Blackmagic Design Video Assist 7-Inch 3G-SDI/HDMI Recorder/Monitor

Blackmagic Design Video Assist 7-Inch 3G-SDI/HDMI Recorder/Monitor

The Blackmagic Design Video Assist is a portable monitor, a professional recorder, a portable scope, and a fantastic camera viewfinder solution. Blackmagic Video Assist 3G model supports video formats up to 1080p60 and has a large 7-inch LCD with focus peaking, zebra, and false color. Its connections include 3G‑SDI and HDMI. This model features two SD card slots, so you can record flash memory cards that are easy to obtain. The design of this model has innovations such as four built-in scopes, enhanced focus assist features, a tally indicator, and built-in 3D LUTs.

Transform Camera Usability with Video Assist

Traditional cameras are designed for shoulder-mounted operation, so are a compromise. Hours spent leaning into a viewfinder for long tripod-mounted shoots can be tough. Video Assist will transform your shooting style with an onboard rigged screen. It's much more comfortable using a screen rigged to a position best suited for a shooting setup. Plus you get better situational awareness of the operator, assistant, or director. You're also adding fantastic features such as focus zoom, focus peaking, zebras, histogram, false color, scopes, frame markers, frame guides, touchscreen, and more.

Customize your Touchscreen Tools and Features

The innovative touchscreen LCD user interface provides incredible control. On-screen, there are dedicated buttons for play, stop and record, plus a mini timeline for scrolling through your recordings. You can even image swipe to jog. With a large and bright 7-inch touchscreen, Video Assist makes it incredibly easy to frame shots and accurately focus. The touchscreen displays critical information while you’re shooting including the timecode, transport control, audio meters, and a histogram for exposure. You can also customize the LCD to add or remove overlays such as current filename, focus peaking, zebra, false color, frame guides, 3D LUTs, and more.

Upgrade to Better Recording for Digital Cameras

Blackmagic Video Assist is an ideal upgrade for cameras, as its bright display is bigger than the tiny displays found on consumer cameras, plus you're also adding professional focus assist features and better quality file formats. It supports all editing software as you can record in Apple ProRes and Avid DNx. You can even use Blackmagic RAW on supported cameras. With both HDMI and SDI inputs you can connect it to any consumer camera, broadcast camera, or even DSLR camera.

Built-In Scopes Ensure Compliance with Standards

Video Assist features scopes for accurate exposure on cameras and compliance to broadcast standards. That means it’s also a great portable waveform monitoring solution. The waveform display provides a traditional luminance (brightness) level view of the video inputs or the playback signal. The vector scope allows you to see the intensity of color at 100 percent SDI reference levels. You also get an RGB parade display which is ideal for color correction. The histogram shows the distribution of white to black detail in your images and highlights or shadows clipping. The built-in scopes can even be overlaid on live video, or as a small picture-in-picture view at the top right of the scope.

Load Custom 3D LUTs to Recreate Film Looks

Some cameras can output logarithmic colorspace to preserve the dynamic range, which is great for later post-production, however when these files are viewed on a monitor they can look flat and washed out. 3D LUTs solve this problem because they allow you to apply a 'look' to the monitor so you get an idea of how the finished images will look when editing. LUTs can be applied temporarily for monitoring only, or they can be burned into files for use in editing when capturing Blackmagic RAW. Video Assist works with industry-standard 17 and 33-point 3D LUT files, or you can work with built-in LUTs such as Extended Video, Film to Video, and more.

Direct Metadata Entry for Faster Editing

The advanced digital slate and metadata features make it extremely fast to add metadata to any shot. Simply swipe left or right from the edge of the screen to bring up the digital slate. You can even select for taking numbers to be automatically incremented when you start and stop recording, so you don’t have to enter them manually for each shot. You can also set reel numbers to increment each time you format a card. All metadata is saved with the files and available in post-production with software such as DaVinci Resolve.

Professional Multi-Channel SDI and Analog Audio

Blackmagic Video Assist includes a built-in professional audio recorder that’s much better quality than the audio found in most cameras, eliminating the need to carry around extra audio equipment. When working in SDI formats, you can record 2, 4, 8, or 16 channels of audio. For connecting microphones, this model has 2 XLR analog audio inputs with phantom power and high definition audio sample rates of 192 kHz at 16 and 24 bits per sample. The audio meters can even be changed between VU or PPM ballistics.

Works with the World's Most Popular Video Software

The files from Blackmagic Video Assist are common and are compatible with all operating systems or in most video software. Media can be formatted using ExFAT or HFS+ so you can easily access the media on computers and access the files like regular disks. DaVinci Resolve is perfect for using with Video Assist as it features editing, color correction, audio post-production, and visual effects all in one software application. Plus you can download DaVinci Resolve free of charge for Mac, Windows, and Linux. You can also use recorded files in other popular software such as Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro X. With Video Assist, your media is common so your files will remain readable in the future.