CLARIFICATION ON SDI FEED TO CART ON SET

[RadoStefanov]

I getting more into cart mixing and am finishing my cart.

I am selecting my monitors at the moment and wants to stay away from 19’ rackmounts to keep my cart light and small.

I thinking to get 2 very bright 7” field monitors and add a 3rd 5” “that I already own” when I need it. 

Here is my question:

When VTR sends SDI down the cart do they just loop through lets say 4k DCI 23.976 or do they down convert to 2k or 1080P.

There are many monitors to choose from but SDI INPUT is up to 2k signals. 

DO you have your own converters?

How often do you get wireless receivers? 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

I don't think there's any standards here.  You are going to have to ask the camera dept. of the show you are on.

I think it's not a bad idea to carry your own converters if you are willing to bear the cost, but it's probably something you could negotiate that camera provide for you if needed.  I rarely see other mixers using wireless receivers ... I wouldn't want the extra antennas around.

It sounds to me like you need to adjust your pre-show workflow to a more scripted environment ... the questions you are asking would be better directed to the people you are working with than trying to figure out an industry standard that may or may not exist.

[Matthias Richter]

Wireless (Teradek) 90% of the time. Don’t go hard wired. It just reduces your flexibility on set. Or you are forced to follow VV whenever Director likes to move elsewhere.

[Johnny Karlsson]

I have a snake I made with 1x XLR + 3x coax (SDI) to send audio to VTR, and receive up to 3 camera feeds. I have never needed a

converter, even with my almost 10 years old BlackMagic duo.

Can’t remember ever getting a wireless video receiver.

 

[Philip Perkins]

Once the local videoists went to QTake all video became wireless.  Teradek on cams, wireless to monitors.  We don't hook them up for sound anymore, they take the wireless hop audio from the camera Teradeks.

 

[Kambor]

I've only worked one feature, but both cameras used teradeks, everything wireless.

 

By the way, the sound mixer sent audio to video village with a g3 too. The only wire in set from sound was when we remoted the antennas.

[Mark LeBlanc]

Qtake on many shows, but once the vanities get the password the latency goes up a bit.. I have my own wireless video system and send it to an Android Tablet.. I don't need big monitors, just enough to see the frames..

Its an Accsoon system.

[RadoStefanov]

5 hours ago, Johnny Karlsson said:

I have a snake I made with 1x XLR + 3x coax (SDI) to send audio to VTR, and receive up to 3 camera feeds. I have never needed a

converter, even with my almost 10 years old BlackMagic duo.

Can’t remember ever getting a wireless video receiver.

 

What cable did you use? Or did you just loon the SDI cables with the XLR?

 

[Johnny Karlsson]

1 hour ago, RadoStefanov said:

What cable did you use? Or did you just loon the SDI cables with the XLR?

 

I soldered the XLR cable, and bought the coax cables assembled from Markertek, they are Belden 1855A HD-SDI Sub-Mini RG59 BNC Cable - I think the brand is Laird.

 

Wrapped all 4 in PET Expandable Braided Sleeving by Alex Tech . If you don’t know about these sleeves - look them up, it will change your life

[Patrick Farrell]

5 hours ago, Philip Perkins said:

Once the local videoists went to QTake all video became wireless.  Teradek on cams, wireless to monitors.  We don't hook them up for sound anymore, they take the wireless hop audio from the camera Teradeks.

 

Not true. On every union show I work, the sound cart is hardwired to video assist to receive SDI and send audio. Very rare for sound to have wireless video in NYC. The latency tends to be too much on Qtake to mix accurately.

[Wyatt Tuzo]

Agree with Patrick above ^^^

 

What kind of work are you doing? I generally cable to VTR via Canare A2V2. Sure there are other ways, but this is pretty foolproof and allows for sending playback return to Comteks (or even just for my own QC monitoring of playback.

 

[Jim Rillie]

On reasonable budget series I work on lately I send a Comtek signal on an Option 7 PR216  to the Qtake operator, and get an SDI single cable with however many cameras are being used on it already split screen for my 19 inch feel world monitor. Fortunately for me, the feed I get is not the take signal, just a composite of the video feeds used in the QTAKE input, so the latency is mostly from the Teradecks on cameras.

I bought a Decimator when I got the bigger monitor, but never had to use it. But of course I don't use  video on every setup, only when it is convenient and lots of sources to check on. 

Different strokes for different folks.

 

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by Jim Rillie
More info added.

