I've got a quick video for you today
that'll hopefully serve two purposes:
an updated buying guide to HDMI cables
and a practical test for a new microphone for this space.
Let's get undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and I'm not real, you're just sleeping.
So, here's the situation.
Last week, I did my first live stream from this new space
using the same camera angles and setup
that you're seeing now, but that required something
that I didn't have which is longer and more HDMI cables.
And so, in doing that, I ordered some off of Amazon
and I started to find some problems
in getting the perfect cable for my needs
and so I ended up actually ordering pretty much
all of the HDMI cables that Amazon had
in a particular category and so,
I wanna share with you the results that I found
because some of them work, some of them don't.
Some of them have weird quirks to them.
Now, this is a little bit niche, I guess,
because of two things. One, we're only talking about
HDMI cables that are over 10-feet long.
If they're under 10-feet long
or up to 10-feet long like this one here,
this is the 10-foot HDMI cable, AmazonBasics.
That's what I suggest you do. Just buy the AmazonBasics one.
They're the best bang for the buck.
They work reliably and you can get 4K60 10-bit out of them,
no problem and that's fine up to 10 feet.
When you go over 10 feet though, the next one
on Amazon, for metric by the way, 3 meters.
When you go up to the next level, it's like 4.5 meters
or 15 feet, then they start to run into problems.
The AmazonBasics cables still work flawlessly,
but they get twice as thick and they're no longer flexible
and if you're plugging this into cameras,
especially the Sony cameras with the little micro HDMI,
if you're using an adapter or whatever,
the thickness of the cable, it's not good on the ports,
the cords actually start doing weird things
to the camera mount and then I had them running here
and they were attached to the ATEM Mini
during the live stream for switching,
and it was like pulling the ATEM Mini off the table and stuff.
So, there's thickness issues, but I still want to be clear
that AmazonBasics cables are still my recommendation
and below 10 feet, you can ignore this video.
Just get the Basics cables. But, if you're like me
and you're looking for some longer cables
and you want 4K60 10-bit,
you've got some considerations here to tell you about.
The second thing that makes this a little niche
is that Amazon tends to have these products
in different countries and in different brands
and it can be a little confusing,
so this is definitely valid
for Canadian and half or three-quarters of these
are also the same in the US, so most of North America,
but as you start to go into Europe and that kind of thing,
these cables still exist, but they might be under
different brands. So I'm gonna put links in the description.
You can find them and hopefully, you can find
the corollary of that in your country, but if not,
hopefully still some of the advice I have here will apply.
If not, I apologize. Okay, so let's get into the first stack
of cables here so you can see what I'm talking about.
Alright, so-- Ooh, what do we have here?
Is this the Sigma 24-70 for the Sony E-mount?
This is going to be my next video,
probably a review of this lens. This is the new 24-70,
that just came-- well, it's not even out yet
for Sony E-mount, specifically and the like, L-mount.
Pretty excited. This lens is pretty cool,
so expect a video on that shortly.
Okay, so I've done basically two tests for these cables.
I have two criteria that are important to me.
The first one is the usability, like I said.
Is it resilient? Is it flexible?
Is it going to meet the length requirements?
Is it gonna pull the camera off the tripod
because it weighs 20 pounds? So, that's the first one.
The second one is can it do 4K60 10-bit?
Every one of the cables I tested can do 4K30
and 4K60 just like a basic computer connection
or like a TV or something, but when you put it from,
let's say a GH5 or Fuji or something that has 4K60 10-bit
to an Atomos recorder, there was some issues
with some of these cables and they are marked
with the yellow post-it note that's on it.
So, let's start with this one.
This is Toptrend Silver series and it does not work
on 4K60 10-bit, so that one's out.
In terms of its cable quality though, I did like it.
It wasn't too thick. Regular coating on it.
Nothing fancy and it worked fine for most purposes,
just not for the 10-bit purpose, so that's the Toptrend.
They do have two more expensive cables.
All of these cables by the way,
that was the other criteria, is they're in a similar ballpark
to the AmazonBasics. I didn't get $50-$100 cables.
They're all like, 20 bucks maybe, plus or minus
five or ten dollars. Trying to keep it in
an economical category because it doesn't really
make sense to compare AmazonBasics against
Toptrend's $150 expensive cable,
but they do make more expensive ones
which maybe would transmit the 4K60 10-bit,
but they were excluded based on price.
So, next up, I've got this one.
I thought it said "Firefly" originally on Amazon,
but then I thought it said "Firebelly".
but I think it's Firbely? It's a good cable
but we're into our first sort of thickness issue here
and I want to pop open one of these AmazonBasics ones
so you can see what I'm talking about
when I'm talking about thickness. It's pretty crazy.
Somebody in their review, Amazon reviews can be funny.
Somebody's like, "What am I running?
A damn coax cable or something?"
That's literally what it feels like.
I think it's actually thicker than your regular cable coax,
so maybe we can see in the overhead here,
but the one on the left, this is the 10-foot version
and then when you go to-- this is only 15.
Look how much thicker it gets. It's almost twice as thick
and this is not flexible at all. It literally...
you can see. It just hangs off, it's not even bending there.
Great signal quality,
and obviously that's why they're thicker.
