MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA–Atomos, an Australian-based manufacturer of external recording devices for professional video, is launching a new range of HDMI cables for the professional video market, adding auto start/stop trigger and timecode to its new HDMI cable line. These much-needed features, the company says, will bring the HDMI standard more in line with the now ubiquitous SDI standard.
For the past 25 years, SDI’s reputation for dependability and control has made it the standard among video professionals. The prevalence of HDMI in consumer electronics and the DSLR revolution created by Canon's 5D Mark II/III, Nikon's D800 and followed more recently by Sony and Panasonic's 4K mirrorless cameras has made HDMI the default connection for video professionals. Although the consumer-grade HDMI standard advanced to 2.0 a year ago to make way for 4K, many of the advantages presented by SDI have still been missing from HDMI.
One of the big advantages of SDI over HDMI has been auto triggering and timecode communication between cameras and external devices like monitors and recorders. Atomos says it has resolved this discrepancy between HDMI and SDI by implementing auto start/stop trigger and timecode over HDMI. With this standard, users can connect using HDMI and automatically trigger functions on external devices from the camera itself, just as they have for years with SDI.
"We are very proud to be defining a new standard in such an established market place. We love HDMI, but as it gets more popular on the camera side we need to help make it work in the pro world." said Jeromy Young, CEO and Founder of Atomos, "Historically this has only been achieved in the tech industry by creating an open standard... which is what we've done"
Atomos says it was the first to engineer auto HDMI start/stop and timecode communication with cameras. Initially with Sony in 2011 for the FS100 followed up with Canon in 2013, for the 5D Mark III, 1DC and C100. Currently almost all professional Sony and Canon HDMI Cameras including the A7S employ this protocol. As the popularity of Atomos external monitor/recorders has grown, demand for this connection has spread quickly to all camera manufacturers. Now with an open, free and available standard this transition can happen quickly and easily.
Another advantage that SDI has enjoyed has been a firmer, tight fitting connection. Again in an effort to bridge the gap between SDI and HDMI, Atomos have developed their own range of HDMI cables with tight fitting connections and coiled cable lengths that allow for less clutter on the tripod and less force pulling at the HDMI connection. The Atomos protocol for HDMI is available for free from www.atomos.com/hdmi-protocol
"Initially we developed these cables purely to support the Ninja Star, our lightweight, pocket size ProRes recorder," said Jeromy Young, "but after consulting with our user base we soon discovered no one had yet developed a complete range of HDMI cables purely for ProVideo users in our space"
Available from August 15th, the range of HDMI cables includes a right angled HDMI micro to micro/mini and full coiled cables in lengths of 30cm (45cm extended). HDMI mini to full and full HDMI to full HDMI connections in lengths of 30cm to 50cms (65cms extended). Prices range from $19.95 to $29.95.
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