Atomos to take HDMI closer to SDI

Atomos has made a move to standardise HDMI for the professional video industry. SDI has ruled the professional video space for over 25 years, built on a backbone of dependability and control. The prevalence of HDMI in consumer electronics and the DSLR revolution created by Canon, Nikon, Sony and Panasonic has made HDMI the default connection for video professionals. Until now, however many of the advantages presented by SDI have been missing from HDMI.

One of the key advantages of SDI over HDMI has been auto triggering and timecode communication between cameras and external devices like monitors and recorders. Atomos has now made HDMI more usable and one step closer to the SDI standard 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 claims it was the first company 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.

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 has developed its 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.

“Initially we developed these cables purely to support the Ninja Star, our pocket size ProRes recorder,” said 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.”