VIXIA HF G50 with Wirecast

[awilliams1313]

I work at a university in their athletic department and we recently purchased the Vixia HF G50 camera for our livestream.  We use Mac laptops with recently released OS (Catalina, Mojave) and Wirecast (14.1.0).  We connect our cameras through the Blackmagic UltraStudio Mini Recorder.  

Wirecast and the laptop detect that the mini recorder is connected, however, it's very rare I'll get an image to pop up from the camera.  I've adjusted every output setting I can on the camera, but nothing seems to work, or at least consistently.  I can, very rarely, get it to detect on through Blackmagic Media Express and Wirecast, but it takes, on average, around 10-15 tries.

Not sure what else I can do to try and solve the issue.  Did I simply just buy a camera that is not compatible with the aforementioned softwares?

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated, especially if it would be quicker to return the camera and search for a new type of camera rather than waste time fuddling with this one, despite me liking it very much.

Thanks!

[Mark35mmF2]

Hi,

Based on what you're describing, the intermittent connection, this sounds like it could be a physical issue. If you are using HDMI cables longer than about five feet I would start by testing a shorter cable. If the shorter cable works without much issue then you would still be able to use a longer cable, but you may need to upgrade to a cable with better shielding.

I would also recommend making sure your input device is looking for a 1920x1080 signal instead of a 4k signal since this camera outputs a maximum 1080p through HDMI.