Premiere/Cineform preview problems

[Brian Tori]

Premiere Pro 2.0
Cineform 4.3
Nvidia FX5200 Graphics
1440x900 LCD Panel

I currently use Premiere Pro 2.0 to edit HDV files. I recently acquired a Nvidia FX5200 dual head card for a second preview monitor. When using Premiere without Cineform, the program monitor is routed through the Nvidia to my LCD and is displayed correctly: filling the entire LCD panel screen and the image displays instantaneously. so far so good.

I recently installed Cineform into Premiere and the image plays smooth as expected. The problem I am having is when I try to view the program monitor on the same LCD. Two things occur: first, after pressing the spacebar to preview the timeline, there is an image lag between playback on my desktop and playback on the LCD. It takes about two seconds before I see the image on the LCD. When I press the spacebar again to stop playback my LCD goes black instead of pausing the image and the LCD loses sync for a moment.
Second, the aspect of the image from Cineform/Nvidia/Premiere is not filling the entire LCD screen. There is about 1/2" of black on the top and bottom of screen. Although, it looks correct this seems odd to me.

P.S. I have the Cineform playback settings set to "preview on overlay device" selected, and my Nvidia card is set to display "full-screen video"

Any suggestions?

[David Newman]

The error is an old one and due to a couple of reasons. Aspect HD can play and scrub at different resolutions and what you are seeing a monitor resync plus an annoying delay introduced by the NVidia card. The ATI and Matrox card are less annoying (the Parhelia has the shortest resync time.) You can reduce the effect by selected "de-interlace while scrubbing", the only way to completely eliminate it is not use the graphics overlay and use an AJA Xena card instead with Prospect HD/2K. We would like for a straight forward fix, but at the moment our past discussions with NVidia haven't lead anywhere.

[Brian Tori]

Thanks for the info. How about the image not filling the entire screen? Is this common on a panel with resolution of 1440x900?

[David Newman]

Unfortunately the many combinations of screens and video cards leaves me without an answer for that.

[Earl Thurston]

Originally Posted by Brian Tori

How about the image not filling the entire screen? Is this common on a panel with resolution of 1440x900?

This is probably because the video's aspect ratio is 16:9 and most widescreen PC displays (including yours) are 16:10. The difference would leave the black strips you're seeing at the top and bottom of the screen. My Gateway widescreen, 1680x1050 (also 16:10), shows the same bars while I'm viewing HD through the component video inputs.