Manuel1975 Posted January 4, 2013 Posted January 4, 2013 Hi there, Because of some recent tech troubles im researching the options of transporting video signal over long distances. Question: What are the most cost effective and robust options to run video more than 10 meters? Say 50 meters? Most veneus have invested in running VGA al over the place but the quality of the signal is "wolly" Id like to work with a protocol wich is common enough so I can let the veneu arrange the cabling so I dont have to run the cables myself AND have the advantage of the digital signal image quality. DVI D, HDMI or sdi??? What do you use? Hope you can help. Cheers, Manuel
david.elsbury Posted January 4, 2013 Posted January 4, 2013 I don't know, we regularly use RGBHV (5-wire) to transport VGA signal over 50m runs, either that or we use fibre optic DVI cable... I think you'd find it depends really on the type of cable, thin moulded VGA leads are of course going to give an inferior image. Perhaps some more info as to what you wish to come from, and go to, would be useful? David
dbuckley Posted January 4, 2013 Posted January 4, 2013 I use ordinary VGA cables, and at 35m at 1024 x 768 there is no noticeable degradation. E2A by "ordinary" I mean decent cable like this, not the el cheapo stuff that's about 5mm in diameter.
sleepytom Posted January 4, 2013 Posted January 4, 2013 Id like to work with a protocol wich is common enough so I can let the veneu arrange the cabling so I dont have to run the cables myself AND have the advantage of the digital signal image quality. DVI D, HDMI or sdi??? ??? If you let the venue arrange the cable then you'll get what your given, there is literally no point telling a venue how you want them to connect the in house screens to their distribution system. Do you supply screens? projectors? plasmas? if so which format do they take? If you supply screens / projectors but expect the venue to provide interconnecting cables then your insane. if you don't supply these things then you need to be able to supply whatever format video the screens need. Something such as a folsom image pro will be useful so you can always output the correct format for whatever distro is inhouse. I guess your talking about night clubs / VJ gigs here?
lite_lad Posted January 5, 2013 Posted January 5, 2013 Really you want to look at HD-SDI for the most cost effective for the signal quality for that kind of distance, much longer and you'll need a DA to boost the signal. You may be alright running standard SDI, but that depends on your needs... the other option is Fibre, a lot more expensive, and more easily broken, but it would almost always be my first choice (and is for many people) as you dont need to worry about distance (unless your going over 2km, but that generally isnt an issue!) and venues are starting to put in patch systems for it (in theatre that is, I dont know specifically what your asking about...) if your looking for a cheaper system maybe look at some VGA-Cat 5 baluns, there are a few good ones out there, but be careful there is alot of crap too!
Stee_cri1 Posted January 5, 2013 Posted January 5, 2013 I would agree with the VGA-CAT5 jumpers. They are great but buy some decent ones. Maybe also HDMI-CAT5. I have been using these with my MacBook Pro and it works really well. I ran 80m last week and the drop in quality was not noticeable.
Manuel1975 Posted January 5, 2013 Author Posted January 5, 2013 Ok, some background info: I used feed vga from one laptop into an other using my epiphan vga2usb box but recently I bought a new (pc) laptop and upgraded my host application ArKaos MediaMaster from version 2.0 to 3.0. Al the trouble started there. Now ArKaos MM hangs now and then when the VGA2USB is initialized. The support from ArKaos Is to dream of and even thought we are 99% shure the hardware is generating the error they are still working at trying to resolve the error handling. Because the epiphan vga2usb / ArKaos MM 3.0 combo is not stable and I'm not entirely satisfied with the image quality im looking into other options. And for a project im doing at this moment I need to send video signal from one laptop to an other laptop over long distances. Blackmagic has some interesting options in hdmi and sdi but the disadvantage is that you cant ask of a location to run your hdmi or sdi cables. VGA and UTP cables are quite standard. Hdmi over ethernet requires very high quality ethernet lines. I hear its better to run them yourself? Long HDMI fiber cables are very expensive and vulnerable, the advantage is that on the output side you don't need to place a IO box which is good for the budget. SDI requires a box at the input and output side but the cabling is much cheaper. hmmm... So much for my research. In an ideal world I would be able to put the cables on my rider and have the location build them before I come, arrive at the venue, build (less) stuff, run show, Break (less) stuff and don't wait for the event to end to be able to break my cables. AND have great image quality from 1 to 100 meters.
sleepytom Posted January 7, 2013 Posted January 7, 2013 I'd suggest DVI over Fibre would be the best option (in terms of quality and latency) If you want to spec something, then speccing a DVI feed from stage to FOH should get you a working solution in *most* venues. There is always the danger that you'll find that the provided solution doesn't work or has been missed. Few promoters really understand video and many music venues do not have reliable video suppliers for these kind of requests. IMHO the link cable between your two machine is too crucial for your show to rely on speccing in on the rider. I would get a 50m DVI Fibre cable to take with you so that when the venus have messed up you can provide your own solution.
Manuel1975 Posted January 30, 2013 Author Posted January 30, 2013 Ok, Just bought a bmd intensity shuttle to get the hdmi signal into my computer and plan to rent a hdmi to sdi box, 50 meter sdi cable and a sdi to hdmi box to transport the video signal for some shows next weekend. Got the bmd intensity shuttle working with 2 PCs but remember reading something somewhere about Mac book pros being very strict with dhcp? Since the setup has to work with a mbp as the video source I thought it might be a good idea to check here if this approach might bring some problems? Hope you can help!
Manuel1975 Posted January 30, 2013 Author Posted January 30, 2013 Ok, Just bought a bmd intensity shuttle to get the hdmi signal into my computer and plan to rent a hdmi to sdi box, 50 meter sdi cable and a sdi to hdmi box to transport the video signal for some shows next weekend. Got the bmd intensity shuttle working with 2 PCs but remember reading something somewhere about Mac book pros being very strict with dhcp? Since the setup has to work with a mbp as the video source I thought it might be a good idea to check here if this approach might bring some problems? Hope you can help! Correction: DHCP should offcourse have been HDCP. Sorry about that...
sleepytom Posted January 31, 2013 Posted January 31, 2013 we regularly use macbook pros with BMD HDMI to SDI converters - they work fine.
Manuel1975 Posted February 17, 2013 Author Posted February 17, 2013 Thanks for al the input! This is how it went down: First I tested a bmd intensity shuttle USB 3.0 and got it working on my system. Then bought one and bumped into some stability issues. The supplier did not want to take it back as the USB 3 chipset is to unreliable. Ended up renting a retina display mbp and buying the bmd ultrastudio express thunderbolt and ran the signal over sdi cabling. Everything worked like charm. It's a pitty that I need to have a mbp to do these kinds of things. Disappointed in USB 3. What are your experiences? Cheers, Manuel
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