Decklink extreme hd cable length

[David Mcclellan]

Yeah, I am very glad someone else posted this before me. I just bought a Decklink HD Pro PCI-X version card and it really is an embarrassing slap in the face to pay over a grand for the card ($1500 for PCI-X) and get these wimpy foot long break out cables.

Could ya spare it? If you charged another 20 bucks could these cables at least reach around the freaking computer? They aren’t even useful enough to reach a deck or a monitor sitting on my edit desk 2 feet directly ABOVE my G5. Who was the engineering genius that made this decision?

-DM

G5 Dual 2.5Ghz
OSX4 FCP5
Lots of Ram – Lots of cables – Lots of bills…

[Andrew Mcleod]

Component and SDI Cables can be made to suit any installation.

SDI is limited to 300 feet. 90 metres.

100 SDI connectors, 300 feet of SDI cable and a crimping tool are approx 450 USD.
Thats alot of cables.

[David Mcclellan]

In the long list of extraneous crap one has to buy in order to edit in HD, a cable crimper should be last on the list.

Come on BMD people, there is no excuse for cables that are barely as long as well endowed male genetalia.

I am 100% right on this. Admit your foolish errors, you swarthy bastards!

-DM

G5 Dual 2.5Ghz
OSX4 FCP5
Lots of Ram – Lots of cables – Lots of bills…

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Sameer,

The DeckLink HD Extreme has BNC connectors on the card for SDI in, SDI out and genlock/trisync. It also includes a short breakout cable for analog connections and RS-422. This means you can use cables of a length that you decide rather than being limited to the 7 foot long breakout cable that we traditionally used with our SD cards. If 7 feet of component cable is all your friend needs and he only works in SD, then the DeckLink Extreme or DeckLink Extreme PCIe would do. However if the cable run to the deck or monitor is more than 7 feet away, he is still going to need to add on some extension cables. We still include 7 foot breakout cables with our SD cards as that is what we have always done. However we received quite a few requests to have a short breakout cable as many people just use it for component video monitoring and don’t like a long tangle of other cables for analog input and audio. That’s why the cable is now shorter and it has also allowed us to bring down the price of the card to US$995 which is only $100 more than the SD version of the same card with it’s longer cable. I just ran a search on a few online video resellers and found that a 15 foot BNC x3 to BNC x3 cable made by Canare costs around $75. That’s a high quality commercially made cable or else you can make the cables up for yourself (which is what we usually do) and that can be a very inexpensive way of running long cables. I hope this information helps.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

We still include 7 foot breakout cables with our SD cards as that is what we have always done so we didn’t want to confuse customers by changing that to a shorter cable. However we received quite a few requests to have a short breakout cable as many people just use it for component video monitoring and don’t like a long tangle of other cables for analog input and audio. That’s why the cable is now shorter and it has also allowed us to bring down the price of the card to US$995 which is only $100 more than the SD version of the same card with it’s longer cable. There has never been an SD/HD card offering any where near this functionality which has come clost to the $995 price of the DeckLink HD Extreme card. You would need to pay hundreds of additional dollars to find another card that came close. That means you’ve got change left over to buy only the cables you need at the length you need without having unnecessary cables causing a tangle or still being too short for your needs.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Andrew,

SDI is not limited to 300 feet or 90 meters. We have verified the integrity of HD-SDI signals to over 100 meters which is about 328 feet.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

For connection to a HD deck, we avoid connecting via the breakout cable as this would greatly limit the length of HD-SDI cable you could run to the HD deck. HD-SDI is a demanding standard and that’s why all of our HD cards provide BNC connectors so you can then run high-quality HD-SDI cables from the card to the deck. We have a support note named What kind of cables should I use for high definition video? which I recommend to anyone wanting to know what kind of cables to use for HD. A cable that works fine for SD-SDI will often be completely inadequate for HD-SDI, even over short lengths.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we received quite a few requests to have a short breakout cable as many people just use it for component video monitoring and don’t like a long tangle of other cables for analog input and audio. That’s why the cable is now shorter and it has also allowed us to bring down the price of the card to US$995 which is only $100 more than the SD version of the same card with it’s longer cable. There has never been an SD/HD card offering any where near this functionality which has come clost to the $995 price of the DeckLink HD Extreme card. You would need to pay hundreds of additional dollars to find another card that came close. That means you’ve got change left over to buy only the cables you need at the length you need without having unnecessary cables causing a tangle or still being too short for your needs.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Sameer Shrivastava]

Hi,
Luke,
thanks for your reply. I have already told my friend to go for decklink extreme. May be if possible, You guys in future can offer a longer cable version for some people ( With increased cost). But giving decklink extreme in less than 1000$s is really commendable.
If possible put a pic of smaller cable in your web site so every body is clear what they are about to get.
thanks
sameer

[Jeff Brown]

http://www.markertek.com : cables any way you like.

From my experience, if cables are included with a product by an OEM, they are more expensive than buying them separately to suit the engineering needs.

-jeff

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Sameer,

Thanks for your suggestion which is a good idea. We’ll take some photos of the breakout cables for the HD cards and add them to the web site. It will probably take a few days but our webmaster tells me he will do it. Thanks again!

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design