I've just upgraded to MSP 8 and am looking to buy a graphics card.
At the moment I have a Geforce 2 400mx and have just started using the TV out which works but flickers and goes back to the desktop everytime I stop outputting video to it. Takes a few seconds of garbage before it starts showing video, everytime something is sent to it ... very annoying!
I also question the use of a TV out as I find colour correcion to be much more accurate if it is done on a CRT instead of a TV.
I thought I would get something dual head with an s-video output so I have the option of running a second CRT or TV.
Just wondering what others are using and if anyone has any recommendations of cards that are compatible.
Thanks in advance.
Best graphics card for MSP 8
I must mention that fine colour correction, brightness, contrast etc. should be done on a TV and ONLY on a TV if the end video is to be viewed on a TV. Why? Because a TV has different colour temperature, colour response and gamma characteristics, compared to any computer monitor, whether it be CRT or TFT.
Unless you are into gaming, it is NOT necessary to buy ultra-performing graphics cards for video work. You will gain nothing and lose money. A good 2-D card is good enough.
The next question is how many monitors? You can buy cards that support 1, 2 or 3 (or add multiple cards). This is something personal. I do not like working with the timeline spread over an area greater than one monitor, because I find the constant major neck movements are very tiring when editing for more than hour or so and it requires more, not less, panning, because the part you wish to look at is often à cheval two monitors.
So, how do I manage? I have two identical 18" TFT monitors connected to a Matrox G-550 card (<$100). 90% of the time, I use only one for actual editing, the second one available to show only the preview at full screen, should I need it. The TV monitor is also available for fine-tuning, by using a Canopus ADVC-100 with the output from MSP during scrubbing and preview set to camcorder output. This converts the IEEE-1394 to analogue for the TV monitor.
Unless you are into gaming, it is NOT necessary to buy ultra-performing graphics cards for video work. You will gain nothing and lose money. A good 2-D card is good enough.
The next question is how many monitors? You can buy cards that support 1, 2 or 3 (or add multiple cards). This is something personal. I do not like working with the timeline spread over an area greater than one monitor, because I find the constant major neck movements are very tiring when editing for more than hour or so and it requires more, not less, panning, because the part you wish to look at is often à cheval two monitors.
So, how do I manage? I have two identical 18" TFT monitors connected to a Matrox G-550 card (<$100). 90% of the time, I use only one for actual editing, the second one available to show only the preview at full screen, should I need it. The TV monitor is also available for fine-tuning, by using a Canopus ADVC-100 with the output from MSP during scrubbing and preview set to camcorder output. This converts the IEEE-1394 to analogue for the TV monitor.
[b][i][color=red]Devil[/color][/i][/b]
[size=84]P4 Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz/Elite NVidia NF650iSLIT-A/2 Gb dual channel FSB 1333 MHz/Gainward NVidia 7300/2 x 80 Gb, 1 x 300 Gb, 1 x 200 Gb/DVCAM DRV-1000P drive/ Pan NV-DX1&-DX100/MSP8/WS2/PI11/C3D etc.[/size]
[size=84]P4 Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz/Elite NVidia NF650iSLIT-A/2 Gb dual channel FSB 1333 MHz/Gainward NVidia 7300/2 x 80 Gb, 1 x 300 Gb, 1 x 200 Gb/DVCAM DRV-1000P drive/ Pan NV-DX1&-DX100/MSP8/WS2/PI11/C3D etc.[/size]
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Terry Stetler
- Posts: 973
- Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:34 pm
- Location: Westland, Michigan USA
Color correction;
Devil is correct; previewing color correction on a TV or S-video monitor is the ONLY way to do it properly, which is why studios do it that way. Computer monitors and TV's use entirely different color systems, not to mention monitors are non-interlaced and TV's and S-Video monitors are interlaced. Don't mix & (try to) match.
If TV's are your target display device (for DVD's, tapes....whatever) a TV or S-Video monitor is where you should preview your edits. Doing otherwise will cause you problems. No "if" to it.
