Blackmagic Forum

Hi,

I recently bought a Video Assist 4k and today tried to connect my Rode NTG4 shotgun microphone to it, but it doesn't appear to work on either input. The LEDs on the microphone don't light up and the VA doesn't pickup any sound from it. The microphone works fine on my Tascam recorder though. I did turn on the phantom power in the menu and if I measure the voltage with a multimeter I get 45.5v on the Tascam and 46.3 on the VA. It doesn't matter whether I run the VA off batteries or the adapter. According to the NTG4 datasheet it draws 4.5mA which I guess is on the higher end for microphones but the VA specs don't mention how much it can provide.

Is there a way to diagnose or fix this? Is there a list of compatible microphones?

Now that the post has been approved I'm going to instantly answer myself.

The issue turned out to be a faulty cable that shorted out pins 1 and 3. Initially I didn't catch this since I only checked phantom power on pin 2 of the XLR when I wrote the original question. I got the cable replaced and now everything works as expected.

Cables, they will get you every time. I use a good cable checker before each job, as the little buggers tend to break in storage!
Cheers