Boxx Meridian

[Alec Jarnagin SOC]

Yeah, I've been using the Boxx the last couple of weeks on my show (shooting RED) and we have yet to have a complaint form video village. I myself rarely get to see the image back there though but the times I have, it was spot on. So far, so good.

[Mark Walker]

Ken,

 

Where did you get the boxx sysytem from back in 2008?

 

Mark

 

Hi all,

We just finished taping (HDcam) a live concert multi-cam in Las Vegas.

We used 2 wireless systems for steadicam: Boxx and Lynx.

The Lynx gave us a better image than Boxx, so we opted to use Lynx as main unit and Boxx as a backup.

 

When comparing both wireless signals to wired signal, both wireless video signals were not as sharp as the wired signal.

Both signal from the same camera fed into the switcher; used vertical and horizontal wipe to compare the signals.

Yes, we can cheat the viewer but not a trained-eye person.

For me, I say the different is between 8.5 and 10. 10 is the resolution of the wired video signal.

Cheers,

Ken Nguyen.

[Joel San Juan]

Here's a couple of pics from a current set up I have with the Meridien.

Powered from a Arri 2pin to a hirose and when on the second set up (lower stage),

powered from my sled 3pin lemo to hirose. Like Jason, I went with

the one TX without the V-mount. Its quite wide compared to the SD version

but after a while, you tend to not notice it anymore. Also with the

Meridien powered from the Alexa, its a real joy to swtich to sticks

or handheld without the hassle of rerunning cables.

 

Hope that helps :)

 

Best,

Joel

[Sanjay Sami]

It looks huge ! and why does the camera have an on board monitor while on your sled?

 

Here's a couple of pics from a current set up I have with the Meridien.

Powered from a Arri 2pin to a hirose and when on the second set up (lower stage),

powered from my sled 3pin lemo to hirose. Like Jason, I went with

the one TX without the V-mount. Its quite wide compared to the SD version

but after a while, you tend to not notice it anymore. Also with the

Meridien powered from the Alexa, its a real joy to swtich to sticks

or handheld without the hassle of rerunning cables.

 

Hope that helps :)

 

Best,

Joel

[RonBaldwin]

It looks huge ! and why does the camera have an on board monitor while on your sled?

 

it is pretty big and a tad on the heavy side. It weighs about the same as an hc-90 (just about/under 2 lbs) and is nearly the size of a laptop. At least it gives you a great deal of ad space that you can sell to make up for the crappy rates and undercutting nowdays. Coming from the last decade and a half where we were using a modulus, it is ginormous! I remember when the Cana-trans came out...it seemed SO big and SO heavy.

 

The Boxx Meridian is the best hd transmitter I have seen -- and it better be with the price tag of a greenscreen!! The assistants were pulling focus off the monitors and could not tell the difference between hardwired or transmission. I obviously haven't yet seen the new Transvideo yet...I hope we can get one in the states soon and arrange a shootout between the two -- not only in the boonies or on a stage, but maybe in a notoriously bad wireless environment like Times Square. I also hope that the Transvideo is better so Marianne won't start crying foul and accusing the poor bloke who set it up as rigging the comparison!

 

As far as the monitor on the camera...I had an assistant do that once recently. I would normally say f-no, but it was a red so a bit more mass wasn't a bad thing plus he asked politely and mounted it to the side and not on top.

 

rb

[Joel San Juan]

Sadly, at the moment we don't have the S2 on board recorders in Singapore so we went ahead with the idea of using the cinedeck extreme to record 4:4:4 uncompressed. Prep time was short and we had no time to fabricate a mount to the side of the cam. Also the cinedeck's weight might not seem too welcomed hanging off to the side. Not being a fan of running tethered on running shots (for 4:4:4 you will need to have 2 hdi cables running from the Alexa and the distance is limited from the village coz longer cables might influence the recording according to the tech), it seemed like the best temporary wireless set up solution till the S2 comes along to our rental market. Cheers ;)

[Sanjay Sami]

It looks huge ! and why does the camera have an on board monitor while on your sled?

 

it is pretty big and a tad on the heavy side. It weighs about the same as an hc-90 (just about/under 2 lbs) and is nearly the size of a laptop. At least it gives you a great deal of ad space that you can sell to make up for the crappy rates and undercutting nowdays. Coming from the last decade and a half where we were using a modulus, it is ginormous! I remember when the Cana-trans came out...it seemed SO big and SO heavy.

