Any quick practical/tested opinions on edit suite production monitors for 3D - active/passive, size, anything real world - not the $30,000 stuff but maybe the $1,000 tv's or gaming gear??

thanks

Paul

For less than $1000 your going to limited to consumer TV's or something like a Zalman. I have a Zalman M215W in my edit suite for general 3D work. It's OK, does the job and the contrast is very good, but it is fiddly to get calibrated accurately and the vertical viewing angle is very narrow. I also have a 42" LG 3D TV which I use for checking at the finals stages. I find the 42" too big during the edit as I have limited space in the suite so I am quite close to my monitors.

Whatever you get you want passive IMHO. Sitting in front of a flickering active TV or monitor for several hours a day is no fun.

You can do a lot during edit with just anaglyph on a good quality computer monitor to be honest, at least as far as checking the stereo is concerned. I didn't really start off doing this much but do so more and more now because it's so quick and easy, especially with good software and decent quality red/cyan glasses.

Nothing beats checking it on a proper 3D TV though and as Alister says passive is really the way to go for this. I use a 47" LG LD950 which is now well below $1000 and really pretty good but they are not for colour grading. I have a couple of the smaller LG DM2780 27" passive 3D TV's as well and use them as glorified monitors. These use the same polarised glasses as the larger 47" (RealD) whereas their smaller 23" 3D monitors use different polarisation. The DM2780 is a steal, 3D not as good as the LD950 but at less than $300...

I've also got a Panasonic 50VT20 active plasma TV (around $1500-2000) which really does give the best picture quality, is capable of some level of calibration and great for checking blu-rays but if you really want to do grading you'll need a pro calibrated 3D monitor like the big JVC at least and these are $5-7k and up - or do the grading on a 2D screen only - or even leave that to a pro grading suite if it's not out of budget. Depends on the market for your final product and your available budget.

On my editing place I use nvidia 3D vision, a 120 Hz ASUS monitor, a nvidia Quadro 2000D and Vegas Pro (works also with Vegas Moviestudio HD Platinum). It is a consumer solution where you should calibrate the monitor - but it works fine for me.

Disadvantage: active glasses
Advantage: full resolution.

Building on what Wolfgang said, all passive systems are half-res, correct?(outside of two projector systems) Does this affect depth resolution? Also, what is the playback pipeline people are using? I assume outputting a SBS that the TVs are converting on the fly. But, bringing it back to depth resolution. Is there any real 'mistakes' that setting depth at half-res might introduce or is it pretty safe to do so and will just look better at full-res?

Yes, all passive systems are half resolution... but that does not influenc the depth resolution! We are talking here about line resolution in your preview system.

My critic with the half resolution on our cutting computers is: I know from the first HDV days that you are not able to recognize a very light unsharpness, if you edit with half resolution. You know, for example a person in front of a wall, and the camera has fokused on the wall and the person is not sharp really. You would not see that with half resolution, but with full resolution you see that.

And yes, there are workarounds: you can also assess sharpness within 2D - nobody says that we edit our 3D footage only in 3D all the time! But I do not like that - but that is my opinion.

3D monitor setup is very straightforward - edit suite is running on your computer and all your 2D and/or anaglyph display options are available to your there (including full res 2D to check sharpness etc) and then an HDMI out if you're using a consumer 3D TV (usually just side by side for the TV to convert).

If you want anything more exotic like full frame-packed display then I normally just burn a blu-ray and watch it on the active plasma, but I don't bother with that until right at the end of an edit. You could use an external 3D video convertor like a Hyperdeck Studio 3D although I'm not sure what the work flow would be here, since FCP can't output live a frame-packed 3D stream as far as I know - higher-end 3D suites can of course so it depends where you are in the production food chain. Since the majority of my 3D delivery is not blu-ray side-by-side is fine.

Passive "half resolution" is fine for depth checks during edit and is far less strain on the old eyeballs in my experience. It certainly does not look like half-resolution when you watch it, the brain does some funny integration of the two images and my personal opinion is that it looks about "three-quarter" resolution to your visual perception.

I've checked most consumer 3D TV's and non appear to accept frame packing - a shame because investing in a Grass Valley 3G Elite will give you a full resolution output, but at a whopping price tag, also the Matrox UltraStudio 3D is a great tool, at a good price too, but you need a Thunderbolt port, so good for MAC right now, but PC's are very few and far between, I think there are only two mobo's with a Thunderbolt port available at the present time.

