SDI quality & Cable

[Sean Donnelly]

SDI on this camera is 1080i60 uncompressed 10 bit 422, so definitely higher quality than the XDCAM used on the cards. You will only see this benefit however if you are recording live. If you play out through the SDI from the cards, you’re only looking at the XDCAM footage over SDI, and theoretically will not improve the quality. It is a BNC connection and just about any 75ohm BNC cable will work, but better quality will allow a longer run.

-Sean

[Phil Vardalos]

Anyone:

My system is a G5 dual 2.7GHz Power PC with a Kona LH card and breakout box. Most of the work weve been doing is shot useing a Sony Z1 cancorder we digitize this footage going through a AJA 10 AVA converter into our Kona LH via SDI to DVC PRO HD for editing. I am seriously considering the purchase of a second cancorder The Sony EX-1 My question is when outputing video and audio recorded on SxS cards via the SDI connector on the EX-1, is the audio imbeded and what overall quaility can be expected? Is there a compression loss in the process?

Phil @HEP

[Michael Slowe]

I’m told that yes, audio is embedded. I can’t take embedded audio into my Media 100 but I did try to run video through the SDI lead but the signal wasn’t recognized.

Michael Slowe

[Tim Allison]

The way I understand things, you are obviously compressing your video when you record the XDCAM files on your cards. If you play that video out through HD-SDI, and ingest it into Fianl Cut with the DVCProHD codec, you will compress it once again.

Why not use XDCAM Transfer software, and Firewire the XDCAM files directly into Final Cut? Just curious.

[Phil Vardalos]

Tim:

One reason is 422 editing and mixing HDV and EX-1 material on the same FCP timeline. I’ve tryed to avoid long GOP editing and found that ingesting via SDI then editing HDV material in either DVC PRO 50 or DVC PRO HD solves issues related to editing in the HDV format like re conforming.

Phil @HEP

[Anonymous]

I have tested the hdsi sdi out into my decklink hd extreme using the apple proress codec AUDIO is embedded and picture quality is stunning

btw the audio is of course only 16 bit so s/n ratio aint that good

next thing to test is
hd sdi from ex1 and aes ebu audio from 744t simultaniou

cheers

martijn

The box said ‘Requires Windows 95, or better.’ So I bought a Macintosh.

[Pete Sake]

Just wondering about buying a HD broadcast monitor. Is an SDI connection better than Component. Component would be a cheaper way to go. I can output either from Kona 3.
Thanks!

Peter

[Phil Vardalos]

Peter

When you buy a HD monitor SDI is the way to go.

Phil @HEP

[Randy Strome]

You will want to use the SDI as it seems by design that the BNC is the only really solid out on the camera. Also most of the small HD monitors will only display all EX1 formats through SDI.

Here is an unsolicited push for the TV Logic 7 Inch monitor. On camera Pixel to Pixel focus, and the ability to view a live waveform has opened up this camera for me and has raised the keeper percentage on tricky shots.

Additionally, for understanding the EX-1’s Gamma curves (which are not correctly published anywhere that I know of), being able to live view them as youu make changes, is enlightening to say the least. The same is true of the somewhat cryptic PP settings.