Atomos Ninja V vs. Blackmagic Video Assist 12G – What's the best off-camera recorder?

okay jordan for today's shootout please don't be mad but i invited your twin brother gordon no no you know he loves black magic stuff and the occult and the dark arts and all that stuff all right i have that guy speaking of the devil hey gordon jordan hey gordon nice jacket oh you know what you [Music] [Music] welcome back dp review tv viewers it's jordan drake here to take a look at a couple of external video recording options now i've been using an atomos ninja 5 for years now it's one of my absolute favorite video tools but recently when the b-raw update came to the s1h blackmagic was nice enough to ship me a video assist recorder so i've been using that quite a bit and i kind of want to walk through what's going to be the better option for you now fortunately or unfortunately in my case we were able to bring in my twin brother gordon blake who knows the black magic stuff very well he's going to explain some of the benefits of that system we're going to walk through them see what might be the best option for you all right today my weapon of choice is the atomos ninja five i've had for several years it served me very well and it's quite inexpensive compared to some of the other options out there now i do know atomos just launched the new ninja 5 plus but the only reason to look at that is if you've got a camera that shoots 8k video or 4k 120 otherwise you might as well stick with the ninja 5 since i'm using it on an s1h that's what i'm going to go with unlike penny pinch and jordan i got a top of the line blackmagic 7 inch video assist 12g the latest version now if you don't want something quite this bulky you can also get the five-inch version of that but you do sacrifice one of those sd card slots and i want all the sd card slots i can get and you know what i'm gonna win you know mom likes me better right well dad likes me better how do you know all right gordon let's talk about the physical differences of our recorders and the atomos ninja 5 i would say its design is utilitarian i mean it's not fancy it's kind of plasticky but that does definitely keep the weight down and it has everything that you need on it we've got mounting points on the top and bottom of the recorder we've got an hdmi in and output now just remember that output's not going to work if you do record prores raw with this the other side we've got a headphone jack a microphone jack a lank input if you want to remotely trigger it we've also got a power button that is um you know it's recessed so you don't accidentally push it but kind of tough to get to and you have to hold it for an unnecessarily long amount of time to turn on and turn off the ninja 5 it's pretty annoying on the battery it's just regular sony l mount batteries but you can add on attachments for that so i can get an sdi adapter if i want to use this with some pro cameras like an fx6 or something like that it's just very expandable gets the job done and again lighter and way less expensive than yours okay jordan the design of my blackmagic video assist is just a totally different level and it feels so much better built i've got multiple mounting points right on top of the recorder here and just so many more inputs and outputs and you have to buy an expensive sdi adapter if you need an sdi connection you know i've already got that built on here so when i show up on set because i'm on set a lot i'm not just a youtuber jordan i can hook into pretty much any kind of professional equipment with this i also have two three pin xlr audio contacts on this still get a headphone jack and still get a lank input and you know what i've got hdmi in and out as well okay jordan i want you to take a close look here because you know what we got two l-mount battery slots on my recorder and that means security and redundancy i mean if someone bumps the battery on your ninja 5 while you're in the middle of a clip boom you just have a corrupted video clip you just lost that me i have some safety here it's just going to quickly jump over to the other battery uninterrupted professional like me a professional it doesn't end there because i've got a power button on here that's still kind of recessed so you're not going to accidentally push it but nice and clicky and i only have to hold it for a second to turn the recorder on and off none of those irritating delays that you have to deal with all the time jordan all right gordon let's talk about our codex a little bit and i mean we're basically an impasse here because both of our cameras can record multiple flavors of prores for most editing systems or dnxhd if you want to edit on an avid suite the big difference is my ninja 5 supports apple's pro res raw which is far and away the most popular codec for mirrorless cameras right now i know you're starting to see tiny little bits of b raw support in some of your cameras pers raw is much more widely supported and i can drop it right into final cut which is my preferred editing suite yeah jordan we share a lot of those other formats but you know what b-raw is just the future of compressed raw recording for starters if you're really serious about the image editing on final cut come on everyone who really cares about picture quality is already working on davinci resolve it's the industry standard for grading in the long haul i think b-raw is going to be the codec of choice and my recorder supports it all right gordon next i want to talk about media and that is a real difference and one where i think i've got a real advantage because with the atomos i can just go grab any ssd as long as it's fast enough to write video and just drop it in the back plugs right in it actually comes with a little caddy to make sure that it's on nice and securely when we're using that only drawback with that caddy is you kind of have it sticking out the back of the recorder a little bit if you don't want something to bump that you can actually grab an angel bird they make ssd's size specifically for the ninja five it's a little bit more money but it's like a really elegant solution