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Third Monitor iMac Avid
Editing from home these days and would like to add a third monitor for full screen playback on my Avid. I’ve got an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) with a 3.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 and Radeon Pro 580 8 GB, running Catlina 10.15.7. No break out box and Monitor 2 in one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports. Can I do it? Thanks Guy
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7 Replies
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If you want the 3rd screen to show full screen playback you need an output box.
Black magic AJA or similar.
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Thanks Pat, thought that might be the case, just hoping!
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Hello! Yes the three-display config is wonderful for Media Composer editing, and growing fast in popularity. Left display is bins and project stuff. Right display is timeline only. A third display is mounted above the right display and shows Composer window, color tools, etc. Very cool.
I have seen this done in the way you described. The only major issue you might run into is an Apple issue, not an Avid one. In Catalina… I think 10.15.6 if I remember correctly… Apple users in all industries not just media saw 2nd-display and 3rd-display issues introduced. (Some Apple users said it was only seen in a specific couple of video card configs, but I never saw that mentioned publicly.) It was still there in early BigSur versions too, much to everyone’s dismay. it affected iMacs, it affected older iMacs being used in Target Display Mode, as well as laptops.
As of BigSur 11.5.x series, I no longer hear anyone complaining about it so it must’ve been fixed or at least patched by Apple. Unsure. So if you get the gear, plug it all in, and discover something is not working, you might want to consider updating your OS. Just a heads-up.
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Side note – I’ve also seen this three display setup where the left display showing bins etc is mounted vertically. More for scripted and documentary users with ScriptSync and such.
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Thanks Chris I’ll give it a go. Right in the middle of something so don’t want to upgrade OS just yet, learnt my lesson the hard way doing that!, but will do it at the end. Thanks again Guy
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With a breakout box you can actually calibrate it properly. With a black magic one you can even use resolve.
Running three displays probably uses more pcie lanes than the processor has and you need them for any other thunderbolt devices. You could check if Apple bothered to tell you more details about their processors
People do it a lot and it seems to work for them. Been in loads of studios with 2 EXTRA UHD monitors on an iMac and hundreds of thunderbolt drives and converters. But that is really really asking for trouble.
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Thanks Tristan, and did they use a Black Magic box to run those extra monitors? Cheers
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