old 23" vs. new 23" cinema display?

dlang

dlang

Well-known member
I am looking into monitoring solutions and have had my eye on the Matrox MXO. I understand that most people who own it are using it with the ACD and getting good results.....So my question is will the older 23" ACD work identically as the newer ones. Is there any diffences outside of the casing being different? I ran up on a great deal for an older 23" acd and need to know if it would be a mistake buying it for this purpose. thanks in advance.

D
 
Shane, I bought an mxo last week for my Pal HVX, output to a 23" ACD.
This in itself was a revelation. I then went and bought a DVD recorder and a £100 CRT TV for a live downconvert to PAL on DVD (after spending many hours rezzing down my current 1080P project for a PAL preview), and also to see my picture/graphics on a cheapo interlaced TV as the other end of the quality scale.

My question regards the fidelity of this downconvert. I'm pretty sure the picture is spot-on, my concern is the sound as it comes from the line-out on the side of my MacBook Pro. Can I bypass the lineout and use SDI or other from the back of the mxo into the recorder (with appropiate connectors of course)? Will it be in sync with the down-converted picture?

My overall aim here is to rent a Digibeta linked via SDI for a day to do all my PAL converts together (7 hours total).

Is this all practical/possible/accurate?

This box has changed my workflow hugely in the last week, and PAL has just become instantly attainable from 1080P. Want a PAL rough cut Mr customer? No problem...
 
cool Shane thanks for the quick reply. Looks like the new one it is.....it'll look much better in the studio anyways(;
 
electricpig said:
My question regards the fidelity of this downconvert. I'm pretty sure the picture is spot-on, my concern is the sound as it comes from the line-out on the side of my MacBook Pro. Can I bypass the lineout and use SDI or other from the back of the mxo into the recorder (with appropiate connectors of course)? Will it be in sync with the down-converted picture?

Is this all practical/possible/accurate?
Click to expand...

I have no experiece outputting with this unit. I have only tested it for broadcast colors. If I had access to a deck or two I would test that.

But, you are asking if you can use the SDI or the RCA out of the MXO for audio? Of course. The headphone out of the laptop is only one option. The MXO also outputs audio embedded in the SDI and via the RCA jacks. So if you connect the MXO to a digibeta deck via SDI, then you are sending audio as well.
 
Shane, thanks for answering.

Does the multitrack audio for SDI come down the DVI or USB from the MacBook?aswell as from the headphone jack then? I'd understand if the audio jack from the mxo to Mac was optical, but it's a straight stereo jack.
I ask this because the audio I'm getting via the headphone suffers from background noise, and from my angle the headphone jack seems to be the only way the sound is getting from the MacBook Pro to the mxo. If it's via the DVI or USB for the SDI then that's fine.

Otherwise this is a showstopper for me as the audio has to be the highest standard possible for my DigiBeta downconvert - the original is 24-bit mixed, and there's no way any background noise will be tolerated.

I know you've not done any outputting, but I'm just trying to get answers and I've had nothing back from Matrox.
 
The audio being fed to the MXO is via the DVI connection. In the VIDEO/AUDIO settings in FCP, you can choose MATROX, in which case you need to then get your audio out of the MXO, or BUILT IN, which is the headphone jack on the laptop. The laptop jack audio will be of lower quality.

I believe that it support 8 channels of audio from the SDI...
 
When in Mastering mode and the Matrox MXO set for the audio playback, the audio will be sent across the DVI cable from the computer in to the MXO. From there it will goes out the RCA jacks and the SDI connection.

The mini-jack audio is used for Presentation mode.

When using the RCA or SDI connections for the audio in Mastering mode, there will be no background noise like you get when using the 1/8th mini-jack connection from the computer in Presentation mode.



cheers,

Joe



Joseph Trepanier
Product Specialist
Matrox Video Products Group
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top