DanielDroege wrote:Would it be possible to adapt the SMPTE Fiber to LC Fiber and use local power at the camera?
The optical fiber pair in the SMPTE 311M hybrid cables used by the new Studio Fiber Converter and Camera Converter are actually used for 10G Ethernet. All of the video feeds (1 UHD from the camera and 3 HD return feeds) are converted to IP video for transmission.
Given that the converters support 12G SDI for the camera feed, obviously there is some compression happening to get the data transmitted under 10 Gb/s. I'd assume that the converters probably use the same low-latency 4:1 TICO compression as the Teranex Mini IP converters Blackmagic released earlier this year. That would get the 12G video from the camera and 3G return video feeds under the available 10 Gb/s bandwidth while still allowing for other Ethernet communications.
The Studio Fiber Converter actually includes a 10G optical Ethernet port (in addition to the SDI inputs and outputs), although it seems like this may not be enabled yet. Presumably this port would be for integration with IP video workflows so that the video input and output signals could be handled over IP rather than SDI.
But what all this means is that if you were use a breakout cable to convert the SMPTE 304M fiber connector at the end of the hybrid fiber cable to LC connectors (something like this:
http://www.camplex.com/product.aspx?item=HYDAP-FLC), you would need to plug the LC connectors into a 10G Ethernet switch. Then you would have an Ethernet connection with the other end of the cable. And then maybe (a big maybe) if you connected a Teranex Mini IP converter to that Ethernet switch you could convert some of the IP video signals to SDI (assuming these both use the same protocol and you could figure out how the each of the IP video feeds is addressed).
What you could not do is take the optical LC connectors from the breakout cable and connect them to one of the SDI to Optical Fiber Mini Converters (from Blackmagic or another manufacturer). These converters do not use video over IP, but instead follow the SMPTE 297 standard to send SDI video signals over fiber.