I had to jump into a new project and had to upgrade to HD. I went from an XL2 with a small 3CCD Panasonic for b-roll to a XL H1s and an XH A1s. I had wanted to use the HS-SDI output on the XL H1s for my first big project, but ran into problems.

I only had a few days to check things out at the office before going on the shoot - but once I was set up, I could not get the SDI to work properly. I was going into a Blackmagic-Designs Studio card in a major Dell system with 1.5 TB RAID. The picture kept flickering to black with static sound when it flickered. It happened every 5 or 10 seconds - totally unusable.

I thought it might be the cable, and changed it out - no difference. I thought it might be that the Dell couldn't keep up with the capture, but it happened even when I wasn't recording.

Any ideas?

I was still able to get the footage - as I just used miniDV tapes on both cameras.

Now for some questions about importing the footage:

If I use firewire out from my camera to my CS2 software, it will capture as .AVI - but if I use firewire to CS4 it captures as an .MPEG file. Am I right in assuming that the .MPEG is compressed and the .AVI is as good as the tape?

I think I found on this board that the firewire and SDI output from the tape is the same quality. Right?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

I know you said you changed out the cable, but it sounds like a cable problem to me. Did you try it out with a more "industrial strength" cable?

I've recorded plenty of times out of my XL H1S through the HD-SDI port, and the times I've had issues like this, it was always the cable.

I also suggest turning on the camera first and have the cable connected to the camera before starting up the capture system.

Quality from the HD-SDI will be much higher only if you are capturing it live to a higher codec. If you are using it to capture HDV tapes, you will not gain anything.

Hope that helps.

The shortest cable I have is 50' - so maybe I should buy a short, heavy duty cable.

Do you use Abobe Creative Suite?

I need to know about the .MPEG vs. .DVI import.

Jon

The SDI cable needs to be at least an 18 guage RG-6 type such as the Canare brand L-5CFB.

See http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-xl-h-series-hdv-camcorders/60430-quick-question-h1-hd-sdi-cabling-monitoring.html for more info.