This thickness can go, I think they have a 50-foot version
and that's why they're like this, but too thick
for running to a camera in my opinion.
So, that's the same case with UGREEN,
which is another brand that I really, really like.
If you're not gonna get AmazonBasics,
I'd say UGREEN is a good brand and those micro HDMI
to full sized HDMI adapters I was talking about
for the Sony cameras? I get UGREEN ones
and I really, really like them, but same thing though.
Up to 10 feet is good. If you happen to find ones
that are longer, they get too thick. Same problem.
And that's basically what I would say this Firbely one is
because it seems similar to me to the UGREEN one
in the way that they do their braiding.
It's, you can see here, it's got that UGREEN style,
almost charcoal, metallic braided cable to it.
Really, really nice and it did meet the 4K60 10-bit
standard but very rigid. Probably, this would've been
the closest call though. If I was going to take one
from the "No" pile and put it on the "Yes" pile,
it would be this one because it was almost flexible enough,
but not quite, but it costs two dollars more
than the one that I thought was the best winner,
so two dollars less and it's better, that's why this one
got eliminated. But, if you don't have the other cables
and you do have Firbely where you shop at your Amazon,
I'd say it's good. It's OK. It definitely works.
Little bit too stiff though.
Okay. Now another cable brand that I love
but has the same thickness problem is StarTech
and there's actually a StarTech in my town,
so I support them a little bit for that reason,
but they're great. You guys have probably bought
StarTech cables or StarTech adapters or something
in your life. Really, really great company.
This cable I recommend all the time.
This is just a little one that I use for, like, the monitor to--
like, a recorder to the camera,
or using a Shinobi to the Blackmagic
or something like that, I use this little HDMI guy.
I think this is 18 inches. It does 4K60 10-bit,
and that's fantastic, but they're in the same situation
as AmazonBasics where once you go above 10 feet
or three meters, they like double their thickness.
So, again, love the brand, would recommend them
10 feet and below, but not 10 feet and above.
The only reason why I chose AmazonBasics
in that original video over StarTech
is that StarTech is more--
StarTech is more expensive than AmazonBasics
by quite a bit sometimes, so the best bang for the buck
under 10 feet is still AmazonBasics.
Okay, and that's this one.
That's the 10-foot AmazonBasics. Love this cable
and I'm using this one for the stream
because the main camera works for 10 feet,
but that camera over there needs, like...
12 to 15 feet
and then the one up above needs a long cable as well.
Okay, now we're onto this one, which is PowerBear?
Which, I don't know. It's got a yellow sticky on it
because it did not work. I had high hopes for this one
though because it's a thick, nice braided cable
like the Firbely one, but more flexible,
so it's got the flexibility and the ruggedness
and it was like one of the cheapest ones too.
I think it's like $12 compared to $24 for the Firbely one,
but 4K60 10-bit and just no signal at all.
The previous one that I mentioned that was cutting out,
the Toptrend one, what it would do
is it would show the picture, then take it away.
Show the picture and then take it away.
Kind of like flash every two or three seconds.
This one, just a black screen, wouldn't transmit at all.
So, eliminated. And then, so lastly,
the one that is my favourite and the winner is this one.
It doesn't even have, like, a brand on the box.
It just says "HD cable". Now, on Amazon,
I'll put a link in the description
so you can click on it and hopefully match it
to something. The seller that I bought it from,
the brand was something like "Snowkids"
or something weird like that. Like it wasn't like
a cable sounding company
and the bag doesn't say anything. It says--
It says, "HDMI Kabel" and cable's spelled wrong, so...
-[chuckling] -Anyway,
uh, it's the perfect balance of everything that I wanted.
It's a braided cable, which isn't necessary,
but, you know, it means that you can probably
bend the hell out of it a little bit more.
It is very flexible, as you can see here.
So, it beats the other department
while still being braided
and it does 4K60 10-bit. I ran it for a while
and it had no problems. And, small little thing,
but some of these cables you can see
come with, like, twist ties on them.
The Firbely one was actually using
like, Nylon zap straps, which I didn't really like,
but this one has a Velcro tie attached to it.
Now, this is no big deal. Obviously, you should own
a whole set of Velcro ties if you don't
because it makes cable management a lot easier,
but to me, it was just a nice, little touch of like,
there's the Velcro tie already included,
so I like that as well.
And like I said, finding this might be more difficult
in your region. I haven't looked up all the different
Amazons yet to see if it's carried everywhere,
but one thing I saw on it that was identifying
that I didn't see on any other ones that might help you
is there's these little like, mirror-like reflective...
they almost look like sharp, metal edges.
Like chrome tapered edges, like old Apple products
on both the top and the bottom of the wide part
of the cable and none of these other ones
have that, so maybe that'll be a bit of an identifier
and also, the cable is a bit more silvery than the dark grey.
But, like I said, I'll put a link to the Canadian one
and if I could find the exact product in other Amazons,
then I will link to it using the geni.us link.
This is good and it does 4K60 10-bit,
so I think that's pretty much it.
But that's going to be it for me.
I hope you found this video helpful or at least entertaining
and if you did, make sure to leave the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already,
but if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining
then you're probably still running RCA cables.
Alright...I'm done.