• Letters to the COW Team

  Bob Zelin – Back me up here, or tell me I’m crazy

  Posted by Jason Dumke on August 28, 2013 at 7:32 pm

  Bob,
  Ok the company I work for is breaking into the editing world and we are in the process of setting up a few avid suites. I am trying to have the guys setup an sync patchbay so that we can feed different types of sync to the Adrenaline and Nitris systems, but I am being met with a lot of resistance. The guys are telling me that “no one ever uses a sync patchbay” and that “and that the sync signal is somehow different and can get messed up going through a patchbay, potentially frying any machine that is connected”. So as far as I know both HD and SD sync are analog SD video signals and can be patched just like any other analog signal. Also I understand that having a sync patchbay makes life easier to send different types of sync to different rooms for projects where you have to convert the frame rate on output ect. Is this true?, if so can you elaborate on when having sync on a patchbay would be desirable.

  Bob Zelin replied 13 years ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Bob Zelin

  September 8, 2013 at 3:10 pm

  boy, you picked a wacky forum to post this on. Why didn’t you try the AVID forum if this is an AVID type question.

  Patch bays do not “screw up” the sync signals. You need the correct sync type to be going to both your AVD Nitris (or Adrenaline) and your VTR, if you expect to output to that VTR without issue.
  Using a video patch bay is completely acceptable.

  You get an AJA GEN10 (for example) that can generate both NTSC composite black, as well as tri level sync for 23.98 (at either 1080 or 720). You use a video DA to distribute the composite black signal to all the Reference Inputs to your Nitris boxes and VTR Reference inputs (of course, on the patch bay, so you can break the normal with a patch cord.). Then when you want to get 1080 23.98 tri level sync into a particular VTR and Nitris box, you just patch it in.

  So, the genius who said that you should never do this – what is his suggestion – to go behind the racks, and unplug the NTSC composite black reference, and use long BNC cables to patch in the correct tri level sync as necessary ?

  Everyone thinks that they are an expert. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using a patch bay to accomplish this.

  Bob Zelin

  Bob Zelin
  Rescue 1, Inc.
  maxavid@cfl.rr.com

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