Live HD monitoring on a Macbook

[Martin Drew]

First off, let me say that I asked Jarred and Evin this morning if it was okay to post this, but I haven't had any response. I think it is information that will be useful to a lot of people here...(apologies in advance if I am posting out of turn).

ScopeBox (http://www.scopebox.com/) for OS X is out of beta and now available for 15 day trial download and purchase. This allows monitoring of a live HD feed coming in from any Quicktime supported capture device. It provides loads of scopes and direct to disk recording too. Of course Serious Magic’s DV Rack has done this for PC for a while but us poor Mac users have had to make do with the tiny capture window in FCP.

I presume it should be possible to configure a laptop to act as a live HD display for critical focussing of RedOne, could be quite neat. I am very excited about this.

Just for the record I have no connection with ScopeBox.

Martin

[Martin Drew]

Arrghh. It seems there is no way of getting an HD stream from RedOne into a Macbook or Macbook Pro. Is that correct? I suppose the solution will still work if you are prepared to lug around a MacPro, not quite as neat then though.

Martin

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I think DVRack and ScopeBox are both dependent on a Firewire tap out of the source. Hopefully as HDMI and its subset DVI become more common on the video side products like ScopeBox will play nice with them as well. In terms of the laptop side there is one huge problem - HDMI inputs will be seen as a risk for piracy, HDCP or no. Within the vertical market for video content creators there should be enough demand to make HDMI ins via the card slot a viable product by the end of 2007. Hopefully ScopeBox and Serious Magic will support those inputs when they are available.

In your post Martin you said that the towers could take feeds from RedOne for Scopebox - is that via HD-SDI through AJA or BlackMagic hardware?

I have been telling anyone who will listen (which is mostly just the poor schmucks working booths at trades shows) that a great product to introduce would an expansion chassis for laptops that is about the same dimensions as a regular laptop only a bit thicker that has one PCIe slot and a couple hard drives and connects via the card slot. It would require its own power source and make the whole combo less portable but it would fit into a decent sized shoulder bag or briefcase and if you had AC available it would be a great on set solution for monitoring and running footage directly to a hard drive. Yes, you guessed it, I came up with this "brainstorm" after dealing with the joys of P2 and the price/hassle factor of the Firestore in HVX land. With the right mount the whole thing lives on a C-stand and has some meaningful advantages.

[Evin Grant]

This is bordering on advertising, but since you were polite enough to ask first I'll wait for Jarred to make the final call.

[Martin Drew]

In your post Martin you said that the towers could take feeds from RedOne for Scopebox - is that via HD-SDI through AJA or BlackMagic hardware?

I suppose I am "hoping" rather than "saying", don't want to make too many assumptions. Yes it would have to be via a HD-SDI capture card.

It looks like a great app especially if something like the Vydeo Express Card (http://www.vydeo.com/products/EC34.html) brings HD-SDI to the Macbook.

Martin

[Martin Drew]

This is bordering on advertising, but since you were polite enough to ask first I'll wait for Jarred to make the final call.

Thanks Evin.

It probably isn't quite as significant as I first thought (hoped). Though it is quite interesting and shows potentiol. I like the focus assist and the scopes especially, but RedOnes preview out may make these redundant. In which case it is going to be sufficient to just use a small DVI monitor.

Martin

[Nick Shaw]

This product http://www.vydeo.com/products/EC34.html will hopefully at some point in the future allow HD-SDI input to a MacBook Pro. That should be very useful with apps like Scopebox.

Nick

[robbo]

http://www.mobl.com/expansion/

I haven't tested this but it should just work.
However, the thought also occured to me that by the time you've invested in rigging this setup to work with a laptop and your external drives etc. You may as well just use a single tower. Smaller footprint ...
But I know space in trucks is always at a premium and can see in some situations that this type of rig would be appropriate.

[Nick Shaw]

The Magma expansion chassis are ExpressCard to PCI, not PCIe, and only 33MHz PCI at that. I don't think they would be fast enough for HD.

Nick

[robbo]

Yes - i realise about pcie, pcix, pci - but uggh yes, you're right !
Only 33 - an Aja LH requires 133 (hadn't got that far with research).

