Video card for Cineform

[tomk358]

I bought a PNY Quadro FX 1500 video card for use with my Premiere Pro/Cineform edit system.

Unfortunately, I have yet to successfully play video out the TV breakout box. It seems like it is a driver issue, as the TV will show windows desktop fine, but when I play video files, the screen goes black.

Has Cineform tested this card? What driver do they suggest?

I'm pretty pissed off at PNY, after talking a tech support person twice today, I've learned nothing, and he basically told me that I'm on my own. So much for 'support'


-Tom

[David Newman]

Unfortnately there are too many cards for CineForm to test and we don't have any Quadro FX 1500s, but 99.9% can be made to work. You might get better help form PNY support if you say you are using Media Player (rather than a fancy editing tool, which they don't want to here about.) If you are playing a video clip through MediaPlayer the overlay should be able to run on the second monitor or TV output with the card setup correctly. Aspect HD uses the same mechanism.

[THoff]

I think it's a problem with how your video card is configured.

If you are seeing the desktop on your TV, your card is probably set up for Clone mode where the primary display and the TV Out display the same thing (albeit scaled down).

You'll want to change the display configuration and put the card into single-display mode, and assign the TV Out to your second display.

[tomk358]

After spending the greater part of yesterday on this problem, I was finally able to fix it. Turns out the driver that Nvidia currently offers for download as the newest is 91.36, but I wasn't having any luck with it. I then noticed that before you choose your specific operating system on the nvidia downloads page, you can scroll down to see which drivers various software/hardware company support. I was dismayed to find that Adobe only supports v77 driver- which doesn't work with the Quadro FX1500. Then I saw that Boxx supports 84.26 which (according to nvidia's release notes) SHOULD work, but when I tried it, it wouldn't install- says my card isn't compatible.

This entire time I had been on and off the phone with the same guy at PNY- I was testing with both windows media player, and premiere pro, but just told him about WMP as it simplified things. He kept having me do things like "try another TV" or "Try composite video out instead of component or S-video" It was driving me nuts, because I clearly understood the problem was driver related, and he refused to entertain the notion.

After the PNY guy gave up, I went back and found a driver 91.47 at the very bottom of the page. It's not a beta driver, yet for some reason nvidia doesn't list it for my card. PNY didn't know anything about it. nvidia only supports the drivers (via email) PNY only supports the cards, so that would explain why PNY tech support was so useless.

Well, to make a long story short, it works- mostly.
When I play a video clip in WMP it looks good, but places it 1/3 up the screen. (also note, the FX1500 thinks all TVs are 16x9, fortunately I have a sony produciton monitor that is switchable). The edges are right on, and even adjustable in the nvidia control panel.

Now when I'm in Ppro w/ a cineform project, the video overlay comes out like it's in underscan- there is a black boarder around it. the nvidia control panel seems to have no effect on this overlay, it's like it uses some other method of accessing the video overlay than windows media player. It does come out centered, and looks pretty good, so I'm satisifed for now. Still a little miffed, as I was hoping for better results. Maybe should have gone with the Matrox APVe instead.

-Tom

P.S. THoff, I went though all the various choices for the video card configuration. The only time I could get the overlay to work was in Clone or Dual Head mode. I'm going with clone so at least I don't have windows opening up on the TV screen side of things. If I set it to single display then the nvidia driver doesn't see the TV at all, and can't send the video overlay to it.