New to BirdDog and NDI? No sweat. In this video Kriss outlines the key features of BirdDog cameras and converters, what all the hypes about, and really what sets them apart from their competition.
To see the full BirdDog product range and for more info visit: bit.ly/3z78fAe
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Full NDI - No Compromise
All Birddog cameras and converters support video transmission over a local network using NDI. There are really two flavours of NDI that make their way into production kit; there’s NDI, and there’s NDI HX, and they are rather different. NDI is a variable bitrate, all intra-frame codec that is visually lossless - it’s of broadcast quality standard. NDI HX however is not, it essentially uses the compressed Long-GOP H.264 codec. Ultimately using NDI gives you more data to work with than NDI HX, so when it comes to product kit, if it can only do NDI HX, you’re going to severely limit its output.
Video over IP Made Easy
NDI makes it incredibly easy to route video signals across a network where historically it used to be accessible to only those who are pretty tech savvy. When you connect a BirdDog product to a local network it will automatically be visible to any of the other NDI devices. So for example, if I have my BirdDog camera and encoder turned on and connected to the LAN we can see here on my computer I can access those video streams, and bring them into my switcher. A usual concern of video over IP is latency. Now birddog use a silicon NDI chip that they’ve developed with a focus on delivering incredibly low latency processing. The typical latency of their NDI cameras for example is sub one frame of video when compared to the SDI output, it can be as low as 16ms - which really makes transitioning from SDI or HDMI workflows to NDI very straight froward, it’s one less thing to worry about.
One Cable
All Birddog products support PoE. This means that just the one ethernet cable can be used to integrate each piece of kit fully into the production system - this one ethernet cable will provide remote power and control, tally, audio, and video transmission - which really does make for an easy install.
Professional Image
BirdDog have put themselves in what could be deemed the sweet spot of market, they offer PTZ cameras that are very good value for money without sacrificing on imaging quality. Highly regarded Sony CMOS backlit sensors and optics are mainly used within the range of cameras, and within the web controls there is a vast number of settings for the operator to really finesse and craft the image. There’s even a full colour matrix, allowing individual saturation and hue control with 64 levels of control per channel, 72 levels of gamma positions to really dial in those blacks, highlight compensation, edge enhancement etc - all the control is there, and with ongoing firmware updates is only getting better.
Tally and Comms made easy
With BirdDog cameras and converters, you get an instant tally and comms system that runs on the network, which is of huge benefit for those producing live multicamera productions - it’s one less thing to setup and manage.
When the camera or converter detects that its NDI source has been put on preview or live from within an NDI video switcher, the built-in tally light will reflect it by illuminating green or red - that’s tally done, it’s as simple as that. BirdDog Comms is a piece software that runs on a windows computer or tablet (free and paid versions available) that links up all of the connected BirdDog encoders and cameras to create a unified comms system. On the camera or converter end an operator can plug-in an apple style headset into the device and can then communicate with the operator at the computer.
Operate from anywhere
NDI is really designed for local networks, however with BirdDog you do have a clean solution for bridging two NDI networks across the globe with ease using BirdDog Cloud - Cloud essentially seamlessly converts NDI feeds to SRT for transmission and back again into NDI to be used locally again - and you even have full PTZ control with that too.
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