ATEM TV Studio: Successful HDMI cables?

[Bruce Colgate]

If I had to guess, and that seems to be as good a method as we have here so far, it would appear that the “sharpness” of the transition, or slew, is what the TVS is most interested in. Obviously, this is largely due to the capacitance of the cables in question – the lower the capacitance, the sharper the transition from off to on, or on to off. Evidently the TVS is very discriminating in this regard, and has little tolerance for gradual transitions. The TVS may also get confused if there is significant crosstalk – again, a guess.

Knowing this now, my only wish is that the TVS had been built with the SDI connections 1-4, and the HDMI connections as 3-6. Not a big deal. Have already spent the $900 or so in BMD converters for HDMI to HD-SDI connections. Still a wonderful product for the $$.

– Bruce Colgate

[Fabio Cormack]

Guys take a look on this post I create about this, with an article from Peter, Producer at TTFNTV

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/124/878105

I think worth the reading

Best,

Fabio Cormack
Davinci 8 – Tangent Wave – Decklink HD Extreme 3D+
Final Cut Suite
Adobe CS5.5 Suite
Rio de Janeiro – Brazil

[Kip Draper]

Fabio, any luck w/ Atlona or did you postpone? Also I noticed Amazon had that little X-100 for $155 a few days ago. Your link leaving this forum takes me to a welcome post w/ 1 reply whether I’m logged-in over there or not. Care to summarize? I can guess the consensus, but this is an extreme hobby, or on-the-cheap studio for myself. After the 1M/E purchase, I’d love to toss a few HD-SDI cams on the CC, but I’m 6-months justifying (to her) the NEED for my first pro cam. 😉

I hope I don’t come off as promoting pricey HDMI as the way to go; From my reading, Bob is absolutely correct to recommend converters over HDMI cable. [but Bob have you evaluated that ultra bling $1000/meter HDMI? 😉 ] If the converters had been $295 when I paid same ballpark for 1 50′ & 2 25′ Atlona cables, I would have purchased at least one converter. However, 2 @ $800 creeps close to 50% of the cost for an HD-SDI cam. With the price drop, I think I made the right call to keep the cash in my pro cam piggy bank. Plus, I have 4 top-shelf Vixias that are finally rock-solid, never leave a well-lit studio, and only broadcast to the Internet, so I doubt 90% of my audience could pick the HD-SDI shot out of an HDMI line-up.

Waiting in hindsight would have been the best call lol, but I had shows to do & haven’t noticed BMD knock $100 off of any product under $500. I’m betting their heavy duty was to be released priced @$100 more, and disappointing numbers on regular mini conv priced same as AJA & Atlona converters triggered Plan B. I’m sure that spike is still rocketing, and competing converters @ $100 more are in the dregs.

Undercutting w/ as good or better quality and/or features is BMD’s game plan w/ this market, and I was miffed & curious that HDMI mini conv were exact same price as AJA conv. Good companies move fast and will stand up & box, but I haven’t noticed any takers moving towards the ring, and I don’t know much about the industry, but I get the sense most won’t turn to fight until it’s too late. It’s similar to the CDNs continuing to gouge & torture their captives while AWS and the Allies detonate nukes right on top of them.

[Fabio Cormack]

Hi Kip,

sorry for taking so long to reply, very busy this end of month…

I’ll be at my daughter’s house in Houston (I’m in Brazil) from Nov 8th, so there I can order/return things far easier then Brazil – so from there I’ll test the Atlona and the X-100 and some Canon Vixias and of course all cabling and ATEM hardware, to decide what I’ll buy.

Basically the post on the link I put was discussing the benefits of going SDI if you need to move cameras around, or HDMI for a better cost and for fixed cameras due to HDMI fragile connection. In my case I’ll start with HDMI and see the results with different cables (including Atlona), to decide if I’ll really need to invest on SDI transcoders and cabling, as my cameras will be basically be steady on a fixed point at a studio – mostly the exactly same thing you do with your setup, and for internet streaming too 🙂

Anyway at least 1 BMD HDMI-SDI converter I intend to buy, as the new lower price is (a little more) attractive for such product.

Another totally different approach in my case would be: instead of 2 or 3 consumer cameras plus expensive HDMI cables or SDI kits, go straight to 1 Canon XF-105, the ATEM switcher and 1 BMD converter for my HFS-100, saving money for future Pro cameras… but well, I don’t know… let me do the tests… is a lot of money on 1 camera, and I use HDSLRs for my films…

I keep you posted about my results – I’ll even try to put all some tests on my channel at You Tube so we can follow together

By the way, do you have any video recorded with your Vixias and the ATEM you could share?

