Boyd,
Thanks for the reply. Once the footage has been captured and i am looking at it in the viewer or canvas, how accurate a picture do you think the mac screen is?
I shot some stuff with my new camera and was struggling with the viewfinder and its brightness settings, (The brightness dial is very loose and bumps easily....). When i viewed it back on a friends large LG plasma (not sure of res) it all looked over exposed, but, when i imported the footage into fcp5 it is fine. No where near as over exposed looking?
I guess what i want to know is how true a picture am i getting by what i'm looking at in fcp?
I guess thats a pretty in depth question, like how long is a piece of string.....
thanks.

I have a Sony Z1, but haven't upgraded to FCP 5 yet (soon :-) so I haven't been working with HDV. But my impression is that the canvas and digital desktop windows are not that great in FCP. They're fine for what they're intended to do, but they don't show full resolution. Also, I'd think HDV on even the fastest powerbook would involve some compromises.

Just the other day I was rearranging my studio, and I had been using my 22" Samsung HD LCD to edit widescreen PAL DV recently. Since I don't have a PAL monitor I was using it via FCP's digital cinema desktop and I thought i looked pretty good. Since I was starting an NTSC project I decided to hook it back up in my usual way, using firewire to send DV to my DVD recorder which outputs component video to the same screen. I did an A/B test, and the component video connection to the screen was much, much better quality.

"I guess thats a pretty in depth question, like how long is a piece of string....."

Hah, ha.... the way I recall the story, somebody asked Abraham Lincoln "how long should a man's legs be?" and he answered "long enough to reach the floor." ;-)

hd-sdi to Any LCD Monitor
 

A cheaper and larger monitor solution might be this hd-sdi to LCD Monitor adapter from blackmagic. Of course to me SD is good enough for stuff like feeding the Jib/Dolly operator with video. But for the Video Village this is better.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hdlink/

I know I'm a little late to this, but...

Those Dells you mention, I seem to recall someone talking about those having basically the same innards as the new Apple flat panel displays. Plus, I've used the Apple displays a ton, and they're near perfect. Sure, they're not completely color accurate out of the box, but that's where Blackmagic and such come in, with adaptors that'll allow you to show full HD res on these monitors, with reasonable color accuracy.

Here, read this:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage..._nattress.html

It isn't perfect, but it's not awful like you claim it is.

Oh, just realized that that box only works for HD-SDI. This page details a box that does it for component: http://www.adamwilt.com/HDV/hp2335.html#DVI

SD Options for monitoring
 

We just got our GY-HD100U and were at first considering using the ERG 8" monitors but ended up using the new Marshall V-R70P-HDA 7" which is actually pseudo VGA/HD at 800X480.

Yet it's 1/2 the price at $1400 and has all the option such as BNC component analog, S-vid and composite, bars generator, battery mount, aspect swtich and mounting plate.

At this small screen size, the HDV image looks awesome and it would be hard to discern any more detail unless you put your face up to the screen. It's really a nice montor for the price.

Dave Beaty