Blackmagic Design Video Assist 12G HDR (7") Field Monitor-Recorder

trustworthy Begin incorporating the ever reliable and trustworthy name of Blackmagic into your shooting workflow, as the Video Assist 12G HDR provides cameras with HD, UHD, 2K and 4K DCI recording to commonly found UHS-II SD Cards. Built into the Assist is a tally indicator, scopes and focus assists to quite literally ‘assist’ you on your shoot, regardless of what it is. Go above and beyond the limits of your current camera by unlocking full 10-bit recording (or 12-bit in Blackmagic RAW supported cameras), so you can begin creating incredible content with minimal sized kit.

The incredibly bright touch screen is HDR compliant, so you can not only capture your footage with no hassle in bright lights, but you’ll be HDR ready as the Video Assist tags incoming HDR sources with the right metadata to help you during the edit process. PQ and HLG are done through the ST2084 standard, while the device itself can handle 100% of the DCI-P3 format, along with the options to use Rec. 2020 and Rec. 709.

HDMI & SDI With a 12G SDI port, you’ll be able to get up to 2160p60 Ultra HD video, plus input via the HDMI port will give you similar results for more prosumer cameras to be utilised with the Assist. For those in film, you’ll be able to capture 2K and 4K DCI up to 25fps for that authentic look.

SD Cards On a 256GB U3 UHS-II SD Card, you’ll get a maximum of 190 minutes when shooting with ProRes Proxy and 38 minutes when using ProRes 422 HQ or DNxHD. You can go for hours if you wind up switching from 4K to 1080p, with Blackmagic’s tests with ProRes Proxy going all the way up to 7.9 hours.

USB-C However, Scan Pro Video highly recommend purchasing a high quality portable SSD like the Samsung T5 (250GB or 2TB models), which once you’re done recording, pop it out and plug it straight back into your PC via USB-C for editing, no transfers required! You can even connect larger disk arrays for even longer recording sessions within a studio or closed environment.

Differences For those that need something a little more, the 7” version of the Video Assist comes with an additional SD Card slot, 2 mini-XLR ports for external audio sources and a LANC port. Both devices come with SDI and HDMI in/out, plus a 3.5mm jack for monitoring. If you're after portability, the 5" is the ideal companion on almost every shoot!

5" Video Assist

Accuracy Vital for monitoring, Scopes and LUTs provide you with both accurate tracking of the incoming feed and familiar colour spaces to work in, helping you preserve the look you were originally after. LUTs can be changed to bring the appearance of the video to something similar of film or from other brands, including Kodak and Fujifilm. If you’re using Blackmagic RAW, you can even ‘burn’ them into the video itself, rather than just a temporary thing while monitoring.

For those looking for an accurate view of exactly what’s coming into the camera, you’ll find the built in and overlayed Scopes to be incredibly useful. Histograms for monitoring white to black, waveform for luminance, vectorscope gives you information of colour coming in, while Parade keeps tabs on ‘illegal colours’ within the RGB colour space.