Video Assist FX3/ProRes Raw firmware new release date?

Hey everyone checking to see if there’s a new release date for the upcoming firmware that will enable FX3 BRaw recording and add ProRes Raw to the 12G Video Assist recorders? Previously BMD have said it would be October, with FX6/FX9 support coming early next year.

Seeing as it hasn’t released yet and October is over in a few hours, I’m wondering if a new date has been figured out yet (maybe someone from BMD can chime in)?

Thanks!

The only info we've really had as a community has come from the interviews BMD reps have done at trade shows. BMD just takes their time when it comes to firmware releases, so there's not much we can do besides standing by while we wait for them to do their thing.

As a recent VA12G owner myself I am also very excited for this update. Beyond PRR support I'd love for them to implement a few other UI changes too, like porting over the more robust frame guide options from their cameras. Time will tell though.

Just released on BMD’s support page. Get it while it’s hot!

Can't see the download yet, but can see the item in the "Latest News" column. It doesn't mention ProRes Raw support, just support for FX3 and FX30 BRAW?

I just updated my VA 12G 5". Seems to work. I have yet to actually record anything with it.

However one thing I noticed with my FX3 set to 29.97fps is that the Timecode display seems to "glitch" roughly every couple seconds at irregular intervals and shows 00:00:00:00 for what looks like a single frame. Both camera and VA are set to non drop frame timecode.

Strangely this appears to only happen with my FX3 at specifically 29.97fps. It doesn't happen at 23.98 or 59.94. It also doesn't when turning off RAW output and setting the VA to ProRes. The FX30 also didn't reproduce this. Swapping cables didn't change this either.

This might not be a big impediment to function but it's visually jarring to see the TC "flicker" every couple seconds.

Does anyone else see this is or is specifically my FX3 being weird somehow?

Wow y’all are fast I woke up and saw the news but you beat me to it! I’ll be testing with my FX3 today.

I saw some folks over on CineD mentioning that DaVinci Resolve doesn't expose controls for ISO/WB/Tint with the BRAW recorded from the FX3/FX30. It seems super unlikely but I don't have an FX body to test. Can someone confirm that?

Weird but I try to use it and I can't.

Drive under the VA shows 0 clips. When I put the har drive (T7 Shield) to my computer it shows braw files but every shots is 6ko.

I use DCI 4K 24fps.

Any tip ?

I saw some folks over on CineD mentioning that DaVinci Resolve doesn't expose controls for ISO/WB/Tint with the BRAW recorded from the FX3/FX30. It seems super unlikely but I don't have an FX body to test. Can someone confirm that?

That seems to be correct. It shows the the normal Braw settings filled in with what appears to be the camera metadata where available. But even when enabling the clip settings all of them remain greyed out except for the exposure one.

I'm only seeing exposure as the only slider with both FX3 and FX30. Maybe more support will come in the future?

It seems that at this point in time the full range of RAW settings is only acessible with iPhone 17 recordings. Even those from the BMPCC 4K with the beta firmware show less parameters than BRAW out of the same camera. For details see my article here:
https://digitalproduction.com/2025/10/0 ... w-vs-braw/

One can only hope for more to come, DR 20.2.3 still disappointed in this respect.

I saw some folks over on CineD mentioning that DaVinci Resolve doesn't expose controls for ISO/WB/Tint with the BRAW recorded from the FX3/FX30. It seems super unlikely but I don't have an FX body to test. Can someone confirm that?

This is correct and after some research I found a Gerald Undone videos comparing BRaw and ProRes Raw on a Panasonic mirrorless. He contacted BMD and they told him that ISO implementation is so different among camera manufacturers that they disabled the ISO control and that you get the same results with the exposure control.

I’m assuming it’s a similar explanation for WB/tint. It’d be really great if BMD explained this in some way in the program itself so it doesn’t cause confusion.

EDIT: here is the video link right to the info (Skip to 10:08):

He contacted BMD and they told him that ISO implementation is so different among camera manufacturers that they disabled the ISO control and that you get the same results with the exposure control.

Which makes sense but also makes me wonder about how "RAW" these different formats are.

Clearly Resolve can decode both ProRes RAW and now Braw from Sony cameras into an identical(ish) image as the slog3 you get out of the cameras internal codec. Now if this was "true RAW" and the WB was just applied from metadata during decoding, then clearly they could do the same for adjusted WB values. But apparently that is not the case. Which seems to indicate the WB is baked in to some degree?

Which is probably still fine. In the end I don't care to much really. It's a higher quality 12bit format. But the nomenclature of calling these formats "RAW" doesn't seem to have any coherent meaning. If things like WB end up being baked in the values aren't "RAW". If there is some degree of preemptive debayering going on (such as some cameras allowing full frame raw at non-native resolutions somehow?) it apparently doesn't mean that either.

