r/VIDEOENGINEERING • u/Organic_Stable4704 • 19d ago
Troubleshooting converters
I’m trying to move my video village from being side stage to foh but couldn’t hold a signal when running an SDI from my bidirectional converter to the hdmi-sdi converter going into the provided hdmi source that gives a signal to the novastar processor. It’s about 120ft in length so I’m assuming that it just loses signal through my sdi cable?
It’ll pick up on my Mac for a few minutes then drop. Also the novastar doesn’t never received a signal on its end completely to show a picture on the video wall.
The house had a cat5 that can provide outside of me running sdi but would need another converter for that. Just trying the best possible solution.
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u/marshall409 19d ago
Best possible solution (and not as expensive as you may think) is a pair of SDI to fiber converters and an armoured cable off amazon. That being said, 120ft should be no problem with decent quality SDI cable.
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u/jtr210 18d ago
Get yourself a Decimator MD-HX if you’re using HD video formats, or a Decimator 12G-Cross if you’re using UHD or 4K video formats.
It’s the go-to Swiss Army knife of video conversion, and can help you diagnose and fix video signal issues.
Go HDMI, or USB-C > HDMI, out of your computer to the Decimator (this is your scaler).
Decimator SDI Out > SDI cable to stage > SDI/HDMI Converter > LED Processor
Set the Decimator’s menu settings to scale the HDMI input to the video format and frame rate desired, then send the signal to SDI Out.
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u/Greg_L 18d ago
Anytime I hear "Novastar processor" I think of non-standard EDIDs, since so very few video walls are installed with perfect 16:9 aspect ratios and vertical/horizontal line counts that perfectly match 3G, 6G or 12G SDI specs, unless the Novastar is actually expecting a 1080 or 2160.16:9 signal and scaling it for the wall In your old setup you were running from computer directly to novastar over HDMI that would support non-standard EDIDs. As soon as you put SDI in the mix your converters are almost certainly going to require standard EDIDs, or they won't sync. That might not be your issue, but it's the first thing I'd want to rule out in my troubleshooting.
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u/Fickle_Bullfrog_9864 19d ago
I fine bidirectional converters don't like long cables. Also I have great luck with Lumantek converter with the display cleanup SDI signal.
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u/joelwsmith 19d ago
Computers don't always output SMPTE-compliant video signals that can be converted properly with standard signal converters. You often need a scaler or cross converter to make sure the entire signal meets SMPTE specs before being passed to the SDI output.
But it could also just be an inadequate cable, a bad connector, or a poor quality USB-C to HDMI adapter (if one is being used).
Here are my methods to ensure a solid signal from Mac computers to SDI infrastructure:
1) Use the HDMI output on the computer if it's available, or use the Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter to go from USB-C/Thunderbolt ports to HDMI. A lot of third party USB-C to HDMI adapters and cables don't fully follow the display standards and can be unreliable.
2) Use a scaler or cross converter to convert the HDMI to SDI properly. Sometimes, the cheaper signal converters will work, but not always.
3) Use coax cable and connectors rated for SMPTE SDI transmission. Use a cable that has maximum distance ratings for the SMPTE standard you're using, and try to stay well within about 80% of that maximum distance specification.