Monitoring in HD - FCP

D

drivinhard

Active member
We are going to be adding a 2nd FCP suite here at work. We'll likely be keeping our original suite for SD work, and the new suite for HD. We'll be getting a new MacPro tower (have an older G5 for the SD) and either two 23" Apple displays or one 30" for the new suite (I mention that as I don't know if using the DVI ports for those will affect my next question?).

What's the best way to monitor on an HD LCD or Plasma off the MacPro? We won't have an HD deck to run through (firewire) like we do on our SD suite.

We've got a few grand ($3500 maybe?) to spend on this, and am looking for the best way to do it (within budget), and also any HD monitor (LCD/Plasma, or CRT) recommendations.

TIA
 
If you don't need the ingest and/or up/down/cross conversation capabilities of an AJA card you can use the Matrox MXO and an Apple 23" display for budget level monitoring. Shane Ross has tested this combo out and says he can get it pretty close to his HD CRT b'cast monitor.

-A
 
Digital Cinema Desktop will only get you an inaccurate proxy though. Drivinhard, I would also say get 2 23" as opposed to one 30". If you are using the ACD as the computer monitor and HD monitor you can't do both at the same time (obviously). If you get 2 23s you can view HD on one and still work w/FCP on the other.

-A
 
Given the limited budget, the MXO and ACD would be your best bet. It would be better to get a Kona and HD CRT or HD LCD, but the monitor along would kill your $3500 budget...and that would be on the LOW END.

The MXO does a great job.
 
Digging up (my) old thread.

I've been buried in a project and am now just getting back into finishing the rest of this 2nd system.

I just realized last week (thanks to a local engineer at a production facility) that our old PVM-20L5 does HD over the component inputs(!) and apparently these things are actually more expensive than what we paid 2+ yrs ago for one ($3.2k or so?).

So I guess I'll stick with this for now, since I can easily toggle between HD and SD and run the AJA into this.

Anybody else using a PVM-20L5 to monitor HD? Good choice? I've always liked Sony's CRT production monitors, I just had no idea this one did HD.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top