Two basic lcd monitors and HD video monitor
 

First of all I'll have to say that this is really great forum. I have found lots of answers in here.

I found some topics considering this subject and I found all solutions what I have here from this forum, but now I wan't to know difference between them.

Mission:
Two monitors for timeline and tools and video output to hd-monitor.

Example two 20 inch basic lcd-monitors and one big enough but not too big 1080p lcd tv.

I've found three different low-cost solutions:

1) Matrox card:
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/cr...helia/apve.php

2) Some videocard and Blackmagick Intensity:
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

3) Two videocards.

Could anybody tell what is the difference between those? Ok, I'll now that with Intensity you can get also video input and with matrox there are quite much different video outputs and so on. But in this case when I have two lcd monitors and and hd-monitor?

I'm using Premier Pro and After Affects(CS3). And in the hd-monitor I should see only the video what I'm editing.

Wow lot's of great questions, I have the answer for one, the APVe card is a nice card, however I wasn't thrilled with the performance, it's only a 128m card in a world where 512m is becoming the norm. The card will output realtime previews to your HDTV using component outputs, while still delivering 2 full monitors, the issue (which really isn't) is that the card will only output to 2 monitors + HDTV using analog pc outputs, it will not deliver digital out + HDTV.

I have upgraded my APVe to the Quadro 1500 thinking that it would behave like the APVe and run 2 monitors + HD, it will NOT do this, the FX1500 will only drive 1 monitor + TV or 2 monitors but will run your monitors in digital mode with screaming results, it's a fast card with 256m of ram and I love the card but feel the vendor does not do enough to disclose it's limitations.

The 3rd option you had was the Blackmagic combo, I have heard that this is really the way to go, get the pro version with component out however, unless your TV has an HDMI in (mine does not). I have some money set aside for one of these and should have it in a few weeks but I think that someone will respond far earlier, hope it's positive cause I think this is a great way to go fo r the high end pro-sumer user.

The final option that you mention, dual video cards, it's more of a pain than it's worth, can be done but sometimes that 2 cards really like to fight and cause you more harm than good, I have stayed away from this solution for several years but ran it a long time ago, again works but finding the right combo may lead to early hair loss.

Best of luck,
Miguel

Miguel,

Question for you... What kind of performance differences are you measuring based on cards with 128Mb of RAM versus 512Mb of RAM or even 256Mb of RAM.

Jon

Jon I never did any actual benchmarking, the main thing is just the display refreshes much faster and seems to keep up more than the Parhelia ever did, the FX1400 also had some slow writes. What I see as different in the 1500 vs. the other 2 cards is that when using PPro in a dual monitor mode, it seemed to be sluggish, the screen writes were slow and in some cases you could watch ever little box in the software (effects, audio etc) draw. Now with the 1500, everything pops, I would love to have some actual benchmarking but that would have been a pain to do between inserting and removing cards on a production machine.