Digital Cinema Preview on 3rd monitor?

[Patrick Sheffield]

Probably legacy from when they stopped supporting PCI cards and only allowed AGP…

Patrick

[Jan Bliddal]

That

[Guy Ross]

I can’t get FCP to do “cinema display desktop preview” on my third display, even though my three displays are all connected to one card. (5870)

[Patrick Sheffield]

AFAIK, FCP only supports 2 display devices…

Patrick

[Andy Mees]

Guy
You need to plug the monitor intended for your Digital Cinema Desktop display into the second output port on the card … thats just how it works.
Cheers
Andy

[Patrick Sheffield]

There ya go – Andy’s got the solution.

Patrick

[Guy Ross]

Thanks Andy!

I switched the monitor connections and now the full screen Digital Cinema Disply Preview is available on the right monitor.

Thanks!

Another loosely related questions you might know the answer to:

Several people have stated in this forum that Digital Cinema Display Preview is a sub-par monitoring solution as compared to Aja or Matrox output cards.

Do you agree?
What’s the technical reasoning behind that?

Thanks,

Guy

[Andy Mees]

[Guy Ross] “Several people have stated in this forum that Digital Cinema Display Preview is a sub-par monitoring solution … Do you agree? What’s the technical reasoning behind that?”

I do agree, absolutely, and so does Apple by all accounts.

Issues with color accuracy is one of the bigger issues. Most video is recorded as component (YPbPr aka YUV) but Digital Cinema Desktop Preview will display direct to your monitor as RGB, which means that unless you actually happen to be working in an RGB 4:4:4 format then its going through a color space conversion … the problem with the Digital Cinema Desktop output tho, is that the real time color space conversion it’s doing isn’t particularly special, it sacrifices accuracy for speed, and as a result the image displayed can not be considered accurate enough for critical evaluation purposes (assuming that’s your goal).

Interlacing issues are another biggie. If you are working with Standard Definition and/or interlaced footage then you’re immediately compromised with Digital Cinema Desktop output as it only plays your footage at the frame rate, not the field rate (your 60i/50i playback will be presented as 30p/25p). As a result, any potential interlacing issues are rendered invisible and any accurate assessment of the image and of motion within the footage is impossible.

Another noted issue is with inaccurate display of graphic files with native resolutions larger than 1920×1200 …

… so all in all its fine for what its name implies, a “Preview” but is not generally recommended for critical monitoring.

Here are a couple of links to some more info :
https://support.apple.com/kb/TA27705
https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/atepper/story/does_premiere_cs5_achieve_the_impossible_dream_for_critical_evaluation_moni/P1/

Cheers
Andy

[Guy Ross]

Thanks Andy!

As I deal mostly with RED footage and ProRes (both of which are RGB and progressive), color space translations and interlacing don’t affect me so much…

However, I still would like to educate myself more about this color science business.

Granted, it’s all in theory, as my ‘good’ monitor is only 8-bit, and just barely covers the sRGB gamut 🙂
(BTW – I highly recommend it – HP zr24w. It’s cheap and color accurate and probably the best you can get for ~ $400).

Does anyone know if there’s a good comprehensive technical paper on this somewhere?
Preferably one that goes beyond the science to actual OS-specific details…?

Thanks!