View Full Version : Editing HDV in FCP5, Monitoring Solutions?


Eric Wotila
December 10th, 2005, 10:12 AM
I'm trying to figure out a way to properly hook up my HDTV (a Sanyo 30") to my G5 (Dual 2.5Ghz) as a monitor when editing HD.

The HDTV has HDMI input, so I currently have it hooked up to the G5 as the second monitor via a DVI > HDMI cable. This works fine when I set the resolution to 1280x720 (720p) - but if I try to set it at 1920x1080, the image on the HDTV starts to flicker. It's still viewable - it's not a rolling image or anything like that, but the frame rate is terrible and there's clearly something going on.

My bet is the G5 is outputting 1080p rather than 1080i - and since my TV doessn't support 1080p, I'm running into an issue.

I don't know if anyone might have any way around this (for the time being, I'm just monitoring in 720p) but I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance!

Boyd Ostroff
December 10th, 2005, 10:27 AM
I have a 22" Samsung LCD (native resolution is 1280x720)hooked up to the second DVI port on my G5. It works very well as a preview monitor in FCP 5 using the Digital Cinema Desktop feature.

I'm wondering about your TV.... when you say you set the resolution do you mean using the system preferences control panel, or are you setting something on the TV itself? I think you need to setup the Mac for the HDTV using its native pixel resolution (assuming it's a flat panel and not a CRT here). Look at the TV manual for info if you aren't sure.

The Digital Cinema Desktop feature of FCP will figure out how to properly scale the image at the monitor's full resolution then. Does the TV have a "computer monitor" mode as opposed to a "TV" mode? That's what I'm using on my LCD.

Eric Wotila
December 10th, 2005, 10:34 AM
I have a 22" Samsung LCD (native resolution is 1280x720)hooked up to the second DVI port on my G5. It works very well as a preview monitor in FCP 5 using the Digital Cinema Desktop feature.

I'm wondering about your TV.... when you say you set the resolution do you mean using the system preferences control panel, or are you setting something on the TV itself? I think you need to setup the Mac for the HDTV using its native pixel resolution (assuming it's a flat panel and not a CRT here). Look at the TV manual for info if you aren't sure.

The Digital Cinema Desktop feature of FCP will figure out how to properly scale the image at the monitor's full resolution then. Does the TV have a "computer monitor" mode as opposed to a "TV" mode? That's what I'm using on my LCD.

The monitor is actually a CRT.

When I set the resolution, I used the System Preferences control panel.

Hope that clears things up a bit :-)

Like I mentioned earlier, I think the key is to figure out how to send 1080i from the G5. (is that even possible?)

Fred Finn
December 10th, 2005, 10:44 AM
You can get a output card, it's what we use at work. It converts the signal to an interlaced signal so that it is actually HDTV. But i can't remeber at the moment what it's called. But i'm pretty sure it's from apple...