Single v Dual monitors?

[Walter Biscardi]

[Skougor] “At what point do you feel a widescreen is too small? There are affordable 22 and 24 inchers out there. The 30 inch is too much cash. I’m torn. I have used the beautiful 30inch cine displays and the smaller apple plastic encased ones from the generation prior, but have no plans on spending more than 600USD on monitors (not incl a reference monitor).”

Man, that’s really a matter of personal preference. I think 20″ is the smallest widescreen you want to edit on.

On one of our systems we have two Viewsonic monitors, $600 total for the two monitors, one is 22″ and one is 20″. Not the best monitors in the world, but they give us a lot of real estate on that system for not a lot of money.

A second system has the 24″ Dell and the same 20″ Viewsonic. About $1,000 total. The Dell is outstanding and pretty much an equal to the Apple Cinema Displays. I think this works out great because you have one high quality monitor for your viewer / canvas and a second monitor just for your bins, etc…

The third system has the 23″ Apple Cinema Display and the 20″ Apple Cinema Display. We also have a 17″ Sony DVI / HDTV display that’s just ridiculously sharp as well.

All the systems work great and I hop around between them. Again, I think 20″ is about as small as you want to get, but there are a LOT of options out there for a wide range of money.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Todd Skougor]

Thanks Walter.
I edit everywhere, on everyone’s machine. So, I’ve seen it all. I guess I’ll go with a single widescreen. As I think about it more and more, I can’t stand how the colors begin to drift as the monitors age. It wouldn’t be so bad, but they never seem to go in the same direction.

Thanks for the quick response.
Long live the Cow!

Todd

[Bill Lee]

You shouldn’t be worried about the color drift, since you won’t be basing color timing decisions from the computer monitor anyway. You should have a broadcast monitor that you are feeding the Canvas to if at all possible, since the progressive nature of your computer display is not going to match your source material (unless you are working in 720p or other progressive media).

Even a cheap second (computer) monitor can be useful to put your Bin (Browser) on while you are working on the other widescreen monitor. You generally won’t be doing a whole lot of work on this window compared the the need to have lots of screen space for Viewer, Timeline and Canvas. The second monitor doesn’t have to match the main monitor, and thus can be low cost (i.e cheap). If you are using CRT displays, having two monitors close together can create visible instability as the magnetic fields interfere with each others electron beams – two LCDs won’t have this problem.

You should also set up some alternative window setups that you can switch at a combination keystroke, so that you can quickly switch to the optimal layout for that moment.

Bill Lee

[Rj Miles]

I have (3) setups I use on a regular basis.

My home studio setup is (2) Viewsonic GS815 CRT monitors. This has the most over all real estate because they run a little larger display size than a 23″ LCD. Although they do require annual sharpness/convergence maintenance.

When I travel, I mainly work on two other systems. One with (2) 23″ Apple monitors and one with a single 23″ Apple monitor. Switching to the single 23″ monitor takes a little time, but I get used to it pretty quick. I really don’t mind the single 23″ with FCP. It’s complex After Effects projects which are tougher in a single monitor world. 🙂

If you don’t mind the space and weight associated with CRTS, they are probably the best deal if you can find something used as nice or nicer than the GS815.