My preference is to use Edius with a Spark card - this gives you HDMI output switchable with a keyboard stroke between L,R, Anaglyph, SBS, Checkerboard, Over Under and L&R Dual Stream (this ONLY works with the above mentioned 3G card)

So editing is pretty simple, I usually work with a 2D left eye output, which is full resolution and good for grading ( I also have a Tube HD monitor for this ) and then flip to 3D whenever needed - it certainly reduces fatigue, and I find the half resolution image perfectly OK as long as you are at the right viewing distance - isn't it supposed to be 3.5 x picture height from the screen?

The Matrox Mini will give you an HDMI output for After Effects and many other applications, AE can be monitored with Anaglyph, SBS , Over Under or Line Interleave (which I can't make work)

So looks like LG's latest "Nano LED" passive 3D is the way to go ( a bit pricey! ) unless you are seriously loaded!

Paul :-)

Paul, not true about consumer 3D TV's not handling frame-packing - all 3D TV's will accept frame-packed 3D video.

If they didn't they wouldn't be able to play 3D blu-ray discs, which are always frame-packed at 24fps.

Cheers

Neil

Absolutely true! indeed, I am asleep at the wheel -

Paul zzzzzzzzzzz

You're in Ibiza - too much alcohol and sunshine clearly tsk tsk ;)

Actually I'm in Devon at the moment - so I must have rust in my pipes or a pasty lodged somewhere!

There is a cheap consumer alternative - take nvidia 3D vision and use that for 3D editing. And use an 102 Hz 3D monitor. That works fine with Vegas, Vegas Moviestudio HD Platinum (here you need a Qudro, a Q2000D will be enough). It will work with Edius 6.5 as far as I know. It does not good work with Powerdirector 10. And yes, it needs active glasses.

Wouldn't want to wear heavy active glasses and watch a flickering image for extended periods. Passive preferable for editing IMHO.

Hi,
I would need your advice in regard of a Final Cut Pro edit suite 3D monitor output.
I would like to get the LG DM2780D TFT
(LG DM2780D 27" LED LCD 3D FULL HD Monitor TV: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories)
which is also working as a 3D television.
Can I connect this to my MacPro as a second display and monitor my 3D content working in Final Cut Pro with Stereo 3D Toolbox?
Or do I need a Blackmagic Decklink Extrem 3D for output via HDMI 1.4?

I would prefer the "second display option", because I am still running on an old MacPro PPC G5 Quad and I have only the Decklink Extrem HD. The new Decklink Extreme 3D is not running on PPC, Intel-only it says on the Blackmagic site.

Thank you very much for your input. Maybe there is another option which I don't see, how to run a passive 3D monitoring on my good old G5 Quad?
If not, I need to get a new MacPro with Deckling Extrem 3D...

Jürgen

Juergen, I have two LG DM2780D's and just connect them via HDMI from my Macbook and iMac. They work fine. As long as you can provide an HDMI connection they'll be ok - if you have DVI then just buy a simple DVI-to-HDMI adapter (about 10 euros).

In Final Cut go to the View menu and then External Video and select All Frames and Refresh A/V when you connect. Sometimes it takes a bit of fiddling but once it's established the connection it's pretty solid. Stereo3DToolbox runs as normal and all the 3D modes can output to the second monitor. You will have to put the TV into 3D mode manually though.

To my delight I discovered that these great little 3D TV/monitors can also play .mov files directly off a USB stick, just like their big brother the LG LD950. I was quite surprised, because just about every other consumer TV out there will only play DivX from their USB ports. Being able to put side-by-side quicktime movies onto a USB stick and play it out as a 3D showreel is a pretty handy thing to be able to do.

By the way, I think these 2780's are a bargain, I got mine for about £230 + VAT each.

Neil, Thanks a lot for your reply.
So that means, the LG will accept on its HDMI IN a DVI side-by-side signal coming from Final Cut Pro (with Stereo 3D Toolbox Plug-In), which is being outputted via a DVI-HDMI adapter?
Is this correct? That sound too good to be true!?!
Jürgen

It's true Juergen.

I've been driving 3D monitors for nearly 2 years from Macs and never spent more than £7 for an adapter plus the cost of an HDMI cable.