Infrastructure​

Excuse my ignorance on the topic. I come from the world of little metal box converters with DC wall warts 😀. However, there are too many of them now mounted in the back of racks, so considering an upgrade…

The primary application is live concert production and the converters are mainly SDI to fiber, then some SDI to HDMI, and vice versa. Sending cameras from stage to FOH over a fiber trunk, then returning switcher output to stage to feed projectors or video wall (some requiring HDMI, some can take SDI straight from the fiber converter).

My question is, if I buy a frame for stage, and another for FOH, do I need to provide Ref In on both ends? I would populate it with 2 way fiber cards for camera send and pgm return (which I believe provides ref for the Blackmagic cameras from the ATEM switcher on the return, along with tally, intercom, etc), as well as a few fiber TX cards at FOH to feed stage displays, and then some SDI to HDMI cards for format conversion on stage. 

In converter box world, none of this requires a ref in. Does that mean I can just ignore the ref cards on the openGear frame for these types of cards? If so, what cards would typically require it?

If ref is required, I can provide ref at the switcher end, not a problem, but how would I get it to the stage frame? Do I have to find a card that can send ref from FOH over fiber?

Thanks