Video out from ProTools to HDMI LCD panel/projector...

[grimepoch]

What is a good way to get video out of ProTools to an LCD television?

Right now I have my video card full, running 2 LCD screens. I am aware I could put in another video card, but I also read about people using other hardware to get the video out, I am assuming through firewire?

Thoughts?

Analog or Digital. I'd LIKE digital, but at this point, I'd like to see what others do.

Rick
Asylum Studio Productions

[surflounge]

two of the best for Mac:

Blackmagic Design

AJA Video - Serial Digital Video Interface and Conversion

[Elephant_Talk]

You could use the Canopus advc110, which connects to your computer via firewire. I'm not sure how pro is this option, but at least it has been tested by Digidesign.


Regards,


Andres Montana.

[Buzge]

Originally Posted by grimepoch

What is a good way to get video out of ProTools to an LCD television?

Right now I have my video card full, running 2 LCD screens. I am aware I could put in another video card, but I also read about people using other hardware to get the video out, I am assuming through firewire?

Thoughts?

Analog or Digital. I'd LIKE digital, but at this point, I'd like to see what others do.

Rick
Asylum Studio Productions

hi

i assume you want 'video out' , not 'third desktop'. The easiest way is to go with firewire>analog video converter, and to any screen. Most spreaded box is Canopus ADVC 100, 110.... you have other compatible boxes on Digi's site, check it out, and after plugging the box (no drivers needed), just tick the 'DV playback out Firewire' in ProTools, and off you go just don't be confused, you'll notice a little delay soundwise (sound-to-picture). that's the time needed for converter do do D/A job, so You must enter an delay value to compensate for that. I think that's mine set to 36 or 40ms. After that, everything's OK

ciao

[grimepoch]

Please excuse my ignorance, but would I use something like the Intensity Pro from Blackmagic design?

Does it act like a video card or will ProTools see it as an output device?

I notice it does not do 1080p or other frame rates than 50, 59.94, 25 or 29.97. What happens when you are editing for video at a different frame rate?

Thanks so much for your help!

Rick
Asylum Studio Productions

[grimepoch]

Thanks for the info! One thing I see is that none of the canopus boxes do HDMI.

Is it worth going digital?
Is my LE system going so suffer if I am sending out HD instead of something smaller?
Does PT LE down convert or do I need to re-encode the video for whatever the device supports?

I imagine doing everything in Motion JPEG-B is the best for the processors.

[hummer]

Blackmagic HD Extreme will be officially supported by PT V8 as a video output device, performing similarly to the Aurora cards that posters adored in the past.

It has HDMI and SDI I/O.

Cheers.

[soundguydave]

HD would be nice, but if your work flow is anything like mine, getting HD video from the editors would be next to impossible. Most of the time you're forwarded a mpeg quicktime minutes before the session, in which case, who cares analog or digital. Also, HD video will tax your computer a lot more, I would only use it if I had some virtual VTR system running. If you do go digital though, remember long HDMI cable runs can be expensive and anything over 100' will probably require an amp. I bought a 75' HDMI cable from monoprice for pretty cheap and it works well.

[grimepoch]

Some stuff I get as you mention, some stuff I get the actual final cut project. I don't have a problem down rezing it myself for whatever I need.

I'll probably start with the canopas because it's not that much and keep the other one in mind (blackmagic) as I move forward!

[dmitri]

You can also check a digital but cheap way: feed the projector through HDMI cable from one output of your graphics adapter, and split the other output to two monitors by Matrox Triple head to go box (it has both DVI inputs and outputs). I'm going to check this setup within a month. If I had a spare thousand, I would choose Blackmagic HD Extreme, but I spent everything on D-command and Cedar DNS.

[grimepoch]

For me I am running a 30" mac display off of one of the outputs, can't get much bigger than that probably with the triple head. I've been looking at that for other things, but in this case, my graphics card is pretty maxed out.

I looked at the CEDAR gear...wow! CANNOT imagine the cost on those pieces, but I am SURE they are priceless. I had some ADR on the last movie I did that I used WaveArts Restoration Suite to clean up, worked well for many of the pieces. However, there were some tricky ones that no matter what I tried, I could NOT separate the noise from the material.

Will keep that in mind.

[Geert van den Berg]

Keep in mind that if you go the 'DV out of firewire' route with a Canopus, you have to convert all material you want to work with into DV.

Depending on how much material that is, this might or might not be a problem (at our facility we're converting a large number of videofiles each day), but if you'd connect the 3rd screen as a 3rd desktop you can play any material directly that is supported by the quicktime codecs installed on your machine.

