How reliable is S-video out MacBookPro/FCP?
 

Hello all,

I was just wondering about the quality of the image that a MacbookPro sends out through the DVI when using Apple's S-video adapter... I need to color correct my film... I have a 17 inch MacbookPro and a calibrated NTSC monitor with SDI and S-video in and FCP 5.1.2.... I was thinking about color correcting in FCP while monitoring on the NTSC monitor using the S-video out through the adapter with FCP's Digital Cinema Desktop Preview function...

Will the colors and levels be accurate at all if I were to do this? Thoughts? Comments?

I know a pure SDI out to the NTSC monitor would be the way to go but I couldn't find a non-insanely expensive solution that would work with my MAcbook Pro....thanks in advance!

Mike

It isn't accurate enough. You need to go firewire out to a camera or deck, then from that into your monitor.

It looks really good but has enough color oddities that I wouldn't trust it.

Thanks a lot for the info..... I was just wondering... How reliable are the color bars in FCP 5? I'm preparing my film for its premiere at the Sundance film festival and I'm supposed to use SMPTE 240M pluge color bars...0 IRE something or other... So I found out the Adobe RGB colorsync profile is the same as SMPTE 240 so I guess I'll color correct on my Macbook Pro's LCD in conjunction with the S-video out to the NTSC and just hope for the best.

FCP color bars are acceptable color bars thru the FireWire out not the monitor out. Your color correction might just look fine the way you plan, as long as you are not worried that a particular color looks slightly different, violet looks purple, azure blue looks green. Things like that might happen. Also you might change the gamma in a way that doesn't work well on a NTSC monitor.

Just so you are warned.

You might try the Huey from Pantone to calibrate your LCD screen to print quality. However I found that the Huey worked better on my Viewsonic monitor which now looks the closest of any of my computer monitors to NTSC color.