Laptop monitoring solution?

[Troy Lamont]

A thought;

What about running the firewire connection to a capable laptop with at least a 1280X720 resolution monitor and a firewire input? Screen size would be at least 15" or 17" which would be great for focusing.

I don't have the JVC, but I've done this with my Sony TRV20. You connect the camcorder to the laptop and I have to launch the editing program to view the camcorder output in real time.

I think the same should work for the JVC. Anyone have a laptop and care to try it? If anyone wants to send me their HD10/HD1 I can check it out for you. :-)

HP has a nice little laptop on the PC side that should work nicely. It has a 17" widescreen 1400 X 900 res monitor with firewire built in. The model is the zd7010us.

I'm sure the Apple aficionados here with Powerbook G4s may be able to do the same as well.

Troy

[Rob Lohman]

Yes that quite possible at least on my XL1s. I shot around 25%
of my Lady X episode with my laptop connected. The XL1s only
outputs at SD so that's 720x576 for me at PAL. The main reason
I used it was to see what is going on in the area of the image
the viewfinder doesn't show. Also it was handy on some occasion
for checking light levels and focus.

[Alex Raskin]

1. The JVC's bundled software does *not* allow for monitoring the footage, only capturing TS files to the hard drive. Anybody knows of the PC-based alternative solutions that do real time video monitoring?

2. 17" is too small to see the difference between SD and HD. You can as well use a *SD video monitor* driven by the cam's S-Video output: real time monitoring, no problem.

In my opinion, if the monitor is less than 22", there is no visible difference between HD and SD, because pixels are simply situated too close together.

Different opinions backed by experience are welcome!

(Do I need new glasses? :)

[Ken Hodson]

Any update in regards to field monitoring with a laptop?
Has there been any development in software to make this happen?
Ken

[Troy Lamont]

Not that I'm aware of. In doing some additional research I came across a software package that JVC offers for a network digital camera via firewire, but I don't think it would support video. I've got an email into them to see. I'll post an update.

Does Cineform capture video or does it just import video thats already been imported?

What about Premiere Pro? Anyone use that?

Troy

[Ken Hodson]

I can't believe that with all of the advancements as far as editing HDV that no one has designed an app for video preview. It doesn't even have to record, just give an actual view of what would be recorded.
How about virtualDub in preview mode?
Ken

[Phil Wright]

Have patience. :) Connect HD and Aspect HD users will have ability to use their laptops as HD field monitors shortly.

[Heath McKnight]

Good points, Phil and Ken. I'm sure it will come soon.

heath

[Ken Hodson]

How do you know that Phil? I really hope this is the case. I figured if it was coming Mr. Newman would have posted.
Ken

[David Newman]

Phil is another engineer at CineForm. All the engineers at CineForm simple like creating HD tools, sometimes on the side. Phil is the developer responsible for this new tool, so he will post again when he has a beta release.

[Ken Hodson]

Oh that is great guys. I was hoping that was the case. It will effect our buying decision in regards to monitors, therefor I appreciate the forshadowing. We all want the most out of our budgets.
Ken

[John Hatchett]

If Cineform are developing a real-time, firewire connected, display program for a tabletpc, I am interested in that as a standalone program. Please enable a pen/button UI rather than requiring the keyboard.

If they want to add the option to capture to disk as well, so that I can turn my tabletpc into a 'firestore like device'. I would welcome that as well. Even if it requires an external 7200rpm drive on the USB2 or FW400 bus.

And if they are still looking for FEATURES to add ... an option for a 30 second lagged display. I video a lot of basketball and hooking up a computer and projector off the firewire bus to enhance the venue with an HD instant replay would be awesome!

[Phil Wright]

Ken - As David noted I'm working on simple utility to take the firewire feed from an HDV camera and display it in a window your PC desktop. Noticed the activity on the thread and figured why not. Should have a beta available to current customers in a day or two.

John - Thanks for the input. The program essentially has no UI as you just connect the camera, run the app and you get your video in a window. So it should work fine in a tabletpc environment IF the tablet PC can decode the HD MPEG-2 video in real-time. The spooling to disk is possible and whether it becomes a feature of this new program, of HDLink or both hasn't been decided yet. The delayed display of the firewire feed is more complex. We'll have to think about that a bit.

[Ken Hodson]

Are we talking the same level of CPU/FSB that is required for AspectHD, or would we be able to get away with a lower system for this preview stream?
Ken

[Phil Wright]

You need enough CPU/memory bandwith to decode and playback the full-res MPEG-2 stream.

Fairly straightforward test would be to load one of the M2T files that HDLink or the JVC capture utility can capture onto the system in question and play it back in MediaPlayer. Check your cpu load in Task Manager while it is playing. You'll want some breathing space so playback should be less than 90% load.

A 2GHz P4 with DDR seems to be about the minimum.