We use the Canopus and it works well, though we're currently doing a project where playback of the delivered Mpeg directly would have been handier. Also the files are bigger after conversion using more disk space.

As been commented earlier make sure the playback offset is set correctly when dubbing, otherwise everyhing you do is out of sync.

[grimepoch]

That's a very valid point, about converting. I'm going to have to think about it some more.

My real biggest concern is load. The more video I have going out, the more load the system is gonna get hit with, so I want to balance quality with quantity if you will. I am using an LE system and not a HD system, but I do have 4 processors.

Right now I am already running 2 big LCD screens and I have 2 UAD-1 cards in my system. This is why I am a little hesitant to go the PCIe way. That said, I have a lot of firewire devices too on my system. I've got a six one way, half a dozen the other situation.

I've done the monitor thing, in terms of just running the video on an external monitor. I'm always making it bigger to fill the screen and I am SURE I am getting a processor hit for that (as it is scaling it).

So in thinking about where to spend the money. I want the video to be decent, but it doesn't have to be amazing. I am thinking of just getting a 37" 720p LCD television which go for around $700 and then just hooking the canopus up to it. I wrote blackmagic with a few questions about their new unit as well.

With this if I decide the canopus is not sufficient, I can still upgrade to something else later. Or, use both depending on the circumstance since the LCD has multiple inputs already.

[Kuba_Pietrzak]

Using an DVI port from the mac, which would feed a video signal into Plasma/LCD/Projector is the simplest method, which comes to my mind too.
Question is, if you could rely on this solution, when the sync issue comes in. And I do not mean the Plasma/LCD/Projector delay, which can be easily check with Syncheck, but things like QT start error and continuity issues with larger tracks' number. When it comes to spot adr, there is a need for 100% tight sync, in order to be sure, if a particular line is in sync or not...

This is just a question, if any of you tested this method and perhaps could say something about it...

regards,
Kuba

[mondojml]

Do the Blackmagic cards actually do the heavy lifting and take the load off of my CPU?

We were running a DVI to HDMI cable from our second monitor port out to a 72" Toshiba but we found that the Mac Pro was hiccuping when using HD content and a massive film session. We eventually switched to Canopus and are very happy with the results. Not HD, but oh well.

[grimepoch]

I think that is a very very important question. If they respond to me, I'll ask. Just out of curiosity, when you switched to the Canopus, you then had to re-encode for DV resolution right?

[mondojml]

Most of the stuff we get is already in DV so it isn't much of an issue but there is the occasional QT that we have to transcode, yes. We have Mac Pro's is the main rooms and I am doing my editing and transcoding on a 2.8GHz iMac and it doesn't take much time to do the conversions when we need to.

[Kuba_Pietrzak]

Can you really rely on DVI->HDMI setup in term of sync?
I'm asking this question, because I am really wonder...

Kuba

[soundguydave]

Sure, its essentially the same digital signal, just HDMI can carry audio while DVI can only carry video. The bigger problem would be in the delay of the monitor, which is easy to figure out with syncheck.

[Geert van den Berg]

Having video and audio with PT on one computer can definately cause the image to hiccup if the image resolution and codec used is very heavy on the CPU.

That's why some studios still use a 2nd computer synced up for video. (and that's why Avid/Digidesign not also have a video satellite option for 4000 dollar, which connects Pro Tools via ethernet to a 2nd computer running Media Satellite, which enables faster cooperation on HD material.)

Using DV outputted via a Canopus isn't hard on the CPU, because the decompression is done in the Canopus.

[grimepoch]

Well I got the 720P 37" LCD hung up in the studio and I used my video camera as a temporary firewire->video device, as I have used it for this before. Sadly, the quality of SD video on a 720P display is horrid!

So, as a test, I hooked up the VGA port on the back of the LCD to my 7300GT video card in my MacPro and put the video in PTLE in that window and full screened it. The video was 720p and it looked fantastic. I checked the throughput cpu usage and it was very minimal, which is good.

My understanding is that Motion JPEG-B is the best codec to work with in terms of CPU usage, BUT, does make a big hit on disk IO.

In any case, I am going to test this on the next project I am working on. Given my workflow for doing post for film, I end up not using a lot of RTAS plugs but will be using AudioSuite more.

In any case, I just wanted to say thanks for ALL the input I've received. This is definitely a work in progress!!!

[musikwerks]

Hi Rick,

1080p is not a frame rate, it's horizontal resolution. You will have a hard time getting full res HD running over firewire. HD files require enormous bandwidth and very fast hard drives, usually a RAID array. (and no, 720p is not HD).

