Eng?

[danielg]

Pardon me if this is a FAQ and it has escaped my notice, but I was wondering about Red and ENG. I was watching the US Open yesterday while wrestling with RSA encryption (don't try this at home) and saw the camera men around the greens with shoulder cams and microwave links.

I think that one of the things that will drive HD in the future is live action work. Is there a microwave link in the works for the Red?

[Brook Willard]

This thread would probably be better suited in the ENG forum on this site.

[tj williams]

Wow 4K microwave!!!!!

really you can take the HDSDIout to a current microwave for HD!

[Tonaci Tran]

This looks pretty good:
http://www.usa.canon.com/html/industrial_bctv/canobeamdt50_video.html

Anyone else have other recommendations?

[Anders Holck]

This looks pretty good:
http://www.usa.canon.com/html/industrial_bctv/canobeamdt50_video.html

Anyone else have other recommendations?

Yes an optical HD-SDI link is pretty cool. But at 38 lbs and 60w power consumption this is not the kit you'd want to use with the Red camera.

This link is for permanent mounting on rooftops etc. to link a signal from one department to another. Transmitter and reciever must be visible to eachother and the laser must be pointing at the reciever optics at all times. You cannot move either when transmitting, although it will autotrack within 4°.

What you need is a RF unit. Currently most of them are based on Mpeg2, but I would expect them to move to H264 shortly, which should bring the compression efficientcy up by 1.6x if interframe compression is used (Which introduces latency though)
Most have a HQ mode which uses full bandwith and a rough mode which is more compressed, but enables the link to keep going even without full signal strenght. Most links are bi-directional, so the reciever will tell the transmitter if signal strenght drops below a threshold, and they will switch between modes accordingly. To defeat dropouts the transmission bandwith is larger than the compression bandwith, which enables the transmitter to resend a missed data package.

The UK company Link research makes a real HD microwave link. 80 mbps mpeg2. No price quotes though:
http://www.linkres.co.uk/wireless+camera+systems/High+definition/Transmitters

For SD there are a few options. 14 mbps mpeg2 at full rate:
http://www.boxx.tv/
http://www.idxtek.com/camwave.pdf

Latency is just below 500 ms.
The boxx takes HD-sdi, but it downconverts internally to SD.

For digital DVI:
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=4318

The gefen's based on the new wireless HDMI chipsets. Compression is realtime JPEG2000, which should introduce minimal latency (buffering in the reciever can still introduce it though). range is only 30 ft. And no info about how it handles a moving transmitter or latency. Not on the market yet.

I would think that the boxx will be upgraded to a real HD version at some point. It is very stable at it's current incarnation, but SD only unfortunately, and the latency is annoing for some jobs.

[Tonaci Tran]

Hey Anders,

Thanks so much for the detailed response. I will definitely be investigating these options.