USB output from Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera

[samchurchill]

Hi, I’m looking to organise the simplest and most tidy setup possible for our new Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera 6K. I need to convert the output to SDI so was going to use the Blackmagic Micro Converter for this.

 

The converter is powered via Micro USB, so I’m wondering whether it’s possible to power it from the camera’s USB-C output (which we won’t need for anything else) while the camera is plugged into the mains via the standard PSU?

 

Has anyone else tried this? Would be nice to know before ordering the cables!

 

Thanks

[dosxuk]

It should probably work (not tested!) as the usb-c is designed to power hard drives and the micro converters don't pull much.

 

That said there's some major BMD stock issues going on at the moment. Getting hold of anything is a challenge, the micro converters were just changed and nobody in the UK seems to have much in the way of stock.

[samchurchill]

Thanks, I thought it’d likely be ok.

 

Yes, they’re impossible to find at the moment! Luckily we’ve already got the HDMI to SDI ones, but can’t find an SDI to HDMI for anything!

[Jevans]

I did have some problems over the summer with the BMD micro convertors behaving erratically on different power supplies - on the individual PSUs that come in the box they were fine but putting them onto multi-way Anker USB power supplies gave us some faults that were very difficult to pin down - things not working depending on which order they were plugged in, different HDMI sources not working on the same convertor and so on. As there's no on-screen display or any real configuration options (which I see as a plus - it's a 'does what it says on the tin' product) it's difficult to tell the difference between the convertor not working, dead cables and so on. Once we swapped back onto individual supplies I think I recall all the problems vanished, so your millage may vary.

[Dave m]

Black magic converters are great and a quality product but the el-cheapo ones on Amazon at £25 or so work pretty well.

[J Pearce]

There seem to be 2 sorts of the cheap lot. One sort is great, the other sort only supports certain SDI resolutions and I've had issues getting them to work with resolutions and frame rates that are in spec for both HDMI and SDI - I seem to recall 108050i was a problem. Also, one sort supports 5-12V input (handy for the end of a camera loom with 12V coming up the loom) and the other 5V only.

[dosxuk]

Some USB power supplies have functions to turn off the power if not enough current is being delivered. I guess the idea is to turn off when batteries are fully charged / equipment is turned off, but with some small devices it just doesn't work. I've had the same problem with arduino's shutting down. Never had this as a problem when powering from some other device though.

 

The BMD SDI-HDMI converters also act as buffers on their loop output, reclocking the incoming signal, so they can be used as handy boosters on long (or questionable quality) cable runs.