If you want an easy solution you can't go past the Avid Mojo unit. It's SD but for mix work it should be all you need.

[UnFraGile]

Hi,

Does anyone knows if the Canopus could playback MPEG-4 VIDEO QT out from Firewire' in ProTools or it's only playbacks DV QT?

I usually use MPEG-4 codec instead of DV, is a smaller file and the hit on the CPU is almost nothing.

Another thing, anyone as used this DisplayLink to have more monitors (desktop space). If yes, does have any problems with Protools HD Mac/PC.

Regards,

Marco

[grimepoch]

I think you might have misread my post, I wasn't saying that 1080P was a frame rate, I was saying that the video card said it only handled a hand full of frame rates, which I listed: 50, 59.94, 25 or 29.97.

And yes, 720P is actually one of the formats of HD video, as is 1080P and 1080I.

720p - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I specifically didn't buy a 1080P for the exact reason you state, the bandwidth requirements sending that much data are huge. There is a toss-up between the CPU load or the data bandwidth from disk depending on how you encode it.

The last film I did, I used 720P DV files and I had no problem with it at all, in terms of using up CPU or disk bandwidth during any of the post work I did. Granted, the video DID use resources, it's just that I never hit a point where I was having a conflict. And, not to say that wont happen in the future.

I looked at the Avid Mojo but the cost of a second 7300GT card in my Mac Pro was $80. I'm failing to see the advantage of using the Mojo compared to a second video card. The video looks great through the video card and into the LCD set to 720P resolution. Maybe I'll know why if I get into an even bigger project and just haven't hit those limitations yet.

Given I have 2 UAD1 cards in my system and am putting a UAD2 in the system shortly, I don't want to use up a slot with a FW card. I currently have 2 MOTU 896HDs, 1 DIGI RACK 003 and 1 RAID HD hooked up to all the FW ports. I know from lots of experimentation, hanging much more off these FW buses and the system starts to suffer FW bandwidth issues.

To many devices!!! Not enough bandwidth!!!

[musikwerks]

Understand.

Will have to disagree with you on the 720p issue though.... regardless of what Wikipedia says. To me, 720 lines is not high definition, particularly when you consider PAL standard definition is 625 lines.

[soundguydave]

Originally Posted by UnFraGile

Hi,

Does anyone knows if the Canopus could playback MPEG-4 VIDEO QT out from Firewire' in ProTools or it's only playbacks DV QT?

I usually use MPEG-4 codec instead of DV, is a smaller file and the hit on the CPU is almost nothing.

Another thing, anyone as used this DisplayLink to have more monitors (desktop space). If yes, does have any problems with Protools HD Mac/PC.

Regards,

Marco

DV only.

[grimepoch]

Originally Posted by musikwerks

Understand.

Will have to disagree with you on the 720p issue though.... regardless of what Wikipedia says. To me, 720 lines is not high definition, particularly when you consider PAL standard definition is 625 lines.

It's not just wikipedia, it's everywhere, it is an HD format, it's not my decision what is HD and what isn't. 720p has a LOT higher horizontal resolution as well (1280) as compared to SD sizes.

Also, PAL from my understanding is like ~576 horizontal lines. Given I live in the US and we use NTSC, which is 480 lines, 720p is much crisper visually.

And let's not forget that PAL is interlaced. I think there is even a lot of debate about whether 720p or 1080i look better than one another. I really never compared them.

And even worse, almost everything I receive is 16:9 so if I wanted to watch it on a SD I have to shrink it even more effectively reducing the resolution of the image because of the black bars on the top and bottom.

[UnFraGile]

Thank you for the info Dave Kaduk.

Sorry for the poster of this thread, to be a bit off-topic and use this thread to make questions about the canopus and displaylink.

Regards to everyone.

Marco

[Geert van den Berg]

Originally Posted by grimepoch

It's not just wikipedia, it's everywhere, it is an HD format, it's not my decision what is HD and what isn't. 720p has a LOT higher horizontal resolution as well (1280) as compared to SD sizes.

It is also my understanding 720p is an HD format, regardless that it's less than 1080p. Why would it not be?

[musikwerks]

720p is part of the HD standard. I was more expressing my opinion that I don't consider it HD when you compare it to the standard of 1080p or 1080i. There's a marked difference in my opinion. No one I know does any HD work at 720p. It's all 1080i. I'm not trying to start a war, just adding an opinion based on my experience.

If you're receiving a file with black bars top and bottom, it's not widescreen (16:9) it's a 4:3 letterbox.