Extending VENUE snake

[Kenmillerjr]

Hey folks!

I have an obstacle here that I need to work through. Each year we do a live broadcast of our 4th of July show. Due to cost, I have convinced the broadcast engineer to use a Venue this year.

With that being said, we will be using two stage racks and I need to "extend" the snakes past the 250' limitation. The broadcast mix position is about 300-350' away. We currently do have a VENUE/MADI-spec fiber snake (bought it with out MADI stuff). I'm wondering if I can get a recommendation on a device that would possibly convert the BNC snake to fiber and back that would be fantastic. Or...any better options.

Thanks!

[Jeff W.]

I have consistently used the VENUE system with 330' BNC snakes (100 meters). A few times I have extended the Snake with BNC couplers. I don't know the exact length of the extension, but I believe it was between 50'-75'. Your best option is to probably just get cabling that will give you the length you need. Obviously any additional connections along the length of the cable becomes a fail point. Be sure to use high quality BNC cable.

To my knowledge there is no way to convert the VENUE BNC connections to any other format.

[Roland Clarke]

Although it isn't a Madi snake, I've heard of several people using things like RME madi boxes for splits etc. Although not officially sanctioned, I would speculate you could extend, convert to fibre and back, split, etc, using RME boxes. I would borrow a couple and check it out for myself, prior to the show.

[Brent Lind]

Strictly anecdotal, but most of the worlds touring houses use 350' BNC snakes without issue and I've personally used them on hundreds of shows including right this minute:) FWIW I recommend you use 75ohm cable and Neutrik connectors.

[ili]

Originally Posted by Kenmillerjr

Hey folks!

I have an obstacle here that I need to work through. Each year we do a live broadcast of our 4th of July show. Due to cost, I have convinced the broadcast engineer to use a Venue this year.

With that being said, we will be using two stage racks and I need to "extend" the snakes past the 250' limitation. The broadcast mix position is about 300-350' away. We currently do have a VENUE/MADI-spec fiber snake (bought it with out MADI stuff). I'm wondering if I can get a recommendation on a device that would possibly convert the BNC snake to fiber and back that would be fantastic. Or...any better options.

Thanks!

I had the same problem last year. Solution:

http://www.optocore.com/products/dd4mr.html

You can go optical or CAT5 with SANE.

i talked to them and they say it is fully compatible with the Venue standard (AFAIK Optocore helped digidesign originally).

Finally i resolved the situation just by placing the console closer to the source. =) . But the Optocore solution seemed very nice.

[digidesigner]

250 is limitation for low quality cable, high spec cables can be used for up to 500'

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...ility/en208581

But be sure to use the correct spec cable or you will se CRC errors popping up.

[Sheldon Radford]

Hi Ken,

Couple of options here:

1. Use one of the higher grade coax cables recommended here (good to 500'): http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...n&DocType=1083

2. Use an RME MADI coax/fibre converter. These are fully tested and qualified for use this way: http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...n&DocType=1083

Optocore offers similar conversion capability with one of their products, but the most recent version of firmware provided to us didn't pass the qualification test for full redundancy, so we can't officially recommend its use.

It's not recommended to extend beyond 250', or to mix different cable grades. Especially on a 4th of July show.

Sheldon

[Kenmillerjr]

Sheldon-
Thanks for the heads up. I'm scared to go that distance, but we got our hands on a 350' BNC Snake that has just come off the road. However, the good news is I did personally test our 250's by coupling them together and that worked like a charm. However, I doubt I will ever use that tho...that scares me. =\