Signal converter to play various formats from the 200 to an external monitor?

M

Mabou

Active member
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular]Hi all,
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I have a SmallHD AC7-LCD HDMI monitor connected to the DVX200. The DVX-200 has many video formats that the SmallHD monitor does not recognize (so I get no video in the SmallHD). Can you suggest a converter that I can buy to take the signal from the DVX and get it to play on my SmallHD monitor?

Thanks a bunch,
Matt
 
I have that same monitor. I haven't tried it yet on my DVX200 but I don't see any reason as to why it shouldn't work. I think the camera can down convert to play on a 1080 monitor. I have my camera with me but I don't have my monitor. I'll test this out on Monday when they are both together and report back. You may have to go into the camera's OUTPUT SETUP and RESOLUTION and make a change there. That's if I understand what that does correctly. The default is SYSTEM so if you're shooting at 4K and trying to use a 1080 monitor that won't jive. Maybe switch that to 1080i or p and see what happens.
 
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Hey Mapper,
You were absolutely right, but this is a mixed blessing.

The Good:
By changing the OUTPUT SETUP -> RESOLUTION to 1080P (instead of the default "SYSTEM"), every recording format (from 1080 to 4k) successfully outputs a signal to a my HD external monitor. Nice to be able to finally use my monitor while shooting in 4k or many of the variants (including some 1080) where the Small HD would not recognize the incoming signal.

The Not As Good:
As soon as you switch out of shooting 1080 (to UHD or 4K), you lose the OSD to the external monitor. So you can see the video on the external monitor, but the camera no longer sends out the overlay of information. You are also not able to view any focus assist, WFM, etc on the external monitor, just the straight-up video signal.

Other Findings:
Once you have changed your OUTPUT SETUP -> RESOLUTION from SYSTEM to 1080 and are shooting in a format other than 1080, if you go to the "DISP SETUP" menu the "Video Out OSD" menu item is automatically set to OFF and is greyed out. There is no way to turn on the information overlay when shooting in anything but 1080.

The nice thing is, if you change your recording format back to 1080, the OSD automatically reappears. No need to go back to the OUTPUT SETUP and set it back to SYSTEM to see the OSD.

So, a mixed blessing, Yes, we get to use the external monitor when shooting in other formats than 1080, but we lose our OSD.
 
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Mabou said:
Hey Mapper,
You were absolutely right, but this is a mixed blessing.

The Good:
By changing the OUTPUT SETUP -> RESOLUTION to 1080P (instead of the default "SYSTEM"), every recording format (from 1080 to 4k) successfully outputs a signal to a my HD external monitor. Nice to be able to finally use my monitor while shooting in 4k or many of the variants (including some 1080) where the Small HD would not recognize the incoming signal.

The Not As Good:
As soon as you switch out of shooting 1080 (to UHD or 4K), you lose the OSD to the external monitor. So you can see the video on the external monitor, but the camera no longer sends out the overlay of information. You are also not able to view any focus assist, WFM, etc on the external monitor, just the straight-up video signal.

Other Findings:
Once you have changed your OUTPUT SETUP -> RESOLUTION from SYSTEM to 1080 and are shooting in a format other than 1080, if you go to the "DISP SETUP" menu the "Video Out OSD" menu item is automatically set to OFF and is greyed out. There is no way to turn on the information overlay when shooting in anything but 1080.

The nice thing is, if you change your recording format back to 1080, the OSD automatically reappears. No need to go back to the OUTPUT SETUP and set it back to SYSTEM to see the OSD.

So, a mixed blessing, Yes, we get to use the external monitor when shooting in other formats than 1080, but we lose our OSD.
Click to expand...

Thanks for trying that out. At least I know what to expect when I finally connect up my Small HD monitor. My guess is that it's a processing issue when it comes to outputting 4K to the onboard monitor and displaying the additional data to the external monitor much like not being able to display the waveform and additional text data at the same time.

I think most people are under the impression that the waveform just magically appears and they don't really understand how processor intensive that is. It's processing the video that the camera is recording and analyzing it at the same time. In higher priced cameras I think it's easily justified by most manufacturers to size the processor to be able to multi task properly and most larger cameras are using batteries that are able to support the demands of that kind of processing.

I think with the feature set that they have provided on the DVX200, we're pretty lucky that we have most of the stuff that we do, all while at a fairly reasonable price point. It's a little unfortunate that we couldn't get some of this stuff combined but it may have pushed the price point they were going for. The DVX300 or whatever it will be called next will probably have these minor shortcomings resolved. Processing keeps getting cheaper and more efficient and more efficient processing lowers power demands.
 
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