We’ve been selling the BlackMagic Design HDMI to SDI mini converter box, and it has quickly become popular with our clients. It is the only HDMI to SDI converter that will accept both HD HDMI signals, as well as the SD HDMI signal from the 5D Mark II camera. For those of you that don’t know this unusual fact, the 5D Mark II outputs HD HDMI until you hit record. When recording, the signal changes to SD and most converter boxes just stop working. BlackMagic’s box will work with both signals, at least up until recently. BlackMagic released a new firmware for their box – version 1.5 – which has some nice fixes but it also happens to break the SD conversion option. If you upgraded your BlackMagic, or just purchased one recently, then it might not work 100% with the 5D Mark II. BlackMagic knows about the problem and will address it in the next firmware, but until then we recommend sticking with firmware version 1.4. You can easily downgrade the box also if you are having this problem. Download the firmware version 1.4 for Mac here, or for Windows here and just attach the converter via a USB cable – it should only take a couple of seconds to install.

Remember way back when, or well just a couple years ago really, when we only had that one standard video connector? To most people in the US, it was the yellow RCA plug that matched up to a yellow jack on our television. Video professionals had it pretty easy too. Just hook up a single BNC cable from the Video Out port to the Video In port on a monitor. Oh, those were the good old days. Now we have a whole collection of different connectors and video formats, not to mention about a dozen variations of each. So, in what promises to be a lengthy article, I will try to break down all the confusion and describe many of the video connectors that are in use today.

…continue reading All Those Video Connectors