Monitoring Options in Prospect HD
 

I've been forced to abandon my Xena LH card due to incompatibilities with my new computer system (it has no PCI-X slot and AJA will not swap it for a PCI-express version since it's 6 months old). I'm editing in PPro 2.0, AE 7.0, and Prospect HD full 1920 x 1080. I've got a dual LCD setup for editing, but no way to output to an external monitor at this time. What are other using? How about dual video cards? This material is not going to broadcast, but I still need a reliable monitoring solution.

Thanks.

Stuart

P.S. The Xena LH is for sale over in the classified section if you're interested.

Prospect will allow you to preview fullscreen on the secondary display monitor. I am not sure if that will extend to a third or fourth monitor on a second card. My solution for that was to buy a bigger monitor and drop the dual screens. My 30" has more pixels than my two old 20" LCDs combined, and can display 2K with room for tool bar UI around it, if desired. That frees up the secondary display port for a fullscreened video monitor. Admittedly the 30" LCD is not much cheaper than buying a new Xena card.

Hi Mike,

Which 30" display are you using? That's an interesting option if someone buys the Xena card - that will free up the cash to possibly invest in something like that. Right now I've got twp 21" LCDs and a 24" LCD. I could use the 30" for editing and the 24" for monitoring...

Mike, what video card do you use?

I have a somewhat equivalent configuration at a smaller scale (22" primary monitor and 19" secondary for monitoring) with Aspect HD and a plain GT7600 Nvidia card. Component out to the 19" works, but there's an annoying 1-2 sec delay each time I activate timeline playback in PPro CS3 before the image shows up on the 2nd monitor. Something I would like to avoid.

I have a Quadro3400, and am in the process of getting a GeForce8800GTX, but had to send one back because of serious overheating and crashing. The Quadro has been suitable for 2D work at 2560x1600. My Quadro is equivalent to the GeForce6800GTX. Any reason you are using component instead of VGA/DVI, or is it a broadcast CRT?

I have seen that delay on certain systems and not others, and have not been able to identify the cause. Some systems don't have any glitch, and work very smoothly.

As far as the Monitor, I have the Dell 3007FPW-HC, and it has been great, besides that is pushes my older games a bit over the edge to run at that resolution, regardless of the card. I have a Dell 24 as well, that I can use for fullscreen playout on the secondary DVI port if desired. So far it has spent 99% of its time connected to my 12" XPS notebook instead, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone with a small laptop.

Hmmmm. Well in part I suppose I thought sending component to an LCD HDTV would ensure that all the colorspace stuff would mimic what happens with eventual playback of the DVDs etc I produce. I've never been sure how VGA monitors handle SD vs. HD colorspaces.

EDIT: So I have tried connecting via my 7600GS and VGA just now and I'm...confused. The LCDTV is 1440x900 so that's the resolution I set in Windows. When I scrub my Cineform HDV timeline the image does fullscreen on the LCDTV but it tells me its rescaling to 1024x768. And when I play from the timeline it rescales to 1280x1024.

So I've guess I've found the source of my 2-sec lag - it's this constant rescaling behavior. But why THREE diferent resolutions? And is there a way to have it stick to 1440x900 in all modes?

EDIT2: OK so I see that "disable preview mode playback" alters the playback resolution, and "deinterlace while scrubbing" alters the scrubbing resolution. So connecting via VGA means the LCDTV has to keep switching its scaling, whereas when connecting via component it's the videocard that has to rescale everything to a 1080i signal output. Either way, for me, seems to produce the 2-second hesitation.