 

The Boxx Meridian is the best hd transmitter I have seen -- and it better be with the price tag of a greenscreen!! The assistants were pulling focus off the monitors and could not tell the difference between hardwired or transmission. I obviously haven't yet seen the new Transvideo yet...I hope we can get one in the states soon and arrange a shootout between the two -- not only in the boonies or on a stage, but maybe in a notoriously bad wireless environment like Times Square. I also hope that the Transvideo is better so Marianne won't start crying foul and accusing the poor bloke who set it up as rigging the comparison!

 

As far as the monitor on the camera...I had an assistant do that once recently. I would normally say f-no, but it was a red so a bit more mass wasn't a bad thing plus he asked politely and mounted it to the side and not on top.

 

rb

 

Hi Ron,

 

Pardon my ignorance, but how does an AC pull focus off a monitor ? I would imagine that would be really reactive (wait for it to go soft and then react). Do these digital cameras have more depth of field than film ? I thought they would be the same if they use the same lenses.

 

Sanjay

[Ken Nguyen]

Ken,

 

Where did you get the boxx sysytem from back in 2008?

 

Mark

 

Hi all,

We just finished taping (HDcam) a live concert multi-cam in Las Vegas.

We used 2 wireless systems for steadicam: Boxx and Lynx.

The Lynx gave us a better image than Boxx, so we opted to use Lynx as main unit and Boxx as a backup.

 

When comparing both wireless signals to wired signal, both wireless video signals were not as sharp as the wired signal.

Both signal from the same camera fed into the switcher; used vertical and horizontal wipe to compare the signals.

Yes, we can cheat the viewer but not a trained-eye person.

For me, I say the different is between 8.5 and 10. 10 is the resolution of the wired video signal.

Cheers,

Ken Nguyen.

 

Hi Mark,

I think you misread my post.

Never said I used the system in 2008.

The last time I used it was July 2010.

Cheers,

Ken Nguyen.

[Charles Papert]

The Boxx Meridian is the best hd transmitter I have seen -- and it better be with the price tag of a greenscreen!! The assistants were pulling focus off the monitors and could not tell the difference between hardwired or transmission.

 

Hi Ron,

 

Pardon my ignorance, but how does an AC pull focus off a monitor ? I would imagine that would be really reactive (wait for it to go soft and then react). Do these digital cameras have more depth of field than film ? I thought they would be the same if they use the same lenses.

 

Sanjay

 

Hi Sanjay:

 

I was fortunate to have Ron operating for me on the project where we used the Boxx system, so I'll take this one on.

 

Theoretically, yes, pulling strictly from a monitor could nominally result in a delay as you indicated. However, like every other aspect of the AC's craft, this is a skill that can be learned and improved on with practice. Nearly every AC I know now has incorporated a monitor for HD jobs--some will use it in conjunction with more traditional tools and others will rely on it, but all have come a long way in the past few years with the knack of finding sharps without hunting. We had Prestons on each camera and the AC's were working off Panasonic 17" monitors so they had a good amount of reference to work from. For the first three days of the shoot we were in a submarine and there was no physical room to have them anywhere near the camera, so the monitors were set up in adjoining areas, out of eyesight. While it's always preferable to have line-of-sight access, it just wasn't possible in this instance.

 

It's long been felt that given 35mm film and a comparable sized digital equivalent camera, the digital image is slightly shallower. I've heard various reasons for this--the physical depth of the sensor surface vs the layers of film emulsion, circle of confusion etc. I've never actually seen a side-by-side proof but many AC's I've worked with have indicated that they are able to hold less depth on full-size digital cameras than with film. And of course if one is discussing the DSLR's, several have larger sensors than 35mm so the focus is shallower still. While there are the occasional hunting moments when AC's work off a monitor, at least they are able to find focus when things get dodgy (at the long end of the zoom, for instance).

[RonBaldwin]

I will add to this that the operator no longer has the best image on the set so helping the focus puller is much more difficult looking through a video viewfinder -- especially the Alexa eyepiece!

[Sanjay Sami]

I will add to this that the operator no longer has the best image on the set so helping the focus puller is much more difficult looking through a video viewfinder -- especially the Alexa eyepiece!

 

Thanks for the reply Charles. That clears a few things up. I guess it must involve preempting distance changes from subject to camera based on a video picture - adding a whole new dimension of skills to learn.

 

Ron - never realised that the eyepiece was not optical. Why would they not have an optical eyepiece ? Is it to send 100% video for a clearer picture to video village ?

 

Sorry for the questions, but I realise that inevitably I will have to work with these cameras. I am in Berlin right now on a movie, and was at ARRI here, but they had no Alexas in stock to show me.

[Nick Karatsaousidis]

Hi all,

We just finished taping (HDcam) a live concert multi-cam in Las Vegas.