Also that the "RAW" formats are somehow still associated with log gammas? See also the options available on the Nikon ZR where the behavior between NEV and R3D raw is the recording gamma/color space? If these were truly raw sensor values then there would be no requirement to chose a gamma curve during recording. That would just be a detail of the decoding happening later.

Now I don't think any of this matters in practice as long as these deliver the bit depth and resolution. But I still find the opaqueness of all of this annoying.

As it is now "RAW" has not specific technical meaning but just means "vendor/camera specific".

As it is now "RAW" has not specific technical meaning but just means "vendor/camera specific".

The answer is clear: bring back CinemaDNG! ;p

But seriously, I agree. It is extremely frustrating how fractured the raw landscape is currently. That said, now that some vendors are offering internal recording as an option I am hoping that we'll claw back some of that control.

It’s still early but the implementation is a little half baked. One can take non raw S-Log and make as-raw adjutments in the Camera Raw pane but not with actual raw? What’s missing?

Good Luck

What’s missing?

The higher storage needs

On a serious note: while that's a pretty capable camera, does anybody really see a significant difference between that "RAW" and the best of the other options?

On a serious note: while that's a pretty capable camera, does anybody really see a significant difference between that "RAW" and the best of the other options?

I can only really speak to the experience I had with the FX3, but yes. The internal XAVC is significantly softer than anything you'd record externally.

I was thinking about external alternatives.

It’s still early but the implementation is a little half baked. One can take non raw S-Log and make as-raw adjutments in the Camera Raw pane but not with actual raw? What’s missing

I think the "as-raw" settings you get for some of the XAVC flavors for example are also misleading. The way those settings affect white balance is wildly different than how it works in camera.

I did this experiment when the ProRes RAW support landed in Resolve. I shot two clips of the same thing once at the correct WB (of 5400K in that case) and one where I intentionally set it to a "wrong" value (3200k iirc).

You'd then expect that the "RAW" controls would let you adjust the WB after the fact and achieve the same results as setting it in camera. But that's not the case. None of the white balance adjustment settings in Resolve I tried reproduce the Sony in camera white balance when adjusting from 3200 to 5400. I tried the "RAW" page ones, the wheels, the HDR wheels and the chromatic adaptation effect.

This applied to both the ProRes RAW and the XAVC footage. Which is also one of the reason why I speculated above that in this use case the external "RAW" is best thought of as being a container for 12bit slog3 as opposed to "true raw".

Given this behavior I actually prefer the RAW page WB being disabled if it would be misleading like that anyway.

The lack of a proper post processing pipeline doesn’t dictate whether a format is or is not raw. Blackmagic Raw isn’t true raw but the post processing is well managed for obvious reasons.

I’m fairly certain raw recording within the iPhone is what tipped the Prores scale with Resolve implementation. Things will improve.

Good Luck

I think inverse duck logic applies. We can't observe the technical details that would justify it being called RAW because they are not publicly documented. We can't observe the behavior you'd expect of a RAW format like robustly setting WB after the fact.

It neither swims like a duck nor does it quack like a duck. But it still claims to be a duck because "trust me bro, it has duck in the name".

None of this would be objectionable if this stuff was just marketed as "our high quality 12bit format". Also to be fair the WB thing for example does work that way out of BM cameras. However it would help if there was some information to go along with this to set expectations.

If it said somewhere "Braw out of BM cameras has these RAW like qualities. Braw as recorded on a VA off a sony/lumix/whatever camera acts as a higher quality 12bit format but with baked in WB." then we could make decisions based on that. Instead we are stuck "reverse engineering" the behavior via experiments and speculation about user interface choices.

It might be better to think of what raw actually means.

For me personally

Can I change the ISO later?
Can I change the WB later?
Can I reprocess the OCM files with a different algorithm later and get different / better results??

In truth, a good 12 bit codec like ProRes 444 can do 2 of these things of these things as a cludge and is why it's become the default origination codec for a vast majority of screen content.

BTW. Using Exposure in DR tab *is* the same as making ISO changes even in BRAW files from BMD cameras. So plus 1 of exposure is like going from 800-->1600 iso.

raw BTW has never been raw. Even uncompressed raw has a lot of image preprocessing applied that you don't see. For example, pixel remapping and individual sensor calibration adjustments. Some cameras from major brands also do some NR. It's a dirty open secret.

JB

I wonder why it is taking so long to add ProRes Raw support to the Video Assist? Blackmagic announced this in early September and the firmware update was expected in October.

It's a dirty open secret.

The dirtiest secret is that none of our cameras is digital. The sensor delivers analog signals.

I wonder why it is taking so long to add ProRes Raw support to the Video Assist? Blackmagic announced this in early September and the firmware update was expected in October.

My understanding was that the VA12G firmware that enabled BRAW for the FX3/FX30 was the one due in Oct. Maybe I missed it but I never heard any word from trade shows with a release date for ProRes RAW.

But also, BMD is a big company in this space but they're working on a LOT right now. I imagine things are going to take a minute to implement.