SD monitor on HVX

To use any high-def camera you'd obviously want/need a high-def monitor. I wouldn't say it's an absolute necessity; there are many things being shot on SD cameras without monitors every day. We were able to get some pretty nice-looking HVX shots without having access to any type of monitor.

But if you're going to get a monitor, you would be doing yourself a favor to get a high-def one.

Ask Jay and Rush about the Marshall -- I didn't use it, but they both seem very happy with the small Marshall 800x480 LCD that can be even mounted on-camera.
 
Well basically what i mean is, people have bin monitoring 35mm cams with SD monitors for years. Would an SD monitor display the HD the image in SD? If yes, maybe that would be ok than as that means your footage would just be a little sharper and better, similar to film. Ore would there be a huge discrepancy in terms of color and image quality?
 
To add on to this

To add on to this

I agree with Barry. I have been using my Sony 8" NTSC broadcast monitors to shoot with the Z1 and it is VERY difficult to judge focus. What looks sharp enough on the SD monitor looks pretty soft when viewed in HD.

Acquiring an HD field monitor is first on my list as soon as our HVX-200s arrive.

Best,

Dan
 
People have been monitoring video assist on 35mm, yes. But that's only for general playback, that's not in any way used for focus or color or anything like that.

You can use an SD monitor with the HVX, but you'll only be seeing an SD image. The HD frame has 4x as many pixels, as well as a different color space.

If you're gonna go HD, you should go HD.
 
Barry, please explain:

My laptop monitor is 1680X1050 (16:9) Do I need to buy an external HD monitor for monitoring, editing and color correcting or I am just fine with what I have? Actually I apreciate if you explain the differenses between HD and SD monitors because me and a lot of people are obviously missing something here. Thanks in advance.
 
There's no way to use your laptop as a monitor with HD yet, as far as I know, unless you're doing live streaming to it via firewire (and even then, most capture programs don't display the footage fullscreen in realtime). What you'd need is an HD version of the Rack software, which isn't availalble yet.

Also, keep in mind that your screen is smaller than 1920x1080, so you'll have to downsample to see your 1080 footage. 720 footage should look fine.
 
If you had some sort of viewing application on your laptop, it would most likely work very well as a monitor for focus (at least). But, I am not aware of such an application that allows realtime capture and realtime frame display rate on a laptop yet. Even HDV Rack requires a very fast computer to display full-screen full-frame-rate.

HD and SD monitors differ in a few ways; SD monitors have historically been CRTs, for one; HD monitors are rarely CRTs. SD monitors display a standard-def image which needs to only resolve an area (in terms of pixels) of around 720 x 480; an HD image needs to resolve at least 1280x720, if not 1920x1080, so an HD monitor should ideally need to be three to six times sharper than an SD monitor would need to be.

SD monitors frequently only include composite and s-video connections, although more and more we're seeing component connections too. HD monitors always include component connections and frequently include HD-SDI.

HD uses a different colorspace (709 vs. 601) as well.

High-def is high-definition. It's not NTSC, it's not PAL, it's something entirely different. If you want to properly monitor high-def, you need a high-def monitor.
 
Thanks Barry. I need a HD monitor for monitoring, pluged directly to the camera, I get that now. But I dont get (probably my English isnt helping) about the diferent color space and about the full-screen full-frame-rate. Are you saying that I cannot playback 1080i25p footage that is stored in a firewire hard disk in to my laptops 1680X1050 lcd screen? And about the color space, isnt my screen high definition enought :) whats with the color space? An external HD screen will do for color corecting (proper color space) and not the one my laptop has ? Please explain and have pation with me. Thanks again.
 
Dear Andreas,

You can watch the 1080 footage on your laptop after it's been captured just fine. To watch it fullscreen, however, it will not be at full resolution as it will be resized smaller to fit the native resolution of your monitor.

If you want to monitor your HD footage in the field, you really need an HD monitor like Barry said. Unfortunately, the true professional ones start at $3,000 and even those don't have native 1080 resolutions. I don't understand it myself; I think it's pretty ridiculous. Money was an issue for me, so I ended up going with one of the Dell 2405FPW monitors. It's meant to be a computer monitor, but it's got component inputs and full 1920x1200 resolution. So far, it looks great; I'm still waiting for my HVX to see how the component HD input looks (SD through the inputs looks like total crap). They're still on sale at Dell (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=24053YR&category_id=4009) until the 18th. I guess they are also offering free shipping right now for an even cheaper price. At $879, you're not going to find a much better solution than that... and it's huge, too. Good luck!
 
Haakon,
Are you able to set your color bars with that Dell monitor?
Another words, does it have "Phase", "Chroma", "Blue only" etc...?
thanks
-C
 
Can someone tell me a specific HD monitor for a start, so I can read specs or something ? My question about color corecting never gets an answer. I feel bad having to ask again and again but it is crusial to me cause money is an issue for me to and I need to know if I will be able to color corect just using a PC. Again, whats with the diferent color space ?
 
Haakon said:
There's no way to use your laptop as a monitor with HD yet, as far as I know, unless you're doing live streaming to it via firewire (and even then, most capture programs don't display the footage fullscreen in realtime). What you'd need is an HD version of the Rack software, which isn't availalble yet.
Click to expand...

FCP throws up a full-size (though not, it seems, full-res) image during capture. However, I have no HD camera, and don't know what it does when the image size is actually larger than the screen size. Has anyone tried capturing HD to FCP using, say, a 12" powerbook? What's displayed during capture?
 
crs127 said:
Haakon,
Are you able to set your color bars with that Dell monitor?
Another words, does it have "Phase", "Chroma", "Blue only" etc...?
thanks
-C
Click to expand...
No, it's not a production monitor - it's really just a computer monitor that happens to have way better resolution than almost any of the production monitors (certainly in this price range), and it's huge, so there's no questions as to what you're seeing.

Of course I would absolutely love those things to be able to control color correctly (which is what a lot of people use their monitors for). With the HVX, however, I needed something that could accurately display focus (focusing off of the LCD screen - even with focus assist - doesn't feel safe enough for me), and something that the director can use to see the actual resolution of the shot, as well as judge composition, DOF, and the like.

Make no mistake; the Dell is not a production monitor. But at $800, it's far and away the best solution you can hope for... and with 1920x1200 resolution, it's one of the only solutions right now that will even let you see your 1080 HD footage how it was meant to be displayed.

It's also a kick butt computer monitor when I'm not in the field. :)
 
Someone, please, specify the HD monitor that does all the job (field monitor, color corecting, make coffee etc :) ) , whatever the price...
 
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