HDLink or Intensity ??

[Bob Zelin]

The HD Link is excellent quality, and is specifically designed to convert a HD-SDI signal into a DVI signal, so you can display HD-SDI on a DVI computer monitor. The Intensity is a video capture card, that can capture from an HD source that has an HDMI output. If you want to add a monitor, the HDLink is your baby. Believe me, the quality is teriffic (or as good as your LCD monitor).

bob Zelin

[Steve Voyk]

Thanks Bob…
That clears up the HD Link question.

OK, so what about in the case where I have Final Cut Pro working away (SD or HD job) and I want to output the timeline (as I’m working) to a fullscreen second monitor that is LCD based? I don’t mean that I want the GUI on a second monitor but rather the ‘broadcast monitor’ output on an LCD (similar to having a traditional Sony BVM/PVM broadcast monitor in edit bays).

What is the CHEAPEST way to do this on FCP and which external box is required? I thought I read that the Intensity card will also give you some kind of monitoring output on fullscreen???

Or is the only way to have a HD Extreme card plus the HD Link card working in tandem ?

Thanks,
Steve

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Steve,

The cheapest solution is free! If you are working with compressed material, such as DVCPRO HD, you can take advantage of the Digital Cinema Desktop feature in Final Cut Pro 5. Just attach a DVI monitor to the second DVI output of your G5 or Mac Pro and then enable this function in Final Cut Pro. You cannot use it for uncompressed video but it’s not bad for compressed video. The Digital Cinema Desktop solution won’t provide you with the same depth of color and image detail as the HDLink and Intensity solutions but it is free and it works.

If you are not already performing capture and output with an SDI card (such as the DeckLink HD Extreme), then the Intensity should be fine for you. It will transparently decompress your (presumably DVCPRO HD) video on output and play it out to a HDMI display. Intensity outputs your video at the same frequency as the video and all HDMI TV’s should handle that. Note that many HDMI TV’s are not full resolution 1920 x 1080 displays although they will happily accept a full resolution signal from Intensity and then scale to fit the lower resolution of the display. There are some more expensive LCD TV’s that are full resolution.

If you alread have a HD-SDI capture card which you are using for your work, then I would recommend the HDLink partnered with a high quality DVI display such as the Apple 23″ display. This will enable you to monitor your video during both capture and playback via SDI. DVI-based computer displays typically operate at 60 Hz which means they cannot display NTSC and PAL video frame rates by themselves. They also expect an RGB signal whereas you are probably capturing YUV video from your camera. The HDLink takes care of the colorspace conversion from YUV to RGB and also performs pulldown processsing to adapt your NTSC, PAL or HDTV video to match the frequency of your LCD monitor. The quality is excellent. LCD computer monitors are progressive whereas much video is interlaced. HDLink includes and interlace adjustment to help improve the quality of the interlaced video display on different kinds of monitors.

I get the impression that you don’t have (and don’t currently need) an SDI card. If that is the case, one of the first two options should work well for you.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Michael Belanger]

Does the HDlink work on the Cinema 30 inch dispaly?

Mike Belanger

[Bob Zelin]

no, it does not work with the 30″ monitor. the Multibridge Extreme drives the 30″ monitor correctly. I would LOVE to see a stand alone HD Link Dual Link DVI unit that would drive the 30″ Apple Cinema from Blackmagic.

Bob Zelin

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Michael,

No, the HDLink is designed to connect to single-link DVI-D displays such as many 23″ and 24″ displays.

The Apple Cinema HD 30″ display requires a dual-link DVI-D connection which is included in the Multibridge Extreme and allows for the display of 2K film material, pixel for pixel.

We have a support note regarding this question named Does HDLink support the 30-inch Apple display?.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bob,

Would you like that just so as to scale up HDTV to a big 30″ screen? If so, why use the 30″ screen when you could plug in to an even bigger HDMI display?

I’m interested in your thoughts as to why you’d like a version of HDLink to support the 30″ screen when we’ve already got that covered with Multibridge Extreme for output of 2K and you can use large HDMI TV’s with HDLink if you simply want a very large screen.

Your comments would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Michael Belanger]

Thanks Luke

Can I use the HDlink to feed another 23/24 inch monitor when editing compressed hd material
such as dvcprohd? I have discovered as you suggested that I can drive compressed material onto a desktop monitor and get quite good results. However if I need to have two monitors this scenario doesn’t work. Any suggestions

Mike

PS
As you suggested to Bob, I can use a large tv fed by the hdlink through hdmi but as I have discovered those TVs simple lack the resolution to make it worthwhile
Is there a better way I am not aware of to have a large 30+ screen?

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Michael,

[michael Belanger] “Can I use the HDlink to feed another 23/24 inch monitor when editing compressed hd material such as dvcprohd?”

Yes. If you are editing a compressed timeline such as DVCPRO HD and have a HD-SDI card in your Mac, the DVCPRO HD will be output as uncompresed via the HD-SDI output of your card and you can then monitor that with a HDLink connected to a 23/24 inch DVI-D monitor. It doesn’t matter if you are editing compressed or uncompressed material as it will all be transparently output as uncompressed via HD-SDI so HDLink can then be used to display your video.

[michael Belanger] “I can use a large tv fed by the hdlink through hdmi but as I have discovered those TVs simple lack the resolution to make it worthwhile. Is there a better way I am not aware of to have a large 30+ screen?”

There are some models of large HDMI TV’s that are full resolution although I have not had the pleasure of testing them. One example is the Sharp LC-65D90U which is a 65″ TV. It has full resolution 1920 x 1200 display and it’s definitely larger than 30″ 🙂 I think that Mitsubishi also make large full resolution HDMI displays but I have not seen one myself.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Michael Belanger]

Thanks again Luke

I think the bulk of my work will be compressed HD , hopefully XDCAM HD will be working soon on FCP.

Great advice. Thanks again

Mike Belanger