Good video editing monitor to go with the af100.

[taras4444]

Sorry Shooter, I don't mind mods moving this to whereever is appropriate. The nle is adobe cs5.5 and my laptop is custom built, but pretty decent. I spoke to the builders and they assured me it's graphics card is good enough to output to one external monitor.

[TomLenham]

Matrox MX02 or BlackMagic Intensity Pro are simple in/out boxes - you can pay a lot more for ones that are more efficient and do more things, but if you simply want to send a signal out to your hdmi TV, then these work fine. They're needed because they take the programme out from your NLE and send it to the hdmi. If you just plugged in a hdmi TV as a second monitor, it wouldn't work the same way - it would stretch or replicate your screen rather than giving you a full screen view of your edit. cvp.co.uk sell them both.

The Matrox does work on macs, but other people may have not encountered the issue I have, which is this: I use Avid primarily, but also Premiere and After Effects (I know, I should move across to Premiere completely but I can't stop loving Avid!). The big problem is this - on a mac, Matrox have a driver for Avid that works fine. They also have a driver for CS5 that works fine. They DO NOT have a driver that works with both. If you want to go, say, from Avid to After Effects, you have to uninstalll one driver, reinstall another AND do a complete reinstall of After Effects for the driver to see it! I did tell Matrox that this was pretty ludicrous and they agreed. PC have a unified driver so it's not an issue of you're on Windows but on Mac it, for me at least, makes the Matrox unusable.

[Shooter]

Sorry Shooter, I don't mind mods moving this to whereever is appropriate. The nle is adobe cs5.5 and my laptop is custom built, but pretty decent. I spoke to the builders and they assured me it's graphics card is good enough to output to one external monitor.

CS5.5 will playout to a second monitor but I just dont know how one does that from a laptop.

Because..I guess you will only have one video out connection from the laptop. This I believe will only play out the same as what the laptop screen is displaying. ie it can display to a larger screen but it will only be a single.

Now..I have no idea what laptop connection you would use for the other 3rd party "box" solutions. ie Firewire, USB and how that will work for CS5.5

TIP ; Hover the cursor over the source or program monitor in CS5.5 and press the tilde key. "~" for a larger monitor screen

[taras4444]

Hey just been doing some initial research and found this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-U2312-W...31&s=computers Seems like it's often used for picture editing etc, so maybe the leap to editing video would be just as good. Any one used any of these? I was thinking initially about getting this perhaps and then maybe the matrox. One quick question, in regards to monitors and tv displays, they can play back both ntsc and pal generally fine right? (As I plan to be taking it around to both NTSC countries and PAL when filming with the af100.)

[Gary Askham]

The technology in a "video monitor" and a "computer monitor" are different. Although with the popularity of HDMI the lines are getting blurred.

As long as you are physically able to connect a second monitor to your laptop then it can be used as a desktop extension. And you can make your video playback fullscreen. But that doesn't make it a "video monitor".

An expensive video monitor is useless anyway unless it has been calibrated - our company pays someone hundreds of £££s every six months to calibrate our monitors.

A true video output from your NLE must be provided by some kind of video output device - a piece of kit (costing anywhere between £200 and £6000) connected via Firewire, Thunderbolt, Expresscard or PCI and designed to work specifically with your NLE. They can be made by Matrox, AJA, Blackmagic or Motu (there are maybe one or two other brands as well). They then connect to your decks and monitors via SDI or HDMI (or component or composite). They also feed the audio to your mixer and speakers and some have RS422 to remote control decks.

This being said - if you are not making content for broadcast television you may be able to get away without a true video monitor - you wouldn't be the first one.

[Bruce Watson]

...in regards to monitors and tv displays, they can play back both ntsc and pal generally fine right?

Um... no.

Very few computer monitors can display in Rec.709 (HD) or even Rec.601 (SD). The closest you can get with a computer monitor is generally sRGB. That Dell monitor can show you "purdy pictures" but it's not a TV and isn't going to respond like one.

[taras4444]

CHeers for the info, and so your saying the dell doesnt display hd? Even though it lists it on the product page :S

[taras4444]

Did some further research and also potentially looking at the samsung p2270 tv screen/monitor

[taras4444]

Hey been looking at the matrox M02 mini some more, customer opinion on most sites seems divided. Many swear by it and others claim it doesn't often work. Just wanted to ask, to use it with a laptop and windows 7, do you need an "express card"? I see this mentioned a lot with mac users but any one use the marox M02 mini straight out of the box with their pc laptop? Also a lot of people discuss it as being handy to encode your work, do any owners use it to create their final project/files as opposed to using adobe premiere export? Thanks as always, it's a little confusing!

[taras4444]

Can anyone answer the matrox question? Still been researching and cant seem to find a definitive answer.