HD250 and SDI Setup

[Carl Hicks]

Originally Posted by Daniel Patton

Adam,
Like most of you guys, we are familur with the HD100/16X combination, it's what we currently own. The HD250 was on short loan here thanks to Carl and his contacts, I only wish we could have tested longer. But from my understanding the 250 we used is on a tight schedule and for every day we had it someone else was missing out, so off again it went.

We tested the HD250/13X against our current HD100/16X to DVC-PRO HD direct via component to the Decklink (as mentioned no SDI). I also shot a little bit outdoors so we could see what it looks like to MPEG/tape, it's all at the office or I would be digging through it now. ;) I'll share what I have once we have dug through it.

I'm also real interested to see what Greg finds and what SDI setup he uses for the 250 and Smoke. At this point I'm unclear if all you need is simply SDI capture or SDI and the specific "setup" for this camera/data stream.

Hi Daniel,

It will be difficult to give a fair opinion of the camera's HDSDI out without you having a broadcast-quality HDSDI monitor in-hand to view it on. Is it possible for you to borrow or rent one?

Also, on capture, you might try the AJA Kona series. I think they make one that has HDSDI input.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Carl Hicks

Also, on capture, you might try the AJA Kona series. I think they make one that has HDSDI input.

Yes they do. And in relation to your earlier post, FCP can take in HDSDI output from a Sony F350, while implementing deck control via FW cable. No need to do any RS422 conversion.

I'm guessing the same would be possible using this setup with the new HD250.

-gb-

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Yes they do. And in relation to your earlier post, FCP can take in HDSDI output from a Sony F350, while implementing deck control via FW cable. No need to do any RS422 conversion.

I'm guessing the same would be possible using this setup with the new HD250.

-gb-

Unfortunately, HDV FW deck control seems to be "locked" to HDV firewire capture in FCP. If you set deck control to HDV and capture to SDI, FCP will not allow log & capture to open.
The following error will be displayed.

It might be possible to use a DV control preset and put the camera 1394 switch into DV position? It is doubtful TC will pass through properly using this method though.

[Daniel Patton]

Just a follow up for all 2.3 of you following this. ;)

I spoke with a tech at Blackmagic today and was told that SDI from the HD250 should work fine without a setup specifically for that camera. The only requirement is that the setting in FCP for capture must be the same as the data stream being sent from the camera (frame rate/image size). Otherwise it's a standard signal much like what comes out of component. This may be nothing new to some, but I was still looking for confirmation as working with SDI is new for us.

On the subject of frame rates... is the frame rate coming out of the 250 & SDI 60P or 59.94? This may have been one of the issues with our settings and downfall.


For whatever reason things did not work out for us the first time around with the 250, it should work fine, we just need to dial in all the settings (camera, bridge/hardware, FCP). We had a very limited amount of time with the camera and even less set aside for SDI specific testing. We are working with our rep to get the camera again in the next couple weeks for another round. As mentioned, I'll post examples of what we find.

Side note:
The Blackmagic tech also confirmed that we could both monitor and verify SDI input via the Decklinks component output, and that having an SDI to monitor was not required, the signal is pushed to the other outputs. They claim this is just another added feature/bonus of owning the Multibridge Pro. For signal to signal monitoring it's more desirable to have an SDI monitor, but not required. Regardless, per Carl's recommendation we'll be sure to have an SDI monitor to check output from the 250 next time, if nothing more than as a backup system.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

Unfortunately, HDV FW deck control seems to be "locked" to HDV firewire capture in FCP. If you set deck control to HDV and capture to SDI, FCP will not allow log & capture to open.
The following error will be displayed.

It might be possible to use a DV control preset and put the camera 1394 switch into DV position? It is doubtful TC will pass through properly using this method though.

Tim, why would you be using HDV as a capture preset? If you're pulling stuff in via HDSDI, it's uncompressed 4:2:2 and that's what you want to set up for. The HDSDI pipe will bring in stuff from HDV tape, but it will suffer a quality loss vs. running HDSDI live from the camera head.

If all you want to capture is HDV, there's no need to even use HDSDI. Just ingest via FW as it will handle HDV data rates.

In fact, if you are going to come in HDSDI from tape, I would set machine control to FW or FW basic cause all you want to do is control the stop/play ff/rew of the tape for cueing.

If I remember correctly, Mike Curtis' setup with the HDSDI capture card added its own easy setups for FCP.

-gb-

[Greg Milneck]

We attempted a capture this morning via HD-SDI into our Smoke 2K system. We used 720 60P and no video would pass thru. We just switched the settings to 59.94 and now the Smoke sees the footage.

I'll post more results later after we have time to play with the footage.

[Dave Beaty]

Originally Posted by Greg Milneck

We attempted a capture this morning via HD-SDI into our Smoke 2K system. We used 720 60P and no video would pass thru. We just switched the settings to 59.94 and now the Smoke sees the footage.

We just received our two HD250's here. I have not had time to try HD SDI capture, but would imagine 59.94 is what you want. That is the same problem we had trying to capture 60p analog. It doesn't work with Kona. So we tried 59.94 and all is good. I bet that's the key to your SDI no show.

Dave Beaty

[Daniel Patton]

Excellent! Thanks guys.

I may be seeing the camera again even sooner than I had thought, sounds like round two should be productive.

[Carl Hicks]

Originally Posted by Daniel Patton

Excellent! Thanks guys.

I may be seeing the camera again even sooner than I had thought, sounds like round two should be productive.

Daniel,

One other helpful bit of info that I learned recently from one of our esteemed sales engineers: There is a menu in the 250 that turns the SDI / HD-SDI output on or off. The default setting is off, so out of the box, the camera will not output signal at all on the SDI / HD-SDI terminal. It is set this way to lower power consumption. The menu item is on the second page of the "Video Format" menu. It is labeled "HD/SD-SDI Out", and the two choices are off and on. So, in addition to Dave and Greg's info about the 59.94 frame rate, also check this on/off menu.

Regards,

[Carl Hicks]

I had an opportunity last Friday to test a GY-HD250 connected to FCP via a Kona device, with HD-SDI. The FCP "Easy Set-up" was set to "DVCPro HD 720p/ 59.94". The capture worked just fine, using "capture now." We were capturing live images from the camera to FCP.

[Donald Van Slyke]

I came by the booth later that afternoon and they showed me the footage that was captured via HD-SDI. I was impressed by the camera and how easily the footage was aquired via the kona card.

We also tried to ingest HDV60p from the BR-50 into FCP via firewire. But that was a no go. We figured so since FCP doesn't support it yet...although it doesn't hurt to try. I talked to both the JVC rep and the Apple reps and neither knew how long it will be until they get 60p support. Clearly JVC just has to wait for the apple engineers to add it and they wish it was faster...

At this point with FCP capturing with DVCPro HD is way easier than dealing with all the pitfalls for HDV. When I got home from the conference I let the budget people know that we are going to upgrade to the HD250u sometime after the new year. I'm excited to get a demo unit in for testing...