Another factor in favor of previewing on a TV or S-Video monitor is overscan, a normal feature of TV's intended to compensate for one being out of adjustment. Basically a video frame such as those shot by a camcorder has extra material on all sides to allow for a TV's horizontal or vertical maladjustment. This extra material shows on the edit monitor but not on the TV. Monitors don't use it and TV's do.
The problem: if you preview on a monitor you'll see a dulplicate of the edit frame with everything included. When played on a TV by your customer up to 20% of what was in the edit frame will be cut off by the TV's overscan.
Previewing on a TV or S-Video monitor is the only way to be sure that overscan won't affect your edit, especiallly the graphics & other overlays and titles.
Once everyone is using HDTV's this won't be an issue, but for now....
Display adapters;
My AGP based rigs mostly have Matrox P-750's. This lets me set up a dual display and have a high quality TV-out (10 bit internal processing) for color corrections, previews, recording to tape (some still want it
) etc.
The Matrox triplehead P-cards (Parhelia, P-750) are much higher performing than the G-cards but still are not gamers. They also have a higher quality TV out than just about any card on the market. They can do single monitor + TV-out, dual monitor + TV-out or triplehead spanned (a 3 monitor wide desktop at up to 3840x1280).
TH spanned has to be seen to be believed
There is also the P-650, which is a cheaper dualhead version of the P-750. 1 monitor + TV out or two monitors. No TH without an addon board.
For PCIe systems Matrox also makes the 16x PCIe APVe, which is basicallly a PCIe Parhelia with either SD or HD TV-outs. When set up for SD TV-out it also has SD analog capture. Capture is not available with it's set up for HD TV-out, but these modes can be so easily switched between that doing SD capture isn't a big problem even in an HD editing rig.
They also offer a PCIe version of the P-650 card. This one is dualhead (2 monitors or 1 monitor and an SD TV-out) at a much lower price than the APVe.
Also available is a 1x PCIe version of the G-550, but its TV-out isn't up to that of the P-cards or APVe.
Devil is correct; previewing color correction on a TV or S-video monitor is the ONLY way to do it properly, which is why studios do it that way. Computer monitors and TV's use entirely different color systems, not to mention monitors are non-interlaced and TV's and S-Video monitors are interlaced. Don't mix & (try to) match.
If TV's are your target display device (for DVD's, tapes....whatever) a TV or S-Video monitor is where you should preview your edits. Doing otherwise will cause you problems. No "if" to it.
Another factor in favor of previewing on a TV or S-Video monitor is overscan, a normal feature of TV's intended to compensate for one being out of adjustment. Basically a video frame such as those shot by a camcorder has extra material on all sides to allow for a TV's horizontal or vertical maladjustment. This extra material shows on the edit monitor but not on the TV. Monitors don't use it and TV's do.
The problem: if you preview on a monitor you'll see a dulplicate of the edit frame with everything included. When played on a TV by your customer up to 20% of what was in the edit frame will be cut off by the TV's overscan.
Previewing on a TV or S-Video monitor is the only way to be sure that overscan won't affect your edit, especiallly the graphics & other overlays and titles.
Once everyone is using HDTV's this won't be an issue, but for now....
Display adapters;
My AGP based rigs mostly have Matrox P-750's. This lets me set up a dual display and have a high quality TV-out (10 bit internal processing) for color corrections, previews, recording to tape (some still want it
) etc.The Matrox triplehead P-cards (Parhelia, P-750) are much higher performing than the G-cards but still are not gamers. They also have a higher quality TV out than just about any card on the market. They can do single monitor + TV-out, dual monitor + TV-out or triplehead spanned (a 3 monitor wide desktop at up to 3840x1280).
TH spanned has to be seen to be believed
There is also the P-650, which is a cheaper dualhead version of the P-750. 1 monitor + TV out or two monitors. No TH without an addon board.
