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External Monitoring…
I have searched and searched and have not found anything recent, anywhere. WTH?
Looking for advice on external monitoring options for nMP (New Mac Pro). Current setup: nMP, two Dell monitors hooked up via TB (“Mini Diplayport”) to DVI passive converters.
From what I understand I cannot just hook up an HDMI TV to the HDMI out on nMP with the two DVI monitors as is. I would have to purchase an active DVI converter to free up one of the two allowed passive connections. (See here towards the bottom.)
I’d rather spend the cash on an actual monitoring solution made for external monitoring than just getting an active converter. So that leaves me with AJA, BMD and Matrox basically. However I cannot for the life of me find any significant reviews or videos showing any of these in action. I like to do my research before purchasing but this is leaving me stumped. Hoping to find some experience from the forum to bounce some sort of opinion-based purchase off of. These are the options, but not limited to, I’m considering:
AJA – T-Tap
BMD – Ultrastudio Mini Monitor
Matrox – Matrox MXO2 Mini MAX (Not sure if “MAX” version is needed since H.264 compressing seems to be fairly fast on nMP.)Needs: Looking for Premiere CC, AE and SpeedGrade compatibility. Basically just monitoring. No need to ingest from HDMI or SDI. Not sure if I’m going to get an HDMI or SDI monitor yet. Doesn’t really matter seeing that these three options have both.
This is mainly hardware related but I didn’t know where else to post. So please move if needed. Thanks for any help. At this point it will be immensely appreciated!
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7 Replies
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Go with one of these:
AJA – T-Tap
BMD – Ultrastudio Mini Monitorand you’ll do just fine.
Chris
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I was figuring this but it just seems too simple to be true. But alas, I guess it just is that simple.
Do you have a preference? I know the T-Tap can output 2K but I don’t need that for my purposes. If you’ve used one or the other, what has the format/app switching experience been like? Any lag or special processes needed? I read that with the Mini Monitor and FCPX you have to quit FCPX if you want to switch output formats. Just wondering if they’re are any little quirks like that with Premiere CC.
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Well my experience is that AJA T-TAP is much more stable than Blackmagic Mini Monitor. Actually Blackmagic Mini Monitor has been pretty much useless for me as it for some random reason makes my USB hardware (keyboard, mouse…) often disappear when connected. There’s lot of discussion going on in Blackmagic forum.
I also have AJA IO XT which is more expensive but it’s really stable and works well. It seems to be the way to go at least here in Finland for post production facilities using Thunderbolt I/O.
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This is perfect! This is the some of the insight I need. Thank you for your notes!
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Your system is way advanced beyond mine, but I use a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter to connect to an HDMI TV from my Macbook Pro with a single thunderbolt output. Cheap. Doesn’t your Mac Pro have several TB outputs?
Robert Withers
Independent/personal/avant-garde cinema, New York City
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It is that simple. But for some reason you can only have two mDP (mini displayport) to DVI “Passive” converters at once. Or a combo of one mDP and one HDMI hooked up. You can however have 6 mDP/thunderbolt native displays hooked up at once. Or six by using two “Passive” and 4 “Active” mDP to DVI converters. It must be some kind of power issue or something.
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I’ve got the new Mac Pro, decked out pretty nicely. Tried both HDMI and DVI-D cable (with adapter from a Thunderbolt port) and my external monitor plays back the same on both, it’s like it’s ok at times, but looks like it drops frames or like it’s playing at a lower frame rate.
I changed the playback to “Software Only” and that hasn’t seemed to change anything. Is there something I’m doing wrong with this?
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