Re: Monitoring HD on HDV TV

Greetings. I recently viewed a tutorial on Youtube which showed how to connect an HDV TV Monitor 1920X1200 to a Mac Pro. Supposedly this would allow HD Monitoring from the FCP Time Line. It was pretty straight forward. It involved connecting an HDMI to DVI cable between the computer's video card and the monitor.

On the other hand, I also read an article on this site that suggested using a Matrox MXO. The Matrox solution is $950, while the HDV TV monitor and a HDMI to DVI cable solution is about $500.

My question. Is there a drawback to the latter solution?

AL

There are no "HDV" TV monitors. There are HDTV monitors, but none made specifically for monitoring the HDV video format. HDV is one of the consumer flavors of HDV.

If you connect and HDTV via the DVI out from your video card, you'lll merely be using the HDTV as a second Mac desktop. It will not dispaly in TV's gamma ranger or color space. The Matrox MXO allows for more accurate color and exposure monitoring of your FCP output when in Desktop Cinema Mode. But as I understand it, it only works properly with an Apple Cinema Display.

For truely accurate monitoring of your HD video program in FCP, you'd need a dedicated capture card such as those offered by AJA and Decklink (Black Magic Designs) along with a properly calibrated HDTV monitor.

-DH

Sorry. I meant to say HDTV. So David, you are saying that the Matrox solution does not provide "accurate" monitoring of an HD signal in FCP?

Flux,

No ... what I mean is that from what I've read and been told, the MXO is only accurate when used with an Apple Cinema Display - NOT when connected to a regular HDTV.


Ken,

There are many pro-LCD HD monitors available; you don't need or have to have a CRT anymore. The downside of pro-LCD monitors is that they are ridiculously priced. The decent ones start around $2400.00 and go up quickly from there. But these days you only need a pro monitor if you're going to broadcast. If you're not, a capture card connected to a good consumer LCD would suffice and be more accurate than using the MXO without an ACD.

-DH

Hi David,

Yes, here are different options and I agree that pro-LCD monitors are excessively expensive.

I already have two 23" ACD displays and no capture card, so the MXO is a good option for me.

If you have a capture card and no 23" ACD display, use the card.

The new MXO 2 has no ACD playback. It does have HDMI out, but for broadcast LCD TVs. The MXO 2 is around $1,500.00

Another option.

--ken

Hi Ken and David,

You can also use Black Magic's Intensity Pro Card around $349 which is much less than the MXO box, granted it is not broadcast accurate for color correction, but for most users should be fine. I bought one of these for monitoring purposes and it works fine. I see that you can also capture HDV via HDMI with the Intensity Pro Card but as I discovered through trial and error and the advice given on Ken's board, the best workflow for me is: Capture native HDV via firewire, then batch export to Apple Pro Res 422 (not HQ). That way I can keep my log and captured clips if I ever had to re edit; otherwise when you capture straight to Pro Res, it's capture only, which I don't like. It involves an extra step of batch exporting, but to me it's well worth that extra step.

Sorry if I went too much off topic!

Scott

I just put another video card in my Mac Pro with the hope of figuring out how to separate signals etc to a HD LCD monitor and projector.. I imagine mirroring is the only option, however I'm not there yet in figuring out how to divvy up the four outputs. My 1959 Bell & Howell 16mm still works though without a video card. Noisy aren't they!! I'm burning my first test HD DVD from Rick Young's paper.

Thanks again Ken,
John

You guys wouldn't know if that can be made to work with G5 PowerMac Dual 2.7 GHz would you? It seems to say only Intel systems, though someone said they had a quad PowerMac G5 that worked somehow.