We used 2 wireless systems for steadicam: Boxx and Lynx.

The Lynx gave us a better image than Boxx, so we opted to use Lynx as main unit and Boxx as a backup.

 

When comparing both wireless signals to wired signal, both wireless video signals were not as sharp as the wired signal.

Both signal from the same camera fed into the switcher; used vertical and horizontal wipe to compare the signals.

Yes, we can cheat the viewer but not a trained-eye person.

For me, I say the different is between 8.5 and 10. 10 is the resolution of the wired video signal.

Cheers,

Ken Nguyen.

 

 

Well Ken,

 

it's a good thing that 99% of TV and feature viewers don't have a trained eye then. Sure I can operate wired. But only after I explain to the client that the operating will suffer. Then 9/10 goes for the wireless signal. For me, operating with wire is like a 5.0. Wireless is 10.

 

Hi Lars,

Just take it easy man. No offend!

I've looking for a better wireless system for quite a long time, since the analogue era.

None of us, steadicam ops, want to be wired.

And, this post is not taking about wired and wireless operating.

My post as well as others is talking about the technical specs of the wireless system; again, nothing to do with operating.

So far, LINK (not Lynx, sorry for my mistake as previously posted) and then Boxx are 2 best systems.

In case you don't know, or pretending not to know, or trying to hide the fact, the fact is wireless hasn't provide the video resolution as best as wired.

 

Ken Nguyen.

 

 

 

Dear Ken

 

Could you please post the link to LINK wireless system? Can't find it on google.

Sorry for stupid request:)

 

Regards

Nick

[Luc Larson]

Hello all:

 

I spent a couple of weeks on a job in Italy with the Boxx system. Vincent Laforet and I were shooting a food and travel show pilot and the Boxx chaps (Mark and Scott--many thanks and kudos for getting it together on such notice) sent us a couple of systems. My DSLR setup is configured so that everything stays onboard regardless of shooting mode so my camera remained untethered whether on sticks, handheld or Steadicam. What I had learned a couple years back with the Camwave was that an uncompressed HD wireless system simply eliminates the hassles of cabling--you quickly forget about the tangling and patching/repatching process as you move around a set, as the image remains just as good on the monitor as if hardwired. However the Camwave proved to be inconsistent, so on the days it chose not to work, back to the wire. On this particular shoot, my first with the Boxx, we never had any interference issues whatsoever and so the concept of HD wireless as "invisible" was finally achieved. I had my mind on the big picture so I can't speak to any of the functional particulars (ease of menus, flexibility of setup etc) but having a rock-solid image at all times was good enough.

 

After a series of different versions as seen at trade shows over the past few years, the transmitter antennas have settled down into a series of soft foam paddles that can be articulated as required. While it's easy to look at an array of antennas and wish they were smaller/fewer/hidden etc, in practice they don't get in your way and you quickly ignore them. The unit is a somewhat similar size to the Camwave.

 

This isn't really a comprehensive review as I said but I wanted to mention that the unit is a solid one and worked well for us on this shoot.

 

Charles,

How did you convert HDMI out on the DSLR to HD-SDI for the BOXX? I'm looking into using the BOXX as my wireless video option but I'm mostly running DSLRs an am unsure of the best way to convert the signal.

 

LL

[Charles Papert]

Charles,

How did you convert HDMI out on the DSLR to HD-SDI for the BOXX? I'm looking into using the BOXX as my wireless video option but I'm mostly running DSLRs an am unsure of the best way to convert the signal.

 

LL

 

The best way is still the Blackmagic convertor--unfortunately they are not built for the demands of field work and go down a fair amount. Both of mine are in the shop. But yes, that's the one we all use.

[nealnorton]

I had the opportunity to shoot HD on a TV show working with a great A/C friend that had pulled focus for me on a number of (film) movies. Very good focus puller. Great timing and rarely missed.

 

Someone convinced him to sit behind a monitor and pull focus with the Preston. The first attempt was pretty funny. . . I guess no more than 20% was close to sharp and with a Preston on I couldn't do much but ride along and wince. Well he figured it would just take a little experience to get the technique figured out so he tried again. The result was pretty much like what you would expect if the A/C just randomly spun the knob through out the take. We decided to go back to the old fashioned technique which had worked so well on so many jobs.

 

It seems to me that operating off a monitor away from the camera would be like flying blind. If the A/C can pull it off then great. But it sure does prevent the operator from helping on the fly and if the actors or camera op improvise then I imagine things would get murky pretty quick.

 

Not that the A/C that is glued to a Panatape or Cinetape readout is in much better shape. Always behind.

 

Neal