not a really well thought out argument there jordan but i wouldn't really expect any better from you because you got to drag around two types of media you probably got sd cards in your camera ssds for your atomos recorder where with the blackmagic it has sd card slots on the recorders it actually has two with the seven inch so i can have a backup five inch only comes with one slot but then you're using the same type of media for your camera and for your recorder yeah you know what it's it's going to be more expensive because you have to buy very fast sd cards if you're going to be using them with the blackmagic recorder but you know what i have a usbc slot in mind so i can just plug an inexpensive ssd in there and get tons and tons of cheap storage so your entire argument doesn't really hold any water i've got a much more flexible media solution which means i win this round as i expect to win many rounds in the future loser okay gordon let's talk about our interfaces and it's pretty straightforward because we both have touch screen interfaces which i like i do honestly wish there were some physical controls on these i mean i remember the old video devices pixie that had a touch screen but also some physical buttons on the bottom of the recorder it was really nice to say if you were wearing gloves you could just have dedicated buttons for like record or punch it but you know what neither of us have physical buttons so we're both at parity there i just have this touch screen that is an excellent touch screen and it's super responsive and i really like on the atomos everything is really colorful it's really playful we've got all these beautiful looking icons just makes you want to get to work it's fun video production is fun yes you have a touch screen and it works and it's nice but mine is just so much more elegant it's based on the menu system from the blackmagic cinema cameras which everyone agrees are some of the best out there and you have a bunch of weird icons you have to try and remember what means what whereas with my black magic look at that everything is just nice pretty intuitive text super easy to read i just think this is a better laid out interface and everyone who's used both seems to agree with me okay gordon let's talk about the actual quality of the displays on these recorders because you can just use these as a monitor even if you're not planning to record externally and considering that this is an over three-year-old recorder at this point the specs still hold up really nicely it's a thousand nits you can use it as an hdr display or just plug it into your computer if you want to see what your hdr grades are going to look like it's a really nice job and right out of the box it was very color accurate and i've had this for three years now and it still hasn't really drifted you might not want to talk about it but i've noticed that your black magic video assist has a bit of a magenta cast okay jordan stop trying to put lipstick on a thousand nitpick because look at this it's just a more modern much brighter screen 2500 nits on this display so when i'm out in the field i can very easily see exactly what i'm shooting sure you know this particular unit might have a little bit of a color shift but i'm sure that no one else out there is encountering that same problem the display is a little bit pink and this is an easy category i clean up i win buddy all right gordon so we've gone through quite a few categories and yes the blackmagic video assist does have advantages and quite a few of those but remember my little atomos here is less than what your model costs and on top of that it can do most of the same things and it's still very capable if you need a monitor you want to record prores or dnxhd you're really not going to see a difference and which camera you're shooting with is going to determine what's going to be the better recorder for you in a lot of situations and there's just a lot more support right now for the atomos ninja shooting prores raw than there is for b-raw and a lot of mirrorless cameras so yeah you have some advantages but i think this is probably the better buy if you need to be flexible with a whole bunch of different shooting options okay yeah so a ninja five might be like a really great value for you know like a hobbyist enthusiast amateur like yourself but for a professional like me and the black magic video assist is a tool that i can show up on big fancy sets which i'm always on because i'm a professional and know hey if you guys need sdi connections it's okay they're already on there i can record to different media sources i'm gonna have a really bright screen so i'm set on a really bright day i mean an external recorder is a tool that i use all the time so it's worth the extra money to know that it's a little bit better in a lot of different areas but i'll be honest jordan which recorder you should buy really is going to come down to what you're going to be editing that video on as a fancy resolve user obviously i'm going to go with the one that will give me the option to record b-raw but if you're working with final cut obviously the atomos makes a lot more sense on a camera like the s1h that can output prores raw and b-raw we didn't really see a quality difference so it's largely just going to come down to workflow and of course your budget so hopefully you got something useful out of that despite him just jibbering on and on endlessly i just want to say if you want to see more content from you know jordan over there and his really cool friend chris you should definitely subscribe to dpreviewtv and we will see you all again well i won't because i'm gordon but that guy will see you again very soon on tv review tv you know man i'm surprised that was actually quite a bit of fun i would totally come and co-host the show again with you sometime yeah not likely why do i even ask i could just kill him and steal his identity and host the show myself

Channel: DPReview TV

Views: 51,523

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Id: DHnYLn86Mqs

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021