Cinema Desktop with FCP and HD TV
 

Hi all,

I am wanting to use Cinema Desktop for full frame monitoring with Final Cut on either a 32" HDTV or something like a Dell 20" widescreen monitor. (Main timeline will be on my Dell 24") Does anyone know if the Dell 20" computer monitor is better or worse than an HDTV? My understanding is that the HDTV will have less resolution but do they show color and motion better than the dell? I guess I am trying to determine whether a computer screen LCD is more or less desireable that an LCD made as a television.

Thanks,
Scott

Just realize that whatever you use as a monitor, Digital Cinema Desktop doesn't show the full quality HD image. Therefore I'm not sure it makes a lot of difference what you plug into it. I think that will be your bottleneck instead of screen refresh rates or resolution.

It doesn't show full resolution? Do you mean it doesn't show 1920x1080? It shows the max resolution I set for the screen doesn't it? Say 1600x1000 for the dell and maybe 1366x766 (I don't know the numbers) for the HDTV..? Or does it reduce the resolution more than that for use in cinema desktop?

Thanks,
Scott

Digital Cinema Desktop takes some decoding shortcuts with 1080i material, and doesn't show it at full resolution. The size of the frame it shows is 1920x1080, but the pixels carried within are...softer, I guess you would say?

DCD is generally only good for showing a big version of what you see in the canvas window. It's not color accurate, and sometimes, as with 1080i material, it's not full res either.

Crap....So even if I wanted to kinda fudge it with color correcting I'm screwed this way....Lame! So what is the best and cheapest way to view my HDV edits at close to full frame and somehwat color accurate for color correction? I am using Final Cut on a G5 powermac.

Thanks,
Scott

What about the Matrox MXO?


-A