Pro X2 - Use of External 2nd Monitor

dalemccl · Post by **dalemccl** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:28 pm

I'm using Pro X2 to edit AVCHD and create hybrid DVD's to play on a Blu-ray player and HDTV in a different room than where the PC is located. I'd like to be able to preview video in the computer room on a small external HDTV, maybe a 26". My video card supports 2 monitors - it has a VGA output and an HDMI output. I currently am not using the HDMI output, so I could use that for an HDTV.

From a forum search, I learned that Pro X2 does not support displaying just the preview window on the external monitor. The example given for the use of a 2nd monitor was that you could have Windows Explorer on one screen and VS on the other.

Can Pro X2 display itself on on the external HDTV while simultaneously displaying itself on the PC's monitor? That way I could do full screen previews and watch them on the HDTV.

martythebrit · Post by **martythebrit** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:12 am

You can drag the VS window onto the second monitor and do the full screen preview, when your done just drag the VS window back onto your computer monitor and continue. If your 26" T.V. has an HDMI input get a DVI to HDMI cable to hook up to your video card, if your use the S-VHS connector it will look awful. When you hook up the T.V. to your computer make sure you have the right resolution set, in-correct resolutions could damage the T.V.

Zippy · Post by **Zippy** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 9:25 am

I use a pair of 24" wide screen (1920x1200) monitors on my system, and couldn't imagine using anything less!

I guess though, the question is why would you want to watch on a "remote" monitor in preview? Would you not be wanting to render the video out and watch it at best quality?

Also - I struggle to see how running an HDTV at the wrong resolution can damage it? Where did this info come from?? You might get a rubbish looking image (TFTs/Plasmas are no good at interpolating pixels, although a telebox style HDTV will usually has some up/downsizing intelligence in it to mitigate this) but damage??

dalemccl · Post by **dalemccl** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 9:55 pm

Zippy wrote:I use a pair of 24" wide screen (1920x1200) monitors on my system, and couldn't imagine using anything less!

I guess though, the question is why would you want to watch on a "remote" monitor in preview? Would you not be wanting to render the video out and watch it at best quality?

I want to mainly view rendered AVCHD files before burning them to disc. I want to check color, brightness, contrast, etc. Pro X2 can't play the rendered AVCHD files smoothly on my quad core system, but I could still get a good idea whether the color is what I want.

As for the reason I would want to do this, currently when I burn an AVCHD DVD+R disc from the rendered file, and play it on my Blu-ray player in another room, the color and brightness/contrast look different than it did on my PC monitor. This is mainly true of night video, which I often shoot. So I end up going back trying to tweak the color and lighting settings in VS until I get the result I want when viewed with the Blu-ray player. With a small HDTV connected to the computer I could get a better idea of the colors and brightness when playing the rendered video file before I burn it to disc. (That is assuming a small LCD HDTV would be a closer match to my main LCD HDTV than my PC monitor is.)

As an alternative I may trying calibrating my PC monitor to try to get it to be a closer match to the HDTV in the other room.

How are you utilizing your two monitors when you use VS? Do you do as martythebrit suggested in the post above yours (dragging the preview to the 2nd monitor)?