Have a great week!

Fabio Cormack
Davinci 8 – Tangent Wave – Decklink HD Extreme 3D+
Final Cut Suite
Adobe CS5.5 Suite
Rio de Janeiro – Brazil

[Vladimir Philogene]

I planned to buy the ATEM studion television, and connect all my cameras with hdmi cables, if i understand well it won’t work with cables longer than 15 feets? or else to have hdmi booster, is that’ right?

http://www.seulement-ecouter.com

[Bruce Colgate]

Hi VP,

It would seem that the safe money is to limit the HDMI connection to 15′. We’ve tested with various different builds of cable, and have also tested passive, active and externally powered active extenders. All have fallen short of what I would define as good, solid connectivity.

For us, everything now is SDI for the BMD TVS, even though the glue now costs more than the switcher itself, though, these days, it is increasingly common for what used to be “big ticket” items to cost less than the gear around it to make it work. FCP needed much more than $1K of gear to make it work properly. Most of our HD cameras cost less than the Sachtler Video 25-II tripod some of them sit on, and some of the cameras are worth less than the lenses we put on the front of said cameras.

Still, we should all send a thank you basket to Grant Petty for making these cool tools inexpensive enough for the common man to own.

– Bruce Colgate

[Doug Fish]

VP, I did a lot of experimentation before I found a solution for my setup that allowed me to use HDMI for all my cameras. I was able to get a Panasonic SD800K to work over 31′ of HDMI by using the following configuration:

Camera>10′ mini-HDMI to HDMI cable, 30 ga.>passive HDMI booster>15′ HDMI cable, 24 ga.>active HDMI booster>6′ HDMI cable, 24 ga.>ATEM TVS

By putting an active booster on the camera end after the 10′ cable, and a passive booster on the TVS end, I had success with a 30′ HDMI cable, 24 ga. and could send the signal a total of 41′. I would imagine you could daisy chain active boosters and HDMI lengths, but at some point that would be cumbersome since you have to find a power source multiple times along the run. For my setup, I wanted the passive booster on the camera end because this was a wall mounted camera and I didn’t want to clutter the install up with another piece of equipment that required power.

I had a horrible time with mini-HDMI to HDMI adapters. Apparently there is too much signal loss in making the connections. Anything over 6′ with an HDMI adapter would fail to provide a signal. Ironically, the 30 ga. mini-HDMI to HDMI cables at 10′ and 15′ work without a hitch.

I think a big variable in whether you will get a signal or not without boosting the signal is something you will not find any technical specifications on whatsoever, and that is the strength of the HDMI signal being sent from the video source. I think some cameras are engineered to amplify the signal, and some (like the Panasonic high-end consumer camcorders I am using) are not.

Hope that helps.

[Matt Bonfield]

Interestingly enough, with the new 2.8 firmware released on Jan 23, with the ATEM Television Studio, my issue with the length of HDMI runs is resolved.

There’s a catch though, while in the control software, you have to adjust the native 1080i/59.97 down to something else… NTSC or whatever you want… then switch BACK to the default 1080i/59.97 and suddenly your inputs with long runs will appear.

I tested this with a 50 ft 24 ga HDMI from monoprice that NEVER worked previously as an input, and BAM, it worked. And again, when it is first plugged in, it is nothing but black until I switch away and switch back. Befuddling to say the lease.

I also tested an HDMI extender from Monoprice:
https://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10105&cs_id=1010504&p_id=6532&seq=1&format=2

I am using 100′ of CAT6 UTP in between with two 15 ft runs on both ends. This also never worked in this configuration until the latest firmware and adjusting away and back the input modes.

I have tested each for over 3 hours of solid production without a hitch. It seems once it’s on, it’s on. I hope this workaround helps some of you out there.

[Carlton Whyte]

This 100′ HDMI cable and splitter combination works: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005LJQNAG/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002WPAU38/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00

I had bought these for output from the ATEM TVS, but just decided to try them from my cam going into the ATEM TVS. The 100′ cable runs from the camera to the splitter, and a short HDMI cable goes from the splitter to the ATEM TVS. The image quality is the same as if I only used a 6′ HDMI cable.

Carlton

[John Ashdown]

I would recommend checking KVMSwitchTech. They offer quite a few
HDMI Cable and HDMI Extender solutions that work pretty well.