Something like the http://www.vydeo.com/products/EC34.html , you suggest above would be a far more elegant solution, I admit.
oh well, we're all out on the bleeding edge with some of this - just hope the hardware devs are on to developing some of the "different" requirements necessary.
cheers, r

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I am a big fan of HDMI (of which DVI is a subset and needs only a simple adapter) as a cheaper alternative to HD-SDI. Unless somone out there with deeper knowledge of the specs can tell me that HD-SDI is more stable or offers more bandwidth? The nice thing about HDMI/DVI is that the installed base is exponentially larger than HD-SDI so the cost efficencies of high volume production work in our favor. I have heard of, but not seen, a version of the HDMI connector that has a positive locking sleeve which would be huge. Trying to strain relief the Firewire plug between the HVX and the Firestore sucks. HD-SDI does have nice strong BNC posi-lock going for it.

Here's to hoping that the new Mac laptops have higher bandwidth ports starting with eSATA and, in my dreams, HDMI or DVI inputs and maybe a faster card slot than Express/34.

[Nick Shaw]

Yes but currently I don't know of any broadcast monitors with HDMI input, but plenty with HD-SDI. I'm sure that will change though. The other benefit of HD-SDI is that long BNC cables are common and cheap, and can be easily made to custom lengths. I can make a BNC cable up myself, but wouldn't like to try HDMI or DVI!

Nick

[Akcelik]

maybe i diverge here but having 4K monitoring display in the form of goggles http://www.i-glassesstore.com/hmds.html imho would be portable & affordable compared to a 4K display covering the space of 15".

maybe Jim can make Oakley RED

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Yes but currently I don't know of any broadcast monitors with HDMI input, but plenty with HD-SDI. I'm sure that will change though. The other benefit of HD-SDI is that long BNC cables are common and cheap, and can be easily made to custom lengths. I can make a BNC cable up myself, but wouldn't like to try HDMI or DVI!

Nick

To add on to the above: HDMI doesn't use Coax, so its range is also severely limited. That's probably another reason why everyone uses HD-SDI for monitoring. The ~30 foot range limit would be pretty limiting on a production on HDMI.

[Rob Lohman]

There are optic extenders and cables for HDMI/DVI as well if you need a longer distance

[Martin Drew]

Thinking more about this, could the data come from the firewire port on the camera? If so I presume that would only be viable if you were recording RGB.

Martin

[Nick Shaw]

I think this has been discussed before. I don't believe the camera itself has a Firewire port. That's on the RedDrive, and only used for mounting the RedDrive on a computer. If the Red One does end up having a Firewire port, I suspect it will only be for writing to drives (1394 asynchronous mode) not for outputting 'video' (1394 synchronous mode).

Nick

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Back in the day when CRTs ruled the earth (why does it seem like the word dinosaurs could be used instead of CRTs ;) ) there were significant qualitative differences between a TV set and a real monitor; the use of rare earth phosphors in the tubes so that they could produce SMPTE color space, beefier power supplies with better control electronics for better contrast range and greyscale linearity and nice strong BNC connectors that could pass a full range signal, etc. The high prices were at least partially justified. I am not sure that is still the case.

The best options for a grading suite are another discussion but on set I think that the price to perfomance ratio of commodity monitors vs monitors sold into the professional pipeline is a different equation. I applaud Red for offering the HDMI tap and with the right cabling it should run far enough to work in most set-ups. Bottom line - I am not going to pay an unwarranted premium for a "broadcast" monitor, especially when I am working in the RAW color space.

[Frank Jonen]

Regarding the ScopeBox issue. I reviewed (http://frame.frankjonen.com/2006/12/scopebox-review/) that app recently and judging from the performance on a 12'' G4 PowerBook and dual G4 / G5 machines. I'd say a MacBook Pro won't choke on the HD ingest at all. I say 'pro' because of the graphics card difference between the MacBook and MacBook Pro series.

Review's here: http://frame.frankjonen.com/2006/12/scopebox-review/

Hope that helps.

Personally I'm seeing the need of a broadcast monitor go away, especially with RAW workflows such as the RED. Hook up a live HDMI stream to an app like ScopeBox, make sure that you don't bloom on the composite signal and you'll be more than safe on the RAW. Calibration is key here. Get a decent hardware calibration tool like the Spyder Pro from Colorvision to make sure your display is displaying the right colors and you have good enough colors to match down on any other ICC profile. If your profiler is capable enough you can simulate any output on screen. Profiler being a person who lives and breathes calibration not some FBI guy in this case.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Nice input Frank, the review provides a reference for us Mac Heads who have been drooling over DVRack. I kept thinking that Apple would put something like this in as a module for FCP, maybe in version 6 but I was getting darn tired of waiting.

[Paul Coleman]

Next update of ScopeBox will have the fleshline in the Vectorscope. http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5484/thumbupyo4.gif (http://imageshack.us)