The backstory:  We’re a video production company that specialise in filming, recording and streaming live conferences and events.

The idea: To capture some more creative shots we thought we’d run a few GoPros through our Tricaster vision mixer. The idea was simple enough and on paper all we had to do was convert the HDMI output of the GoPro into a SDI format.

We were at the UK Magic Championships for 4 days filming their gala events and we had plenty of opportunity to be creative with camera angles. (Lions, Rabbits and Ken Dodd)

The struggle: We powered the GoPro via a mains usb iphone charger (all good so far) and connected a Blackmagic HDMI to SDI converter box so we could connect straight into our Tricaster via a 10 meter SDI cable.  Unfortunately there was no picture at all and trust me we tried every possible format, frame rate and voodoo chant.

We could get a picture if we connected the GoPro via HDMI straight to a monitor, we could also get a composite signal from the GoPro into the Tricaster (which was ok) but not the Holy Grail of SDI and the magic of HD.

So our first thoughts were that the Blackmagic converter wasn’t processing the signal but we tested that with other HD cameras and it worked well, we also tested a GoPro Hero2 and amazingly that worked absolutely fine, every time.

We tried everything suggested in the forums including the sequence of how to turn each device on/off, wait 5 minutes then do it all again. In the end I read an interesting trail between a disgruntled GoPro owner and the head of Tech at GoPro himself, the bottom line is it was never designed to be a live camera but a very good and practical action camera and even though it can output HD is it really fully supported via HDMI?

Answer: I’ve not a clue

So with limited success our idea now is to boost the Hero 3 signal with a HDMI repeater to clean up the signal, I’ll let you know how we get on.

Any recommendations welcome…