chris bangma

The 5.6" will not be transflective. There are only a couple of companies that make LCD panels which are transflective. We might be able to convert the 5.6" panel to transflective, but will have to see.

Things have been a little quiet for us, just slowly working away on the new version. This week we will be working on the software for the new controller. Will be adding framelines, masking, and bubble level. We will also be testing the hardware for the bubble level as well. If anyone has any features that they would like us to implement, please speak up and let us know. Here are some details about what we are thinking of doing. -Framelines, 2 sets, both fully adjustable, and the ability to change the color of the framelines. This way you could have a 16:9 frameline, and also have a 4:3 frameline in a different color, so it is less distracting. There will also be the ability for crosshair or center dot. Still debating whether there should be a set of "canned" framelines, or just leave it adjustable. -Masking, ability to adjust the opacity of the image outside the main framelines. Maybe the ability to adjust the opacity between the inner and outer framelines? -Bubble Level, will have the ability to change the position on the screen, change the width of the bubble, the span, and the color of the bubble.

We will soon have a monitor roughly the same size as the SmallHD. It will be using the same screen, and pretty much the same features. The difference is the brightness, we will have around 1200 nits VS their 300. Price point should be slightly under $2k.

If someone with a Master rig wants to bring it by our shop in Chatsworth, we will measure it up, and make a universal monitor bracket for it. Of course we would prefer you put a Cinetronic monitor on it, but thats up to you.

Thank you to everyone who cam by to see the monitor at Cinegear. We will have the monitor available at the Stabilizer Gear Expo for those who want to get a more hands on look at it.

Just a reminder to those who are coming by Cinegear today to see the monitor, Robert Starling has been gracious enough to show the monitor for us, but he is actually hired by Angenieux to show their lenses. Please try to be a little discreet when you see Robert. Ask to see the lenses, which are great by the way, and politely ask if you can see them in the sun etc. This will help us out, and keep Angenieux from getting upset that people just want to see the monitor.

For those attending Cinegear, Robert Starling will be showing a monitor at the Angenieux booth. Please feel free to check it out, also remember to check out Angenieux's lenses as well.

There will be a level box which will mount to the sled, to read the level of the rig, and not just the monitor. It will also be capable of driving an led bar, for the off chance that you do not want to use it with the Cinetronic monitor.

At the moment we have not planned for a reclocker on the input of the new monitor. Our engineer assures me that it will not be needed, but I asked him to put space on the board for one anyways. He mentioned that the HD-SDI has been a problem for a lot of manufactures, since the board designers arent familiar with designing a board for RF signals. He mentioned on some of the very first designs he did, there were the same breakup problems. They were solved by having an RF engineer do the layout of the HD-SDI portion of the board, and the problems were solved. Most engineers working with HD-SDI will tell you to use the shortest cable possible, and not have any right angles, "T"s or barrels. They will also say to use the cables with the heaviest shielding. I challenged our designer, and told him I want a monitor that works perfectly with 500 feet a crappy cable lying in water and mud with multiple barrels inline. He commented that this was not the ideal way for running HD-SDI. I responded by saying that this is what we have to deal with every day in our industry, so it better work. Hopefully he comes through on the first try. If not we will tweak the HD-SDI board until it meets our criteria.

Rumor has it that the Blackmagic Hyperdeck might actually exist somewhere :-) When we can get our hands on one, we will make up a bracket, so it can fit on the back of the monitor.

This is actually a fairly common problem. The HD-SDI signal is a very sensitive signal. You MUST use HD cables everywhere in the system, or you will have problems. What many people fail to realize is that HD-SDI behaves like an RF signal, since it is running 1.5ghz. This requires that you have properly shielded cables, and proper bnc connectors as well. With composite, you were able to get by without using shielded coax cable in the steadicam post, but with HD-SDI it will not work. To my knowledge the XCS sled is the only one with HD coax in the post. The new Pro may have it as well, but I am not familiar with that sled yet. One workaround is to add a reclocker just before the monitor. This will clean up the signal, and reduce the dropouts.

For those who are interested in checking out the monitor, we will have one on one of the sleds at Cinegear, and will also be showing the monitor at the Stabilizer Gear Expo.

One of the reasons why we offer demo monitors is so people can do their own shootout, under the conditions that work for them. This way you can see for yourself, if it fits your needs or not. We are also very open to suggestions, if there are features you would like to see, or have any ideas that would make the product better for you, please let us know. We would like to see this product evolve into what works best for everyone, and not just dictate on how we think it should work.

If you read back, you will see that this is something we are working on. We will have a new controller and housing in June, with full production a few weeks later. At the moment we are offering the highest resolution 6.5" and 7" screens available. They are higher resolution than what anybody else is currently offering in this size. This coupled with 1500 nits brightness, make them some of the best steadicam monitors currently available.

Yes, this is the original housing and board. We hope to have the first demo of the new controller and housing around cinegear, if all goes well. Production will start a few weeks after the demo.

Currently there is not a tally light, but we can easily fit one and wire it up. What suggestion do people have for a preferred connector for the tally light? Use the 8 pin steadi lemo, or a separate connector?

A little bit of a running joke, since I tend to take pics of the monitors with the big lebowski on them. You probably just sold a few dozen more based on your choice of image.

A quick picture of the 7" steadicam monitor.

A quick picture of the 7" steadicam monitor.

The first couple 7" monitors are ready, for those who wish to demo them. We will be posting more details and photos of the monitors soon. You can find contact info and basic specs at www.cinetronic.com

We are looking into IBC, and will let you know if we work something out.

Picture in picture is an option. You would need to convert the second source to a different input, since it cannot do 2 of the same input types at the same time.

The current lcd controller is a bit limited in its on screen display. We should be able to do a fairly simple level with it, but nothing too fancy. The new controller has full control to place anything anywhere on the screen, so we can do a much better level display on this. As for the level itself, we have been doing some testing with a gyro based level. We hope to have this finished some time in May, and let some of the operators test it.

We will do testing of the onscreen level in May. Will let you know how it goes.

The first batch of 5 is out working. The second batch of 5 should be out in 1-2 weeks. We should have a demo unit in Europe toward the end of May, or beginning of June.