Overlay - avoiding the dreaded "black pause"
 

I have AspectHD, a Nvidia 7600GS, and "Enable overlay" checked in my CS3 Cineform projects to enable fullscreen monitoring on a secondary LCD-HDTV.

Everything works great .... except for the annoying 2sec black pause when moving between scrubbing and playback.

Can anyone recommend a cheapish (i.e. not Aja) graphics card/monitor combination that does NOT suffer from this pause?

[Note: this is a Cineform project issue - I realize it doesn't happen with native Premiere HDV projects.]

Cineform doesn't use the GPU for processing. It's a combination of CPU, disk speed and buss, etc. Hence with BOXX workstation with quad opteron 270s, I get the delay when using overlay preview to second monitor, and this is with an Nvidia Quadro FX 3450 SDI. However, I get almost no delay when editing from my Dell Lattitude laptop with duo core T7500, and it has an intel shared graphics chipset.

My old 3.0GHz dual xeon workstation at home is even slower, obviously with single core, 7505 socket and only 533 FSB. (Which is why I replaced the quadroFX card on that one with a $99 ATI game card, the cheaper card allows me to play new games in highest quality and my cineform edits do not suffer -because, again, the GPU is not a factor).

This is why you need an AJA solution, it's a dedicated pipe and cineform was written specifically to take advantage. It is instantaneous. Worth every penny.

Peter, I'm not trying to pick a fight, but it just seems to me that especially if someone has a fast new mb, with a fast quad, with a decent RAID...it would eliminate most of that advantage, would it not?

Not to mention getting fast renders in the bargain. I've been trying to listen and understand the real reasons why AJA's "solution" would make it worth our while in a non-SDI workflow.

Still looking for more on this...

My reason for posting is that some people have claimed have much less of a pause than others with non-Aja setups, and it would be good to hear what configurations they have to figure out what the main hardware factor is.

(I could be completely wrong on this, but it seems the resolution sent to the 2nd monitor when scrubbing and during playback differ - and vary depending on "interlace while scrubbing" and high/low resolution playback settings. So maybe the black pause is a function of the monitor having to change resolution?)

Sometimes the monitor is a factor, but it is mostly the video card (particularly NVidia is bad.) The Matrox Parahelia has the shortest switching time, although the black is still there. Only the AJA setup is seamless.

Matrox Apve
 

The matrox nails at at 1 sec on my system.

Got used to singing the song - "black is black..... while editing.

This is not surprising. We're dealing with compressed media, high quality media, but still compressed. Encoding/decoding this media is task done by the precessors. Want faster results, get faster processors.

I use a Sony LMD with HD-SDI input board. The monitor also has a PC input and I switch to that as my second PC monitor on the dual head. When I edit, I switch the LMD to the HD-SDI via AJA, it's a night and day difference.

However, if you have a strong graphics card (one that supports dual hardware overlay), you could just undock and drag the application preview monitor to the second display and stretch it out to fill as much of the screen as possible. Just as quick as the AJA, and avoid overlay switching altogether. Even with overlay, you're not getting correct colors anyway as they shift with some cards -which is reason #2 for why I use the AJA onto a studio grade monitor.

David, any progress on the usage of the Blackmagic cards?

In the past our answer to that question was always a bit vague, but I can confirm that we're actually working on it now. "Hopefully soon" is the best schedule you'll get out of us for now however....

David.

quote:
"Hopefully soon" is the best schedule you'll get out of us for now however....

Great news. I have a blackmagic card, and I am anxious.

David I can only hope/suggest that engineering codes something for some of us that only want to use the BM Intensity Pro card and it's Component Outs to monitor.

I don't have a monitor capable of HDMI only Component and I now own the BM Pro card that is useless to me right now. I'm using the Component outs on another useless card to me (Quadro FX1500) and I can preview but with the previously mentioned 2 second delay, I would just love to see the BM Pro deliver via Cineform in realtime without the delays.

That said I'm only hoping that when a release of Aspect comes out it includes a hook to push video to the Component out.

Keeping the faith!

Miguel