Low-Cost HDV video monitor solution for FCP?
 

DVI Monitor Option

I currently have a G5 2.7 with the Ultra6800 card going out to 2 23" Cinema displays. I use one for monitoring and one for editing. I was thinking about trying the following:

Adding the following card to an avalible PCI slot (Radeon 9200 Mac Edition - $128 through MacMall) which offers DVI output, and connecting that to an HD video monitor (Advent 30" HD-Ready Flat-Tube TV with DVI input - $459 through Best Buy) via DVI. Would FCP5 allow me to output the "Digital Cinema Desktop" video stream to this CRT monitor via DVI?

Any comments or solutions would be greatly appreciated.

PS:I had already posted this at the end of a previous thread, but I did not get a response, so I am started a new one.....

Yes, but it won't be good enough for colour correction. Digital Cinema Desktop is not accurate enough for colour correction and who knows what this TV does to an incoming DVI signal.

Here is my argument (probably faulty) for why analog monitoring was needed for DV. The end product would be shown coming from an analog signal and a preview was needed to see that analog signal, the desktop display, not being analog was not an accurate representation of the final product. Now that things are becoming increasingly digital having an analog display seems outmoded. I would like to hear a convincing argument why the "Digital Cinema Desktop" will not give an accurate color representation of HDV if the end result will be delivered digitally.

A broadcast monitor has a well defined white point, gamma curve and colour space. A computer monitor has none. Gamma curve and white point are variable. They can be set while calibrating the monitor. The colour space of a computer monitor is sRGB while HDV's colour space is ITU 709. Since Digital Cinema Desktop doesn't bother with gamma correction nor white point correction, it is worthless for colour correction.

Analog has nothing to do with it. Reliable monitoring with repeatable and reproducible results does. You can see the difference between Digital Cinema Desktop and a better solution at the end of Graeme Nattress' review of some BlackMagic Design hardware: http://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_decklink.html

For the benefit of those who have a similar issue on the PC platform, take a look at the various options which Canopus offers:

http://www.canopus.com/US/products/E...ison_chart.htm

People who are using the Canopus HD cards seem to be pretty happy with them, but note that they require a workstation motherboard with PCI-X slots (not PCI-Express) to function properly.

There are HDTV televisions that have DVI or HDMI in and let you set the gamma curve and white point (I don't know if the Advent is one of them).
What would be the shortcomings of putting color bars on a HDV timeline, and color calibrating the monitor from the DVI out /Digital Cinema Desktop?