-
Multibridge Extreme DVI will not sync to HDTV monitor
I’m running Multibridge Extreme on a Quad G5. Using the latest available driver…at this very moment that would be 5.2.3, The DVI output will NOT sync to an industry-standard HDTV monitor (1920×1080 60hz 37 inch LCD).
I realize it is set up to support the all-too-common Apple Cinema Display size of 1920×1200 (with black bars top and bottom). That is well and good, but here we have a situation where I have an industry standard 1920×1080 (60hz) monitor hooked up via DVI, and I find it beyond belief that this resolution…(1080i/P)…an HDTV industry standard, would not be supported on Multibridge Extreme…a product purporting to support editing of HDTV. Of all resolutions that need supporting, surely native should make the short list…no?
Somebody please tell me if I’m doing something wrong. I hope it’s that simple.
Looking forward to the 5.4 drivers, but honestly, I don’t see much in the release notes that speaks to ANY resolution other than scaling for the 30 inch Apple Cinema Display.
Again, that’s well and good, but where I have trouble is that you’ll support scaling to fill that screen (2560×1600) but still not supporting good old native 1920×1080? Boggles the mind…
I would love nothing more than to be told the problem is some setting I have wrong somewhere, but I fear the plain truth about support of this rez is more ominous than that…in other words, the Blackmagic hardware is not set up to support it?
Carey Dissmore
-
4 Replies
-
Are you playing back 23.98? Most LCDs will not display 23.98 or 24fps properly. Several years ago, we took our Sony F-900 camera into an Electronics store and plugged it into their DA. We set the frame rate at 23.98 to see what would happen. What we found was that all of the plasmas would display properly but NONE of the LCDs would give us a proper picture. Sometime it was crammed to one side or it would only show part of it. Two monitors from the same company would express themselves differently. Again, every plasma in the house handled 24P (Progressive) just fine. And that’s another thing. Some LCDs will not display a progressive sequence regardless of frame rate.
Steve Wargo
Tempe, ArizonaIt’s a dry heat!
-
Hi Steve,
That’s a very good observation. However in this case the frame rate of the video and the refresh rate of the monitor are not connected to that degree.
In much the same way that:
a) You can view Quicktime movies on your computer monitor of pretty much any frame rate even though the monitor refresh rate doesn’t change (most LCD panels are 60hz)
b) You can view your content on any DVI monitor that your graphics card will support via FCP’s ‘Cinema Desktop’ mode, even though the refresh rate of the monitor doesn’t match the frame rate of the video
The DVI port on the Multibridge Extreme should support getting that picture up on the display…and it DOES indeed do that, on certain monitor resolutions.
…but what baffles me is the 37 inch HD monitor I specifically bought to configure as a client monitor in this new system (the native 1920×1080 HD rez was a huge drawing card) turns out to be (currently) an unsupported resolution/refresh rate/scaling option for the Multibridge Extreme. The more I think about this, it seems this drastic oversight (if that’s what it is) by BMD ought to be fixable with a software update. Let’s hope anyway.
-
Just to clarify that some of what you saw was probably due to the nature of the connection…it probably wasn’t DVI. I’m going to show some ignorance here but I know enough about DVI to know that it’s a 2-way connection in which the video ‘sending’ device (in this case the MBE) communicates with the display to determine it’s resolution and supported mode. Graphics cards do this all the time.
I don’t know enough about the MBE’s internal construction, but if I were designing the thing, I’d certainly include the basics of a GPU display device/scaling engine. The Multibridge Extreme should essentially be able to take any SD or HD video source and output it to any reasonable resolution DVI monitor, and on top of that should offer the user the choice of output mapped 1:1 pixel for pixel, 2:1 doubled, or SCALED to fill the full resolution of the display.
Oh, back to your original question, I was trying footage at all different frame rates, not just 23.98 FPS. The problem isn’t the frame rate of the source footage, it seems to be the requirements of the DVI display I am using. 1920×1080 60hz
Here is a link to the monitor specs….btw one of only 2 1920×1080 (true 1080P) large (37 inch) monitors currently shipping in the U.S. Many at this size are 1366×768. IO plan to do 1080i/P editing so I wanted the full rez.
https://www.sceptre.com/Products/LCD/Specifications/spec_X37SV-Naga.htmHope that clarifies…
Carey
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up