going on in real time, having them contribute to the day’s work when they can’t be there. You don’t have to fly people in and have them all in one place. It’s more creative because people can spend time to watch what’s going on and comment to get a better result or a faster result. They’re using connected add-on tools in a collaborative environment over the internet in real time. It lets you be more creative, which is what most DPs want. Or you can do productions faster if you’re under the pump. I think both of those are relevant at different times in a production. I see the industry adding on these Internet connected tools for relatively very little cost.

You mentioned democratization. How does that affect the high-end and very expensive equipment?

That’s the technology trend, and it will happen in different cycles. Let’s just rewind 10 years. Everything’s 2K, right? Then 4K starts to come in. When that comes in, everything goes boom, the cameras get bigger, the discs get bigger, the computers required to process that get bigger. And so that was at the start of the 4K pick-up. Now 10 years later, obviously 4K is mainstream, all the platforms deliver 4K. So, you’re doing 4K work now and you’ve got two choices. Do you bump up to 8K and it gets bigger again just because of physical electronic capability, or do you stay in 4K and miniaturize more? The technology moves on and allows you to go smaller and smaller.

As the technology moves forward, then we can jam more into smaller devices. There are always these choices in tech. The commoditization, the democratization through the size and cost of the electronics involved is really a cycle of format changes. We are currently near the maturity of a 4K workflow, and therefore a couple of years until the next format arrives.

What format is next?

If the next resolution is 8K 240p, it’s not available today as an off-the-shelf silicon commodity. You have to do a lot of custom work. You must be in there at the right end, pushing technology. So, it’s bigger, it’s hotter in a few years. But the ability to do 8K 60p will come sooner into a smaller silicon device, whether customers want to use that bandwidth for 8K or not. Who knows? Maybe consumers will prefer to use that bandwidth for higher frame rates at lower resolutions. So yes, I think that 4K 240p will fill that gap. I’m seeing requests for that now from customers, which makes sense. They were doing HD 240p for years. So moving to 4K 240p is logical, but it’s four times the data rate and it’s the same data rate as 8K 60p. So you are in this “I’ve got to make a bigger device world,” and that will continue to be the case for at least the next two to three years until we see the next generation of silicon. But we’re getting pretty close to what would be theoretical maximums. I mean, the iPhones at three nanometers, which means three electrons per transistor. One nanometer is one electron. And just to give you an idea, the previous generation Ninjas were at 16 nanometers, so 16 electrons per transistor.

The latest ones are at 12 nanometer, 12 electrons per transistor. And then we have to go to a different technology. I’m sure MIT is working on a few in the background. But we will get to the end of that cycle. But there’s still another cycle to go for video. Some companies are spending around $20 billion on that. It’s a little bit out of my budget, but there will be off-the-shelf chips that we can utilize, put together with our technology and offer in the future. But you’re probably looking at two to three years and later.

When we last spoke a few years ago, you had aspirations of building a camera. Is that still in your plans?

I’d love to make a camera. But, no, I don’t want to compete against the people who are already making cameras.

Like your headline, “While the industry makes better cameras, we make cameras better.” Would you care to comment about anything on your Atomos roadmap?

Yes, actually, I would. Atomos is entering into the lighting market, and specifically for Ninja customers. We’ve been working on a highly accurate sun spectrum group of LED lights, called Sun Dragon. Clearly, the evolution of LED lighting has been happening for over 10 to 15 years. LED lights have been great, but their downfall has been that many are consumer LEDs, so the spectrum is skewed to blue and red. But cameras are calibrated to daylight or tungsten. That mismatch has to be corrected in camera or in post.

Our new lights are not only full sun spectrum but also are waterproof. They’re lightweight, flexible silicon strips, in 10-foot lengths that you can shape or stick anywhere. You can put a diffuser on the front and it’s a floodlight, like a panel light, or you can put them around a set as ambient or practical lights. They will be controllable from the Ninja in 50 cm increments. You can have them at different color temperatures. You can be very creative with these lights. I don’t want to enter the panel light market. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to provide a lightweight and portable fixture that people can take with them and then, when they need it, stick it in the right location instead of just flooding the place with big lights.

It’s all controlled wirelessly through our sync and control protocol that’s long range and can go through walls. It’s really solid. We’re entering into the lighting market, which is growing at 15% year on year and is a $700 million market today.