For PCIe systems Matrox also makes the 16x PCIe APVe, which is basicallly a PCIe Parhelia with either SD or HD TV-outs. When set up for SD TV-out it also has SD analog capture. Capture is not available with it's set up for HD TV-out, but these modes can be so easily switched between that doing SD capture isn't a big problem even in an HD editing rig.
They also offer a PCIe version of the P-650 card. This one is dualhead (2 monitors or 1 monitor and an SD TV-out) at a much lower price than the APVe.
Also available is a 1x PCIe version of the G-550, but its TV-out isn't up to that of the P-cards or APVe.
Terry Stetler
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MSP maniac!
Thanks for your replies. Greatly appreciated.
Overscan
Yes I have noticed this, especially when putting titles to the side. What looks right on your computer monitor is way different on the TV. So I agree, for display on TV, overscan needs to be taken into account and the only way to do this is to preview on TV.
Brightness/Contrast
Same here because these are both different on a TV. You can match roughly on the monitor but better displayed on a TV.
Colour correction
I shoot short films and have usually been the director, but I did rough cuts for the editor on MSP6.5/7. I have experimented quite a bit with colour correction as I am always faced with scenes that have to be cut together that don't match exactly.
What I have found is that poorly colour balanced clips played together on the TV don't look too bad but not quite right. Trying to correct this on the TV seems very difficult as you are working with small gradations in colour.
When I play these same clips on the CRT monitor, slight differences are suddenly greatly magnified and consequently it is much easier to correct. If you can get it almost right on the monitor, it will look indistinguishable on the TV. But TV seems fiddly and provides an unsatisfactory outcome for me.
Not sure what is going on but for me, the computer monitor seems to work much better for colour correction.
Graphics card
Thanks for the info on that. I am limited to AGPx4 at the moment. I dont plan to upgrade the whole computer just yet. Just have xp/Athlon 2.0 and 1 gig ram. I have it set up well for video editing but only with 3 western digital 7200rpm 8mb cache hard drives. I have never experienced instability or slow performance on this machine using different versions of MSP but yes with premiere, pinnacle edition, vegas and Avid DV express. MSP is way faster and that's an important factor for me.
The only upgrade I plan at the moment is the graphics card to a dual head and there seems to be plenty out there. The matrox are more expensive. And I don't want to spend too much untill I've completed another ten or so films when, by then I will most likely upgrade the entire computer.
I really like the idea of the ADC box taking the firewire and converting it out to preview on the TV. But at this point, I think I will stick with the one computer monitor and a good TV out from the card. If I want to preview through firewire, then I can use the camcorder and see how my system handles it all.
There is nothing worse than upgrading peripherals beyond the capacity of the system. I also agree with the stretched timeline across two monitors. Works for some people but not me.
So, coming to a decision, I guess I am looking for an AGP 4x card with a TV out and dual ramdacs. I think that is the problem with my Geforce 2, it only has one video overlay and has to keep switching.
Matrox might be a bit expensive for now although there are some 32meg 450's (or 550's) going on ebay cheap but I question the use of a 32meg card.
So at the moment I would be looking at a Nvidia or ATI card and wondering if anyone has used these cards with success. I am not yet convinced that it will be possible to use one of these cardsd for a satisfactory outcome.
Overscan
Yes I have noticed this, especially when putting titles to the side. What looks right on your computer monitor is way different on the TV. So I agree, for display on TV, overscan needs to be taken into account and the only way to do this is to preview on TV.
Brightness/Contrast
Same here because these are both different on a TV. You can match roughly on the monitor but better displayed on a TV.
Colour correction
I shoot short films and have usually been the director, but I did rough cuts for the editor on MSP6.5/7. I have experimented quite a bit with colour correction as I am always faced with scenes that have to be cut together that don't match exactly.
What I have found is that poorly colour balanced clips played together on the TV don't look too bad but not quite right. Trying to correct this on the TV seems very difficult as you are working with small gradations in colour.
