Canon Vixia Clean HDMI Out

Hey everyone,
I've been working hard the past few months to get the morning broadcast at my High School running smoothly. All seems to be working now, and I'm looking to plan ahead for next year. Basically our "department" will be getting a small budget of a few thousand dollars, and I'm looking into upgrading our current video system with a completely new setup. We're no where near the budget for a Tricaster 40, but we do have enough to upgrade our Broadcasting PC, buy a few BM Capture Cards, and get some new cameras. Currently, we're using an old Canon GL 2 connected via FireWire to an old Core 2 Duo machine. Video Quality isn't HD, but its a pretty nice SD video camera.

I've been doing a bit of research looking for good cameras, but I could really use the IAIB's help. I'm looking to get 2 cameras, so I'm looking to spend $300-400 on a camera. I'm open to suggestions above, but the lower the better. I've been looking at the Canon Vixia line, and was wondering if all cameras support a clean HDMI output. I have heard of many manufactures restricting this feature on lower end cameras, so I wanted to be sure the camera I end up buying supports it. Any recommendations?

Thanks!

Too bad a TriCaster 40 is out of reach :( Have you checked out NewTek's education deals? Or maybe see if any of your local NewTek deals have any XD300s left at a knocked down price.

Regarding the clean output, from what I can tell all the Vixia's have the same firmware, and as such all work the same way regarding clean HDMI output. That said it's definitely safer just to buy one to test and send it back if it doesn't work, and if it does work then order a bunch more. Also check out used HV20/30/40s, They're great prosumer HD cameras with clean HDMI out for sure.

I believe all Vixias have clean HDMI out. In some cases you can find them at around $250 but often under $300 for base models.
Blackmagic intensity Pro cards, which accept HDMI in.
I find that B&H Photo Video tends to have the lowest prices and best variety.
You can use Telestream Wirecast as a software switcher, compositor, encoder. It also has Video Display Output for local hardware integration.

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Originally Posted by joedemax

Too bad a TriCaster 40 is out of reach :( Have you checked out NewTek's education deals? Or maybe see if any of your local NewTek deals have any XD300s left at a knocked down price.

Regarding the clean output, from what I can tell all the Vixia's have the same firmware, and as such all work the same way regarding clean HDMI output. That said it's definitely safer just to buy one to test and send it back if it doesn't work, and if it does work then order a bunch more. Also check out used HV20/30/40s, They're great prosumer HD cameras with clean HDMI out for sure.

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Thanks for the info Joe! Unfortunately, even at the discount price of $5k, wer're still just a bit out of reach. I would buy the TC40 in a heartbeat if we had a bigger budget, but unfortunately, I don't think it's going to happen. Plus the fact that I have emailed multiple departments/people at Newtek with educational questions and never got a response back once worries me.

If you are looking for a hardware switcher to keep in your budget the Blackmagic ATEM Television Studio at $995.00 is quite nice. But since your only a few thousand would use half of it up.

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Originally Posted by Linuxcooldude

If you are looking for a hardware switcher to keep in your budget the Blackmagic ATEM Television Studio at $995.00 is quite nice. But since your only a few thousand would use half of it up.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I actually looked into the ATEM, and unfortunately it wouldn't be ideal for us since our broadcast is dependent on virtual sets. For the price the new Wirecast Machine I am budgeting for costs me, I could buy an ATEM for the same price.

Canon Vixia M500 currently at $349 would be good.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...M500_Full.html
Canon Vixia R300 at $249 for the bottom end.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...R300_Full.html

I believe ATEM TVS and HDMI have very short cable length limites if you go that route. I've heard the TVS is finicky that way.
You could get HDMI to SDI convertors for longer runs. I think Blackmagic's are about $300 each.

It would be interesting to know if NewTek had an education deal on the TC40. It may be that they consider it, priced as is, their "education deal." Somewhere in my reading I'd heard that NewTek had some sound reasoning in choosing analog inputs beyond the price of the input cards themselves.

Apparently NewTek may have felt a good portion of the market for at $5K Tricaster included Educational Institutions and Houses of Worship that continue to use older cameras on other sources with analog out and that such market would be stretched financially to get a $5K Tricaster and requiring them to upgrade their cameras would have flat out put it out of reach.

Another way of looking at it was that it might have made more sense to have HDMI or SDI camera users purchase digital to analog convertors than to ask those using analog cameras to upgrade their cameras. The analog inputs gave them a broader market that would be needed to make a $5K Tricaster profitable to NewTek and viable for the most potential users.

It may be there's no big educational discount because as it is, it's their educational market priced box.

For a Wirecast user I guess a competitive analog input card might be the Osprey 460e at around $1000 US which is no different than a Blackmagic Quad and only $500 less than a Matrox VS4 (which adds ISO recording).

A main difference between an all in one box and Wirecast is the latter allows you to upgrade hardware piecemeal. To move from analog to digital might cost about $1000 to upgrade the card. As computer technology changes you can buy a computer.

NewTek has had a history of upgrade paths (whether it be inputs or processor). It'll be interesting to see if they do that with the TC40 but I've heard nothing as of yet.

If you're on a really tight budget you could get Wirecast $500, two Intensity Pro cards $380 (that's for two) and two Canon R300s $500 (that's for two). So for $1380 you'd have software, input, cards. Just add computer. Quad i7 Ideally would give you room to grow.

Thanks for the all of the input. I think I'm leaning towards the new Canon Vixia HF R400 cameras. For $300 a piece it seems like a good camera and I'll be picking up two. We're currently using Wirecast Pro, so that's one nice thing I don't need to buy. At this point I'm probably just going to spend 1/3 of the budget on a good, expandable Wirecast box. I tinkered around with Dell's online store and priced out a nice i7 with 8GB of ram XPS system for $800. Of course, I'm still shopping for a better deal, but at this point I think I'm going to continue to grow a Wirecast Box.

Like I said, I would LOVE to use a Tricaster TC 40, but unless Newtek would be kind enough to sponsor our school broadcasts with a unit, it doesn't look like it's going to happen, at least not with the current budget. The ATEM TV is nice too, but we rely on virtual sets, and I don't think I want to spend my time building layered photoshop files to act as a Newsroom for the ATEM.

If you have any more input, please keep adding!

Blackmagic cards have a history of incompatibility with Dell although that may no longer be the case since I'm not seeing the prohibition on their list. I've heard no issues from recent Dell purchases either.
They do list recommended systems and motherboards though.
http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/supp...K=false&os=win