Owner manual

PIX 270i User Guide and Technical Information

Introduction

The PIX 270i is a rack-mountable, production video recorder with extensive audio and video pro-

cessing capabilities. The foundation of the PIX 270i is hardware-based, 10-bit video up/down/cross

conversion, and hardware-based encoding to Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD codecs. These features

allow for fast, reliable acquisition of video (at any standard HD or SD resolution and frame rate) and

audio (up to 64 tracks from Analog, AES, HDMI, SDI, MADI, or Dante sources) to ready-for-edit,

industry standard QuickTime .mov ﬁles.

Files are recorded simultaneously on (up to) 4 separate, 2.5” SSD storage devices via two front panel

PIX-CADDY slots and two rear panel eSATAp connections. This redundancy in local, removable

storage devices, coupled with standard, Ethernet-based ﬁle transfer features further reduces steps in

the production workﬂow. Gigabit Ethernet network ports enable remote access to recorded ﬁles and

the ability to transfer them quickly into a post-production environment.

Full-featured precision timecode and sync reference I/O using Ambient Clockit core technology is

provided to allow tight synchronization with external equipment in complex multi-machine conﬁgu-

rations. The PIX 270i supports various external control options: RS-422, GPIO, SDI ﬂags, Timecode

triggering, and an embedded web server for network-based remote control. Network Grouping

functionality enables linked, frame-synchronized recording and playback of multiple PIX 270i units

connected to a standard Ethernet network.

This User Guide details installation and operation of the PIX 270i. This User Guide corresponds to

PIX 270i ﬁrmware version 2.10. User Guide revisions are released at the same time as ﬁrmware up-

dates and available online:

http://www.sounddevices.com/products/pix270i/downloads/

Manual Conventions

Several formatting features have been included to make navigating the guide easier.

• Physical buttons on the PIX 270i are represented with capital letters (REC button, MENU, etc).

All physical button names are detailed in the Panel Descriptions section.

• Button combinations are represented with the plus (+) symbol. For example: “Press LCD + AU-

DIO” means to ﬁrst hold down LCD, then press AUDIO, and ﬁnally release both buttons.

• Setup Menu items are indicated with this text: [Menu Category - Parameter], where the menu

category is one of the items in the list displayed when MENU is pushed, and the parameter is an

item in the list displayed when that category is selected (by pressing in on the Control Knob).

• Blue italicized text references sections of the user guide containing contextually relevant informa-

tion. When viewing this document on a computer, this text can be clicked to jump to the named

section.

Video Mode and Audio Mode

Throughout this User Guide, the terms Video Mode and Audio Mode will be used. The PIX 270i is

capable of recording video and audio together into a QuickTime .mov ﬁle (Video Mode) or record-

ing audio only to a .wav ﬁle (Audio Only Mode). The mode is determined by the Setup Menu option

[System - Video/Audio Mode]. When set to [Video + Audio (QuickTime), the PIX 270i is in Video

Mode. When set to Audio Only Poly (Wave) or Audio Only Mono (Wave) the PIX 270i is in Audio

Mode.