When I play these same clips on the CRT monitor, slight differences are suddenly greatly magnified and consequently it is much easier to correct. If you can get it almost right on the monitor, it will look indistinguishable on the TV. But TV seems fiddly and provides an unsatisfactory outcome for me.
Not sure what is going on but for me, the computer monitor seems to work much better for colour correction.
Graphics card
Thanks for the info on that. I am limited to AGPx4 at the moment. I dont plan to upgrade the whole computer just yet. Just have xp/Athlon 2.0 and 1 gig ram. I have it set up well for video editing but only with 3 western digital 7200rpm 8mb cache hard drives. I have never experienced instability or slow performance on this machine using different versions of MSP but yes with premiere, pinnacle edition, vegas and Avid DV express. MSP is way faster and that's an important factor for me.
The only upgrade I plan at the moment is the graphics card to a dual head and there seems to be plenty out there. The matrox are more expensive. And I don't want to spend too much untill I've completed another ten or so films when, by then I will most likely upgrade the entire computer.
I really like the idea of the ADC box taking the firewire and converting it out to preview on the TV. But at this point, I think I will stick with the one computer monitor and a good TV out from the card. If I want to preview through firewire, then I can use the camcorder and see how my system handles it all.
There is nothing worse than upgrading peripherals beyond the capacity of the system. I also agree with the stretched timeline across two monitors. Works for some people but not me.
So, coming to a decision, I guess I am looking for an AGP 4x card with a TV out and dual ramdacs. I think that is the problem with my Geforce 2, it only has one video overlay and has to keep switching.
Matrox might be a bit expensive for now although there are some 32meg 450's (or 550's) going on ebay cheap but I question the use of a 32meg card.
So at the moment I would be looking at a Nvidia or ATI card and wondering if anyone has used these cards with success. I am not yet convinced that it will be possible to use one of these cardsd for a satisfactory outcome.
My G-550 is 32 Mb and it works just fine for editing, feeding two 18.1" TFTs at 1280x1024.
[b][i][color=red]Devil[/color][/i][/b]
[size=84]P4 Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz/Elite NVidia NF650iSLIT-A/2 Gb dual channel FSB 1333 MHz/Gainward NVidia 7300/2 x 80 Gb, 1 x 300 Gb, 1 x 200 Gb/DVCAM DRV-1000P drive/ Pan NV-DX1&-DX100/MSP8/WS2/PI11/C3D etc.[/size]
[size=84]P4 Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz/Elite NVidia NF650iSLIT-A/2 Gb dual channel FSB 1333 MHz/Gainward NVidia 7300/2 x 80 Gb, 1 x 300 Gb, 1 x 200 Gb/DVCAM DRV-1000P drive/ Pan NV-DX1&-DX100/MSP8/WS2/PI11/C3D etc.[/size]
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MSP maniac!
No problem. Prior to buying the TFTs, I had 2 21" CRTs at 1024x768 at, I think, 82.5 Hz (can't be sure, but they were at least 80, limited by the monitors)
I much prefer the LCDs, but that is personal.
I much prefer the LCDs, but that is personal.
[b][i][color=red]Devil[/color][/i][/b]
[size=84]P4 Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz/Elite NVidia NF650iSLIT-A/2 Gb dual channel FSB 1333 MHz/Gainward NVidia 7300/2 x 80 Gb, 1 x 300 Gb, 1 x 200 Gb/DVCAM DRV-1000P drive/ Pan NV-DX1&-DX100/MSP8/WS2/PI11/C3D etc.[/size]
[size=84]P4 Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz/Elite NVidia NF650iSLIT-A/2 Gb dual channel FSB 1333 MHz/Gainward NVidia 7300/2 x 80 Gb, 1 x 300 Gb, 1 x 200 Gb/DVCAM DRV-1000P drive/ Pan NV-DX1&-DX100/MSP8/WS2/PI11/C3D etc.[/size]
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Terry Stetler
- Posts: 973
- Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:34 pm
- Location: Westland, Michigan USA
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MSP maniac!