[RadoStefanov]

26 minutes ago, Jim Rillie said:

On reasonable budget series I work on lately I send a Comtek signal on an Option 7 PR216  to the Qtake operator, and get an SDI single cable with however many cameras are being used on it already split screen for my 19 inch feel world monitor.

I bought a Decimator when I got the bigger monitor, but never had to use it. But of course I don't use  video on every setup, only when it is convenient and lots of sources to check on. 

Different strokes for different folks.

 

 

QTake splits it for you?

 

[Mungo]

I would get a system that copes with each and every resolution and framerate, SDI and HDMI - for the future. The Hollyland Mars 4k is not as pricey as Teradek, but definitely works fine too.

The only downside is that there isn't a video thru, so hopefully the video villagers provide a seperate video signal output available for you.

[Philip Perkins]

16 hours ago, Patrick Farrell said:

Not true. On every union show I work, the sound cart is hardwired to video assist to receive SDI and send audio. Very rare for sound to have wireless video in NYC. The latency tends to be too much on Qtake to mix accurately.

Around here no one wants my cables and  the latency is liveable.

 

[Jim Rillie]

3 hours ago, RadoStefanov said:

QTake splits it for you?

 

Yes, he does out of the goodness of his heart. haha He says it's easy to setup.

[RadoStefanov]

36 minutes ago, Jim Rillie said:

Yes, he does out of the goodness of his heart. haha He says it's easy to setup.

There is a black magic 4 sdi combiner

[Derek H]

I highly recommend the big monitor plus multiview approach. I went with a datavideo TLM pull out rack monitor but it’s not light. It does only require a single rack space though which is a huge space saver. It pulls out and folds up to expose a monster 17” screen.  I keep a black magic SDI quad mutiviewer box at the village cart and then run a single 150’ BNC to the sound cart for up to 4 cameras and barrel together two of those to get 300’ if needed. It’s great. I really like this method and your utility will not have to deal with loomed multi cables which have physical drawbacks. 
 

I have yet to encounter an issue with the output video signals available at village being incompatible with this setup. 
 

 

[RadoStefanov]

I was thinking about that approach.   But just wanted to keep everything simpler and smaller.  
 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

57 minutes ago, RadoStefanov said:

what if the village cart? Your utility cart?

 

It's the cart with the monitors that everyone watches at video village, which is usually the easiest place to get a video output.

[drpro]

As that famous advice guru has said "it depends".  My .02.  Hardwired saves a lot of grief.  Jim's suggestion go with a four split screen, whether it is something large or tablet size.  Depending on who you are working with, buy one of the BM bi-directional converters, covers HDMI or SDI.  I run into this on occassion.

[RadoStefanov]

4 hours ago, drpro said:

As that famous advice guru has said "it depends".  My .02.  Hardwired saves a lot of grief.  Jim's suggestion go with a four split screen, whether it is something large or tablet size.  Depending on who you are working with, buy one of the BM bi-directional converters, covers HDMI or SDI.  I run into this on occassion.

You run in to people feeding HDMI?

 

[IronFilm]

41 minutes ago, RadoStefanov said:

You run in to people feeding HDMI?

 

Probably unlikely in the situations you're working on (it's only very low budget productions that would use HDMI instead of SDI). But it is always possible. 

 

One possible scenario is that your only option to get a feed is from a monitor that has spare HDMI output but not a SDI output (either because it's a cheap cheap monitor, with HDMI in/out and only SDI in, or more likely... they're already using that SDI output for their own purposes). Thus if you have an HDMI to SDI convertor, your day is saved. (it's a cheap convertor to buy anyway, https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1607016-REG/blackmagic_design_convbdc_sdi_hdmi03g_micro_converter_bidirectional_sdi_hdmi.html ) 

[drpro]

As that famous advice guru has said "it depends".  My .02.  Hardwired saves a lot of grief.  Jim's suggestion go with a four split screen, whether it is something large or tablet size.  Depending on who you are working with, buy one of the BM bi-directional converters, covers HDMI or SDI.  I run into this on occassion.

 

Sometimes

[Patrick Tresch]

On 11/8/2023 at 11:10 PM, Patrick Farrell said:

Not true. On every union show I work, the sound cart is hardwired to video assist to receive SDI and send audio. Very rare for sound to have wireless video in NYC. The latency tends to be too much on Qtake to mix accurately.

But your video assist recieve a wireless signal or is it hard wired to the camera? 
 

My shoots are Teradek’s 500 or 6 

Not all systems can send and recieve 4k for now. And they are so expensive that they usually are not used. Or only for video village and after down converted to 2k or HD for the rest. Or some accept 4k signals but send it downconverted. 
 

buy a >1500 nit monitor