DL3 Live camera setup

Hey again Cormac.

The camera is the same between DL.2 and DL.3.....there are still the S-video ports on DL.3, but you have the added ability to use SDI as well.

Keep in mind though that the D-Tek is not an SDI piece of gear, and a DL.3 cannot "send" and "recieve" SDI at the same time.....only one or the other.

The advantage to SDI (apart from image quality) is that you can daisy chain an input signal from one fixture to another. So if you have only one input stream then you run one cable up to your truss and daisy chain from there.....or if you have say 5 fixtures and you only want to use the center fixture's camera, you could come out of the SDI for that fixture and then daisy chain to the other 4 without any switching gear, etc.

Hope this helps. :)

Ok,
that helps last questions.
In my previous setup i have had an external source(laptop) which i ran into a dtec switcher and changed the input so the DL2 fixtures saw the laptop output via s-video input.
Can the DL3 see the s-video and SDI input at the same time or can i use only one input source?
Make sense ?
I did see previous posts about SDI lag or sync issues is this still the case?

Thanks C

Yes you can input both SDI and S-video into a DL.3 at the same time, provided you are not trying to output the camera via SDI (out via S-video is fine though).

The "frame delay" is the same between S-video and SDI on DL.3. There were some early buffering issues on the SDI capture card that would cause inputs to not be in sync....especially with daisy chained systems, but that has all been sorted out in software versions 1.5.x and higher.

The newest is 1.5.2 b2031, and I recommend updating any units you run into that are not running this version.

So, question here, the SDI "In" and "Out" cannot be used at the same time? How would one daisy chain? Or....are you just saying the internals cannot both input and output simultaneously as these two jacks are going to the same place?

Patrick,

SDI "In" and "Out" cannot be used simultaneously due to a limitation of the SDI capture card we are using. Basically, whenever the DL is set to SDI In, the "Out" port mirrors the "In" port. This is what makes daisy chaining the units possible (unlike the S-video capture).

What this also means is that because the "Out" port mirrors the "In" port, you can't be capturing SDI from another source while simultaneously sending the DL camera out over SDI. When the DL is set to send it's camera out over SDI, the "In" port becomes inactive.

I hope this makes sense. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,

That's exactly what I thought it meant. Thanks for the info and clarification!

-Patrick