Wireless Video Transmitter
 

Does anyone have any experience with wireless video transmitters? I need to buy one for use with monitoring a remote camera, and for use sometimes with live multicam shoots.

Open up you wallet wide and visit http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=&cltp=&clsgr=

if quality isn't an issue, i know radio shack has like an $80 sender that just accepts composite video. ive used them, they seem to work, just not great

It really needs to be high quality, the BHPhoto site has some good products.

Why not use a Slingbox?

The "wireless" can of worms. mmmmm

There are actually a number of options when it comes to wireless, but firstly - where will it be used, and in what capacity? Will one end of the wireless link be moving during the shot? What kind of distance do you need?

For wireless handheld or steadicam use, the major contenders are the widely known CIT Modulus 3000, 2000, or the new 4000. Also there is the excellent Canatrans, the Transvideo Titan, the Boxx, and the WEVI Camwave.

The modulus and Canatrans are TV-UHF band transmitters. Technically illegal to use without license in the U.S. To get best performance from these, you MUST have a good tuner and antenna setup. Not recommended for live camera feed to air - signal interference and dropout is almost guaranteed at some point. Fine for video village though.

The Titan, Boxx, and WEVI are all microwave - less range due to the higher frequencies, but also less interference. Titan is analog, 2.4ghz, the Boxx and Wevi are both digital Wifi. Digital means delay, so expect a 3-5 frame delay in the signal. I own a WEVI, and can attest that it is a rock-solid, broadcast grade signal. BUT, it is delayed, so it will probably not work for live to air, unless you can make a creative solution (perhaps delaying all your other cameras and audio by the same amount, then you could cut seamlessly and save a LOT of money).

All the above units are below $5000 roughly. Now...
For true broadcast, no delay links, you'd be looking at a gigawave system or grass valley digital triax system. These systems, to be polite, are substantially more than $5000. Quite substantially. If you're using it for i-mag, then you'll need a system with <1 frame delay, most likely. Definitely not cheap, and certainly the kind of thing that would be a substantial cost to rent for even a day.

There are a lot of other systems out there, but this is a general list off the top of my head. I have both the WEVI and a TV-UHF transmitter. For steadicam use I generally mount both so that a director watching the performance can look on a handheld monitor with no delay (slight picture breakup, TV-UHF), while back at video village they can watch a crisp feed without breakup (digital wireless). But live to air is a whole other ballgame.