Monitoring/Grading on DVI vs HD-SDI

[Elliott Balsley]

I want to prepare for color grading on a Mac Pro with a Radeon 5770 card. I want to use my Panasonic 1710 monitor, which I know would be much more accurate than a regular computer LCD, since it is naturally in rec709 color space. But my question is, do I need to buy an HD-SDI output card in order to benefit from that monitor, or can I just connect it via DVI to the Radeon? The monitor has both input options. I'd like to avoid spending money of a Kona if I can. Also - since the Radeon has only one DVI port, I'd be using a Mini-DisplayPort to DVI adapter, if that makes any difference.
Thanks for any advice.

[Marc Wielage]

Color correcting with what software? What platform? I would follow the specs advised by the people who make the software. Pro grading tools like Baselight, Resolve, Lustre, Pablo, Nucoda, and Speedgrade all have very specific hardware requirements. Calibrating the monitor is of key importance.

I'm not convinced a 17" monitor will be suitable for grading. We used a 20" broadcast monitor to grade the HD home video releases of Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, and that was a chore. I would've preferred using the 32" version of this monitor, but for time and logistical reasons, we used what was there and got it done. Nowadays, I think a 50" plasma would be the best overall choice.

[Elliott Balsley]

I plan to learn and use DaVinci Resolve (on a mac). Certainly it would be better to have a larger monitor, but there are budget constraints... I've gotten by on a 17" monitor before doing a few projects in Lustre at school.
I see Blackmagic specifies a Quadro 4000 GPU, and a separate SDI card for monitoring. But what happens if I just run the monitor from the DVI port on the Quadro (or the Radeon)? Can it still be calibrated correctly?

[Christopher Barrett]

You can't really get a separate image out from Resolve without an SDI card. You would have to view the little image in the Color screen and then switch to the Viewer Screen to view corrections larger, not really an efficient way to work. Also, Resolve won't utilize the Quadro if you have ANY monitors plugged into it (it wants that card all to itself!). This is the opposite of Premier which needs to have the display plugged into the Quadro to utilize CUDA. Crazy stuff.

[Elliott Balsley]

Wow, that's weird. So if I got rid of the Radeon to make space for the Quadro and Decklink, there would be no way to see the GUI? It would be great if it let you use the Quadro for monitoring, and just took a performance hit.
Also - DaVinci specifies the Decklink HD Extreme 3D... is that really essential? Or could one get by with reduced performance with the basic Decklink SDI card?