Breakaway Cables

G

ggrantly

Veteran
Hello Listers,

Is there anything special about a breakway cable other than the obvious? Assuming it has a quick disconnect plug and a splitter-return for headphones, is there any other features of note?

I have enough cables to do my own, what would be the best type of loom to enclose the bundle?

Grant
 
Making your own by bundling several cables together can become unwieldy. They can tangle and twist over a short amount of time, and then you have a snake that won't lay flat.

The benefits to the breakaway cables are the multi-pin quick-disconnect at the camera end and the fact that it is a single, manageable cable with fan-outs at each end. They aren't cheap, but worth the investment. PSC makes some great ENG snakes (used to be called Betacam snakes), and even has some extensions available.

Honestly, the multi-pin disconnect is worth its weight in gold. It allows the camera to move for a reset without having to deal with multiple connections on the camera. Just leave the camera's fan-out assemble connected, and keep it tied to the camera handle for strain relief and stability. This cuts down on transition time more than you'd think.
 
The cables I have are pretty soft, not anything that will kink, even in a bundle. I was more curious about any special features. Do the pre-made versions bundle individual cables, or use a multi-conductor cables with the headphone return and XLR signals all in the same cable? If they are individual cables, they must use something like heat shrink?

Edit: The cables in the link look like they are bundled in shrink tube yes?

Thanks
Grant
 
No, they use multi-conductor cable. You'll often find heat shrink on the fan-outs, just for durability's sake and for color coding, but it's one cable with three shielded pairs (though often they'll use a 4-pair cable and only terminate three of them). If you want to DIY, you'll be better off with a 4-pair cable.
 
My breakaways have a 10 pin hirose connector which connectors to my mixer (PSC Alphamix, I think the SDs also use a 10 pin), on the other end is two XLRs, and a 1/8" stereo headphone plug with a breakout for the camera op. In between is a small pull-release quick disconnect. The XLRs and 1/8" stay connected to the camera and has a velco quick strap which typically attached to the tripod. So I connect the hirose to my mixer, connect the other end to the camera inputs and headphone jack. I shoot tone, set levels, and can quickly flip a switch on my mixer to check the output from the camera headphone jack. And for camera moves, quickly disconnect via the pull-sleeve breakaway, allowing the camera to be repositioned for the next shot, and when it looks like the camera is locked down, quickly reach over and in less than a second, reconnect to the camera. The breakaway cable is far more than a snake, and is worthe every penny.
 
The PSC break-away cables we use for our work are invaluable - worth every dime. They come pre-configured for your mixer too.
 
I agree with the rest of these guys.
This is one cable that is pretty much 100% mandatory.
From the quick disconnect, to everything being in one cable, it will just make your life way easier.

As far as building one from scratch it's not for the faint of heart. I've never dealt with a worse connection than a neutricon to solder.
Royal pain in the arse. Makes every other difficult cable in my opinion look like an xlr solder job.

Absolutely worth buying pre made. I own both PSC and Remote audio and I prefer the Remote audio. Because they are wired differently
you can't mix ends so I just had remote audio wire the cable to PSC spec's.
 
I got mine made from a cool guy named Blake Wilcox. He even put my name on the cable!

$199.95 for 25 foot with camera end breakaway ..built with mogami super flexable cable ...extentions up to 100 ft. avalable ...$16.95 s/h It also has a headphone jack for the camera operator/director to pretend they have a clue about audio with...

Email him at: fredfstone60@hotmail.com
http://www.wilcoxsound.com/
 
Chadfish said:
This is what I have. Very nice. http://cgi.ebay.com/BETA-SNAKE-ENG-...235?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5643a637fb
Click to expand...

The biggest reason I've personally moved away from the PSC version (which this version above looks like a direct copy of)
is the bigger xlr cables at the camera end.
Why? Because it's an added solder point inside of the cable. (note where the bigger red and green cables go into the jacket.)
Right there they are soldering the smaller internal cable to the bigger XLR.

The remote audio appropriately solders at the neutricon connector so the same internal smaller cable can go all the way to camera.
They use a plastic cover over it to help protect it more of course but one less solder joint for me wins out.

Obviously just an opinion.
 
Hi, so if you are using a breakaway cable and feeding audio to a camera, does that pretty much eliminate your ability to record from the mixer to a recorder (i.e. tascam dr 40) at the same time? Thanks.
 
If you only need one mic, you can set the mixer (MixPre or MixPre-D) to send the one mic to both output channels. Then you send one output to the camera and one to the recorder. You can also use the "Tape Out" to send signal to the recorder if you are using 2 mics. Photos are shown on this page: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MixPre/
 
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