Using both to review footage on my Dell 2405 monitor.

The recreation shoot is over…now comes the time to capture all that beautiful footage. I rented an AJ-1200HD deck from a buddy of mine for a day, and was able to borrow a couple different HD SDI converters from another friend (he works at a company that rents FCP systems)…the Decklink HD Link and the AJA HDP…so that I could monitor the output from the 1200HD deck on one of my Dell 2405 LCD displays. I first tried the HD Link.

Decklink HD Link: This required that I download software from the Decklink site, which I did. It also required a USB connection between it and the computer, which I provided. Then I connected it to the deck via HD SDI, then to the monitor thru it’s DVI cable, and into the mixer via RCA for audio monitoring. I got a picture, but it was small…about half size…and had a large black border around it. I consulted the one-page manual and saw that it recommended that I set my monitor resolution to 1220×800. OK…well…how do I do that? I connected it back up to my computer and used the DISPLAY system preferences to make the adjustment. 1280×800 was my only option close to it, so I chose it…then shut down, connected it to the HD Link and…the same thing. Half size. I dig into the monitor settings in the monitor menu and at the bottom it states the resolution to be 1920×1280. Must be the default setting. I dig thru all the menus and find no option to adjust the resolution. So I am stuck with the half size image. Not what I wanted. Plus there was a lot of “noise” on the monitor…vertical waves is the best description. I made sure all the plugs were tight…I even tried the other monitor…same thing.

So I tried the AJA HDP.

AJA HDP: I swapped the boxes out and crawled out from under my desk to see the footage filling the screen. Not quite filling, there was about .5″ of black on the top and bottom, but the full image was present, and filling my screen as much as it could. And the video noise was gone.

OH….MY…GOD!

What an AMAZING image. I saw on my screen live fire from replica cannons. Big booms…smoke filling the screen. Sharp sharp image. I am now seriously considering this adaptor…all I need now is an HD capture card.

UPDATE: I used the HD Link Utility and switched the setting from LCD Monitor to HDTV and it filled the screen. However, the image was the raw squeezed image from the tape…and I had no way of making it look “normal.”