HD Monitor Pro

S

splicepictures

New member
From the Red Lightning site (http://www.hdmonitorpro.com):
"High Definition Support for HVX200. HD Monitor Pro will save you time, money, and headaches. By Capturing live HD video directly to your hard drive you will not need to worry about wasting time capturing your P2 cards or tapes, changing tapes every 60 minuets, tape drop outs, or wearing out the heads on your video camera.

Live on screen audio vu meters with support for all 4 audio channels in HD, with peak hold and clipping indicator will allow you to set the proper audio levels for issue free audio. On screen recording indicator will let you know when you are recording and a systems resource meter will warn you when your Mac can’t handle the load.

Keep your sanity by being able to quickly label, rate, name, denote scene/take, and add comments to each clip right after you finish recording each shot while it is fresh in your memory. Stop wasting time doing “Log and Capture” sessions in Final Cut Pro, HD Monitor Pro eliminates all that pain.

Save even more time by saving out a Final Cut Pro file for instant access to all your clips and their notes so you can immediately start editing."

I was doing a search and couldn't find anything here. Anyone tested it at NAB? How would the recording to MacBook work?
 
I had a quick play with the demo last night and first impressions are very good. I was using a Dual 2Ghz G5 with an ATI XT800 GC and the 1080 25p feed from the HVX200 was displayed very well. Not too much lag and very good resolution.

The recording feature is very good as there is a full clip management panel to rename and add metadata to clips post recording.

I tested it along side ScopeBox HD 1.1 and I do think HD Monitor has the edge in overlay performance and recording interface. However ScopeBox does include TC and reel names on the recorded clips.

I also noticed in HD Monitor, with the 1080 25p signal I recorded, when I imported them to FCP 5.1.4, a warning comes up saying the media has not been optimised for FCP and might result in lower than expected RT performance. This is the type of warning we used to see after FCP updates where Apple made changes to the way media is captured and stored to disk. Probably not too much of an issue, but should be addressed.

If they were to add various scopes, a TC window, TC in recorded clips, make the Audio Meters bigger (or customisable), allow us to change the background colour on fullscreen view to black and add full 720p support, this would be the best of the lot for HD monitoring on the Mac. Its also $200 cheaper than ScopeBox.

Finally the HD format support is currently limited; it only works with the HVX200 and only in 1080 - no 720p yet.
 
ill try out the demo when i get home. problem with these is that there has been lag , like in the other one, cant remember the name of it. but ya, its hard to pull focus when the screen is running a second behind and at 15fps
 
splicepictures said:
How would the recording to MacBook work?
Click to expand...

Not that great I would say since these types of apps usually need a powerful GPU and the MacBook only has a low'ish powered integrated Intel GPU. Try out the demo and see.
 
The key to these apps is to turn off the 'extra' features as much as possible. Things like Guides, calibration and zebras seriously effect performance. Clearly though its not much use if you can't use at least some of these all the time, like calibration and even the Flip functions.

I also noticed the Flip functions are not recorded into the clips, so even though you 35mm adapter setup will look good onscreen, the resulting recordings are still upside down - this needs to be fixed also.
 
Hi SplicePictures,

HD Monitor Pro runs great on any MacTel machine and recording 1080 works fine.

Cynic821,

We are running about 7 frames of Lag and while we are constantly striving to reduce the lag in future versions. I have no problem pulling focus with the lag, you just pull a little slower so you don't over shoot your mark.

Mark.burton,

There are no issues with having the extra features enabled as long as the Mac has Core Image support. We are not doing any 3D that requires a real video card, so the built in Intel video works fine.

As far as the flip, we record the signal as it is streamed from the camera and will not risk dropping frames to do it real time. The flipping feature is a real time effect in FCP and does not slow down editing.
 
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