Thanks, the Parhelia card is a bit expensive at $800.00AUD for my current set up. For the moment, I think I will stick with the gaming cards from ATI and Nvidia to try to get a CRT and TV setup.
I should be able to get one with dual ramdacs and s-video out with about 256mb ram for around $160.00, leaving me some money for an S-video TV.
I can't complain to much with my current set up other than the annoying flicker between previews which I think is due to the geforce 2 400mx having only a single ramdac.
I have always used Nvidia cards but I may give ATI a go, I will have to see what their offerings are but would probably be looking at something like the 9550 radeon.
Don't know if anyone has used this card with MSP 8, whether it works or not. See how we go.
I should be able to get one with dual ramdacs and s-video out with about 256mb ram for around $160.00, leaving me some money for an S-video TV.
I can't complain to much with my current set up other than the annoying flicker between previews which I think is due to the geforce 2 400mx having only a single ramdac.
I have always used Nvidia cards but I may give ATI a go, I will have to see what their offerings are but would probably be looking at something like the 9550 radeon.
Don't know if anyone has used this card with MSP 8, whether it works or not. See how we go.
Instead of getting an S-video TV, you could get one of these cables and connect it to any TV or video monitor.
http://www.svideo.com/pc2tv.html
Check newegg.com for prices. In that price range you should be able to get ATI AIW9600XT or something higher than 5900 series w/VIVO by Nvidia.
http://www.svideo.com/pc2tv.html
Check newegg.com for prices. In that price range you should be able to get ATI AIW9600XT or something higher than 5900 series w/VIVO by Nvidia.
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sjj1805
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MSP maniac!
Just in case you aren't aware - I confess I wasn't until a few days ago.
The graphics slot on the newer motherboards has changed to PCIe and your old Motherboard Graphics card will not fit.
If you are thinking of updating your motherboard in the near future you would probably be better keeping what you have got and then upgrade both items together.
I thought I would treat two of my 3 sons to an upgrade each and went out and bought a new motherboards, processors and RAM thinking I would rip their exisiting one's out and replace them with these.
Ended up having to go out and get 2 new graphics cards due to these PCIe slots!!
Just in case you aren't aware - I confess I wasn't until a few days ago.
The graphics slot on the newer motherboards has changed to PCIe and your old Motherboard Graphics card will not fit.
If you are thinking of updating your motherboard in the near future you would probably be better keeping what you have got and then upgrade both items together.
I thought I would treat two of my 3 sons to an upgrade each and went out and bought a new motherboards, processors and RAM thinking I would rip their exisiting one's out and replace them with these.
Ended up having to go out and get 2 new graphics cards due to these PCIe slots!!
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MSP maniac!
Thanks for the link, I thought an s-video TV might be better quality although while I was at that site, I found this:rwernyei wrote:Instead of getting an S-video TV, you could get one of these cables and connect it to any TV or video monitor.
http://www.svideo.com/pc2tv.html
Check newegg.com for prices. In that price range you should be able to get ATI AIW9600XT or something higher than 5900 series w/VIVO by Nvidia.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Our PC to Component Video Convertor allows you to connect a VGA signal from a PC to the component video inputs of your television. The advantage of this convertor is that it provides you with a better picture than if you input through the s-video or composite video inputs.
This product is similar to our "PC to TV" convertor but has Component Video outputs via three color-coded (red, green, blue) jacks.
This product is powered through a USB port on the computer. We offer a separate "wall-transformer" if you do not want to use a USB port to power this unit.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
That looks pretty interesting, straight into my component video vega.
With the PCIe thing, no AGP at all? Thanks for the warning, oh well, I won't be upgrading for another year. As long as I can get rid of this annoying flicker everytime I send video to the TV things will be much better. But to do that, I will have to get a new card.
AIW9600XT is still $400.00AUD although it is a nice card, I won't need the analogue inputs, I only run DV.
I'll hava a look tomorrow.