SDI2 port

[Brian Udoff]

I recently was AC'ing on a shoot where we were shooting one of the higher resolutions, and the DIT wanted a clean Log C signal. However, his cart could only take 1.5G signal, so I had to run my onboard monitor on SDI2 at 3G.

Luckily, my onboard monitor had no problem with 3G, but unfortunately the resolution forced me to receive a clone of SDI1. So now I could only see a clean signal with Log C. Needless to say, it was not ideal from my point of view.

Basically, I'd like to ask:
1) if it is possible to make 1.5G an option for both ports, as it seems there's still a lot of equipment out there that needs it,
2) if there's any chance soon that the SDI ports will be able to be gamma-independent at higher resolution?, and
3) at the least, if the gamma needs to be cloned across both SDI ports, can each port have its own choice of being clean or with surround info?

Many thanks in advance!

[Christoph Gschloessl]

Hello Brian,
Thank you for using our forum. Your questions are very helpful to inprove our camera SW. I have clarified your inquiry with our PM for ALEXA Mini. Here are some answers.

1) The limitations are only for UHD and 3.2K ProRes.
4:3, ARRIRAW and the other ProRes recoding formats do not have that limitation.
We are looking into fixing it but we will need to replace the entire SDI firmware. Unfortunately this effort will not fit into the
next software update (SUP 4.0) and had to be deferred to the next major SUP in Q3 2016.
2) Independent Gamma (or Look) will not be possible unfortunately.
3) Yes, once we have the new SDI firmware in place this is going to be possible.

I hope this sorts things out.

[Brian Udoff]

Thanks!