How do you do Tricaster?

[cooldraft]

I was brought up in the old school where they taught us that S-Video was better than composite. But now that I've bought the 1,000;s of feet of cable, I not see venues with bnc built into the building. There will be three (or more) bnc runs to the back in a 'control room'. My question is should we just use a bnc to rca adapter and use this of is svideo going to give us a better signal. Also I am looking or 2 3xlcd screens and they all seem to have bnc. One final note, is bnc better for long runs (svideo tops out at about 200'---in my experence), keep it bnc with the exception of the female to male bnc/rca adapter?

[SBowie]

Y/C provides a superior signal (to Composite), as you say. BNC connectors are superior (to either 4-pin S-Video connectors or RCA connectors) because they are much less likely to be accidentally disconnected, not for anything to do with the video quality per se.

So limiting the discussion to video quality, and unless someone can point to information that Y/C deteriorates more over long distances than composite does (not aware of any such data), of the two - Y/C would be the best choice. (Some TriCasters support Y/C connection using BNC connectors, but not all do; but that's a connection issue, not a quality one.) And of course, the least possible use of adapters is always recommended.

[PIZAZZ]

Our rule of thumb was/is never run Y/C over 100'. A basic breakdown of the Y/C cable is it is essentially 2 very small coax cables inside one jacket. So using two RG59 or RG6 cables with appropriate adapterage to make the longer runs is essentially the same thing just not in the same jacket.

SVideo/YC over Cat5 baluns can be done up to 1000'. This is possible because the Balun boxes convert the video signal to a BALanced then back to UNbalanced signal thus the nick name BALUN.