The iBook and Cinema Displays

J

Jofes6

Active member
My situation is, I have an iBook and would like to purchase a 23" or 30" Apple Cinema dispay for larger viewing area for editing and decent color correction. The problem is that the iBook and the Cinema Dispays are not compatible.

Is there any way to hook up a Cinema Display to an iBook? If not, what would be an alternate solution to find another 20"-30" monitor to hook up to my iBook for decent color correction?

Thanks
 
You would need to get a VGA to DVI converter and that'll bridge the signal between the two pieces.

Two things to note:

An iBook cannot drive a 30 inch cinema display at native resolution.

The VGA signal out of the iBook is analog, so you'll have to keep in mind that you'll need to accurately colour match the signal and that it will go out of phase over time.
 
The iBook is officially only able to support mirroring at it's native resolution which is 1024 x 768. Using screen spanning doctor I've been able to span a desktop to another monitor running at 1280 x 1024, but I'm not sure if it'll go any higher. There's also the matter than cinema displays are 16:10, not 4:3, and I don't know if the iBook would give you the correct 16:10 aspect resolution options.
 
I color corrected on my somewhat calibrated 65" television from which I went firewire from computer to camera and composite from camera to tv and it looked decent. I want something a little more reliable, like a production monitor that I can go from computer to camera via fire and from camera to production monitor using composite to BNC adapter. Do you know how well this might work?

Thanks
 
epplegacks is right, the iBook will not go any higher than 1280 x 1024 rez. If you hook it up to a larger monitor via converters, even to a 23" cinema display, it will look like crap. I've done so with some of my larger monitors, a 24" gateway and a 23" cinema, they will stretch the 1280 x 1024 pixels and blow them up to fill the screen. It gives no benefit whatsoever in regards to editing because you're not getting any more usable screen real estate with the larger screen.

How much are you looking to spend on a production monitor? Those can get pretty expensive for pro monitors. I think you'd be fine doing color correction on an apple 23" display, and if you're shooting with a DVX, even the 20" would be good. At best, sell your iBook and upgrade to a MacBook Pro and get a 20" cinema display. OR bring your iBook into an apple store and have them hook it up to a 20" display, see if there is a way to get rid of the stretching problem and get a 20" apple display. If you're shooting DVX only, there isn't a need for a 23 or 30 display and if you're running it off your iBook, the extra inches from the larger screens won't give you any more screen real estate.
 
I think the cinema displays are out of the question. Upgrading to a MacBook, unfortunately is also out of the question.

The closest Apple store from here is 5 hours. That's probably a good thing or else I'd spend every last penny I have.

I found a 17" JVC production monitor with 16:9, 4:3 option, blue gun, and underscan. I would like to know if it is worth it for 2 reasons: I need a larger viewing area just for editing and 2, I need something that I can achieve decent color correction.

The monitor I found is under $900 at B&H, and I am looking to spend no more than $1,000.

Thanks
 
So if you got this JVC monitor, your plan would be to run firewire out to the DVX, then video out via BNC to the monitor, right? You'd use your camera to bridge the monitor and ibook?

The only thing I'd worry about is perhaps a loss of quality with the output of the camera; converting the s-video to bnc. There might be some decay in the signal, I'm not sure if and how significant the decay might be.
 
Exactly. I can deal with a minor loss of resolution as long as I have a larger viewing area and better color correction reference. If the loss of resolution supercedes these abilities then I do not want to purchase one. I used this method with my 16:9 big screen and it worked great. Now Im just looking for something more accurate and something stationary in my edit bay, rather than unhooking all my equipment and trasferring to my living room.

Peace
 
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