A Lion ate my second monitor

[Oliver Peters]

[John Davidson] “Has anyone been working in an editing environment with a single Apple Cinema 27″ on Lion? Do you hate it? Love it? I’m really starting to think the era of Dual monitor editing is slowly fading away. The only thing that gives me pause is that FCPX does utilize a second monitor for playback or event management. Maybe that’s not as big a deal with the new broadcast monitor playback…”

I work with Lion in 3 suites – 1 with 2x 20″, 1 with 1×30″ and 1 with 1×27″. The single larger monitor is fine, but I prefer dual monitors. I agree 2×27″ is too much, but I want to spread windows out. So on my home system with dual displays, I put other windows and apps on the secondary screen when I’m working in an app that uses a single display. With FCP X, I put the Events left and Viewer/Timeline right. I really don’t like single displays for editing, because I want the extra real estate to spread out bins – something I definitely prefer in FCP 7 over FCP X.

Another set-up I’ve used in the past is a larger 23″ or 24″ monitor that was centered as the primary display and a smaller (20″) offset to the left. This was the secondary display and used for bins in FCP. If you run a MacBookPro with an external monitor, it sets up this type of situation.

Broadcast monitor output with FCP X doesn’t change that. All you are doing is duplicating the Viewer, only bigger. Unfortunately it’s pretty poor at this point. As it’s a “beta”, we can only hope that it gets better.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Mark Dobson]

[John Davidson] “I’ve been working with Dual 27″ Cinema Displays on one system, and my personal office is a single iMac. I like the iMac 27 better. The reality is that the Dual 27’s are just too wide.”

A lion ate my mouse and I am now using a wacom tablet.

I’ve got 2 x 27″ Samsung 1920×1080 monitors and really enjoy having loads of ‘eye’ space especially useful to have a whole screen for the events library. But you do need to have the monitors set right back on the desktop to avoid neck ache!

Someone on this forum – I think it was Andy Mees, posted a picture of a set up with a second 16/9 monitor turned on its side for the Event window.

Now that we have got external monitoring I have turned my 32″ Sony back on. This sits on the right of my desk on another shelf and quite a way back and will be useful to check end output. All this adds up to a lot of screen space, it’s looking a bit like some of the transportation control rooms I’ve been filming recently.

The Intensity Pro card I have re-installed is not working properly yet. The only output available is NTSC 720×480. There are a couple of threads running on the Creative Cow Blackmagic forum and Blackmagic are aware of these issues. I guess that with both the FCPX AV and the Blackmagic Desktop Video being in Beta that these problems are to be expected and that both companies will welcome feedback from us.

Once Matrox have released a new driver I might re-install the MXO2 for the simple reason that it ships with colour calibration software which is something that Blackmagic don’t appear to offer at the moment.

[John Davidson]

I decided to bite the bullet and get a 5770 Graphics card for the older mac pro, making it display port friendly. By taking out the two 24″ monitors and replacing them with the 27 and a FSI “17 next to it, it’s pretty great. Adjusting the windows on the screen to get the most out of it, I have to say we all like it better. We can finally make the most of expose and full screen apps now. Editing feels like a more intimate experience as well. Two 27’s just felt like too much width. Here’s a pic of the setup – client monitor is a 32” and is off to the left out of site.

I’m going to try it for a few weeks. So far we all really prefer it to the old way.

Almost looks like a fcpx setup!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.