Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Looking for HDMI/VGA to SDI converter

This is topic Looking for HDMI/VGA to SDI converter in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Ben Edwards (Member # 8199) on 05-20-2016, 11:19 AM:

Hi, we have a NEC 800C Cinema Projector (Dual Link HD-SDI) and are looking for a way to connect computers to it over SDI. Preferably embedding audio (to send it to out CP750 Dolby Processor).

Currently use only a single link SDI and send 720p Blu-Ray, which is fine, a converter that does this is sufficient (720 looks great of the screen).

So the one we are looking at is the Datavideo DAC-70 which seems to tick all the boxes. It looks like we can connect HDMI or VGA (with RCA audio) and it will embed the audio.

Was wondering if anyone has used such a unit or has any alternative suggestions (with the same functionality). We were originally looking at the Decimator MD-CROSS V2 but it does not seem to embed audio and does not have VGA (later not a crucial but nice).

Regards,
Ben

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-20-2016, 11:23 AM:

How will the audio get from the projector to processor if you embed it into the SDI?

Posted by Ben Edwards (Member # 8199) on 05-20-2016, 11:44 AM:

We use a blackmagic de-embeder to extract the audio. So from the converter we plan to go into the de-embeder which sends single channel SDI-HD to projector and audio to Dolby Processor.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 05-20-2016, 12:21 PM:

A couple of screening rooms I work at use AJA FS-1's.

They're quite expensive, (often over $3,000US) but they do
"everything". IMO it's often overkill. I've had arguments with
film-makers, who think that converting & sending their project
over the SDI links will somehow make their crappy video look better.
Bozos!

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 05-20-2016, 04:10 PM:

Hmm, why embed audio in the first place if you de-embed later anyway, as most of your sources except HDMI will be compatible with the CP750 anyway (S/P-DIF, Toslink, analog). Maybe your de-embedder supports multichannel analog?

Well, not my business. You probably want a real scaler, but for what it does, the Datavideo seems to do what you want and the price is right.

I'm wondering how good the analog VGA to SDI/HDMI conversion is, given that computers/notebooks will output very different resolutions between 4:3, 16:9, 16:10, etc. up to 1920/1080.

- Carsten

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-20-2016, 04:36 PM:

We have a customer that swears by an Analog Way scan converter to go from computer to SDI. We didn't sell it so I have no idea the cost but I suspect it isn't cheap. He says it does a phenomenal job of getting computers into SDI and looking good.

Posted by Ben Edwards (Member # 8199) on 05-21-2016, 03:21 PM:

Embeding audio as we want to be able to run a SDI cable to the stage and have a laptop on stage sending video and audio. We are a multi use venue so as well as cinema we do performance and talks. For this reason we want a portable converter not a rack mounted one. This means we can use it in the projection room or the stage.