Multi-Monitor RED Rocket / Apple Color question

[Travis MacRitchie]

Just finished installing my new RED Rocket equipped Mac Pro...

I'm running out of the computers video card to a 30" cinema display. And out of the Rocket's HD-SDI to a Panasonic LCD for accurate color. So far all good...

But when I am in Apple Color it looks like I'll need a different card other than Rocket to output the external video. A blackmagic or kona or something? Can someone please confirm if this is what I need, and what the cheapest route would be? The kona 3 looks nice, but a bit spendy.

And the last piece of the puzzle... I have a 50" plasma that I want to have running as well for a client monitor. Ideally this would mirror the 17" LCD whether running in RocketCine or Apple Color. Thoughts on how best to hook this into the loop?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Uli Plank]

AJA, Blackmagic and Matrox all have solutions. Depends on the formats you need, Kona is needed for true 2K, while the cheaper ones do 1080 only.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

You need another card like an AJA or BlackMagic to monitor out of Color. No Rocket support in Final Cut Studio as of yet... You don't have to buy the Kona3. The Kona LHi is real nice and a lot less money. Connecting the plasma into the loop isn't terribly difficult.

If you're Panny monitor has HD-SDI pass-thru, you can take the HD-SDI from there and use that to feed the plasma. If there's no pass-thru, you can split the signal using good quality coax splitters -- I recommend the 3GHz rated ones like you would see for DSS feeds. You may also get away with component video splitters or even quality Y-cables if you're not running too far and use good quality cable.

Most likely, your plasma only has HDMI input. If it is 10bit compliant, that's great, you can use the AJA Hi5 HD-SDI to HDMI converter. If your plasma is only 8bit over HDMI, you can feed it right off the Rocket card via a DVI to HDMI cable/adapter.

 

[Travis MacRitchie]

Thanks Jeff.... Two more question for you. My panny monitor does have hd-sdi pass through, but the plasma obviously has no hd-sdi input, so I'd need some sort of aja box to convert it to hdmi, is that correct, or is there an easier way?

And lastly, can RR output through it's DVI and HD-SDI simultaneously, or is it only 1 or the other?

 

[Travis MacRitchie]

Right now I'm looking at getting a blackmagic decklink sdi as it seems the cheapest solution for getting hd-sdi out of fcp and color. That coupled with the AJA Hi5 box to convert the passed through hd-sdi signal to hdmi should let me see RED Rocket feeds and Color feeds live on both the 17" Panny LCD and the 50" Plasma simultaneously. At least I hope so. If you see any issues with any of this please let me know!