Hi All,

I have a new Intel Mac Pro and the latest version of FCP. I'm using a Canon XHA1 HD camera and would like to buy something that would allow me to preview my HD timeline real time (primarily for use in color correcting) with my HD monitor. I was considering a Matrox MXO (I don't have a mac laptop so the portability doesn't matter to me) but then I came across some posts on the boards about the Blackmagic Intensity card, which is less than half the price! Would this card allow me to do color correcting and editing in HD on my external monitor?

Thanks!
Luke

The Matrox unit is great for monitoring and all but the most precision color correcting. It's drivers even route audio out of your DVI port so the audio plays in sync with the video on external monitoring. It also converts the RGB to YUV color space for accurate monitoring on the Apple Cinema Display.

-gb-

With the exception of possibly the synced audio, wouldn't the Blackmagic card do that as well?

if you have an HD reference monitor then you can use any compatible HD I/O card.

if you only have an SD reference monitor then you can use any HD I/O card that downconverts on the fly (but your color correction will only be good for SD delivery as you will not have corrected in the true HD colorspace)

if you want to color correct in the true HD colorspace on an Apple 20" or 23" cinema display (or a Dell or similar) then you need the MXO. That is the only option which can provide a color accurate representation for critical correction to such a monitor.

Thanks for the info. I actually have an extrnal HD CRT monitor that I'll be using. So it sounds like there's no reason to get the MXO over the blackmagic for my needs?

Is it a standard definition monitor? According to info in another thread, the newest version of FCP can downconvert HDV to DV on the fly and send it over firewire. If so, and if you're using an SD monitor, you could use any regular DV firewire device like a camcorder or cheap convertor box to drive the monitor.

It's an HD monitor.

It's an HD monitor.

Component inputs, HDMI or HD-SDI inputs?

If you have HDMI, then you could buy a simple DVI-D to HDMI adapter for $15 and use the second output of your video card.

In FCP choose "Desktop Video Preview - FULL" as your monitor.

You can then adjust the gamma and color with colorsync.

I've been doing something similar with my broadcast 17" HD monitor (with HD-SDI) and a Convergent-Design HDConnect MI to convert the DVI-D, to HDMI output of a Macbook Pro to HD-SDI. It works very well.

It has HDMI and Component. As far as the DVI-D to HDMI adapter, my understanding was that it wasn't suited to color correction.