HDMI Burn out

Peter C.

Peter C.

Veteran
I was considering adding a V mount battery to power my camera and monitor but I saw warnings that this could burn out the HDMI port. This phenomena seems mostly to occur with Black Magic. The reasons for it seem vague some say it's caused by cheap cables others say you need to plug power in first then the HDMI cable, others say you need two separate batteries. Anyone ever head of this?

 
Almost unheard of with HDMI, very rare. But SDI, could be a big problem. Companies like RED and ARRI have a breakdown with the order to do it in.

A general rule of thumb is to have all devices ON before plugging in any cables.
 
I've heard of it occurring on cameras with SDI and cameras with HDMI... Such as on the Canon C70 (I own one so I pay attention to chat about that camera). Short version: D-Tap/P-Tap connectors can lead to shorts... So if you have say an external monitor connected to your camera, and then you want to power that monitor from a V-Mount (or other mount) battery that's also connected to your camera, make sure you have all the power cables connected before you connect your monitor (or whatever) to the camera via SDI or HDMI. (ie- What NorBro says). Or power the monitor from its own battery...

I first saw alerts about this from Arri. Then about a year later, from RED (perhaps I missed their earlier warnings. Here's ARRI's brief PDF on this issue:
Preventing Damage to SDI Outputs

And here's brief video from them (Google points to their twitter post): https://twitter.com/arrichannel/stat...272000?lang=en

I bought a couple Core SWX Nano BPA batteries to use with my C70 with the idea that I'd use their D-Tap connectors to power a small monitor. That works fine and I was careful to follow the power-first-then-HDMI order. But I'm now powering the monitor with its own small battery; Not as light or as easy to manage (ie- now two power levels to track), but in case I forget or am rushed while changing batts, I won't fry my HDMI ports. (Also: I wish the C-70 had an SDI output, and a few other things...but it makes nice pictures and can match with better Canon cameras).
 
Last edited:
Both my camera and monitor can be powered from usb instead of d-tap but I still don't know if that would matter. I'm leaning towards buying an extra monitor and camera battery to avoid the worry. I thought a v-mount base plate battery would be a nice way to put the weight at the bottom and to not have to swap and charge a bunch of batteries. But sometimes it's better to be safe than sorry because when you're in a rush you'll inevitably do it the wrong order.
 
Oh, it's more than nice. Once I discovered the PowerBase 10 years ago (company used to be called Switronix), I never used it any other way. (Coincidentally popular with BM users back then.)

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...ink_small.html

Extremely convenient shift in weight/balance and not sure why other batteries don't have that camera plate built in (maybe patented, IDK).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top