Why use black magic devices to playback video instead of just playback in pro tools?

[Rockman413]

Hi there,
Just wondering : we can playback the video in pro tools session and put the window on another screen, what’s the reason we should spend more money on black magic or Aja devices to have pro tools output video thru that?

Thanks

[BScout]

You can do a direct video out (this one may not be important to most people) (ie, hardware video online that outputs only the picture that can be fed to screens and projectors)

You can genlock the picture (if the playback video card supports it) so that the picture is in frame sync. This one is important to post-production and dialogue editors to keep absolute sync. The video offsets in Pro Tools are nowhere near as consistently accurate as actually have a playback video card and Pro Tools both on genlock/black burst sync (need Sync HD also for Pro Tools to do this)

[Eric Lambert]

Great question. For years, video playback ate too many system resources and so offloading the movie to an external codec, like a Blackmagic or Canopus or one of the other FW/TB/USB boxes, helped ProTools operate more freely. I used a Canopus for years, then switched to a Blackmagic, but for the past year I've been sending video to a 2nd monitor which is connected to my trashcan Mac's HDMI port and it works swimmingly. AND there's the option of throwing plugin windows over to that monitor if the main desktop gets crowded. There has been no real downside to this.

Another advantage is that I no longer need to convert videos to DV, since that's what the external boxes preferred to work with. When a video comes in, I simply import into ProTools, drag to the other window, hit Full Screen and that's it.

So, unless you have a slower machine and need to get video processing off your main system, or if you don't have the physical outputs for a dedicated TV, you can safely forgo the Blackmagic. We've done this in four or five different rooms which once used Blackmagic or Canopus boxes and there's no going back in any of them.

[LDS]

Originally Posted by BScout

You can do a direct video out (this one may not be important to most people) (ie, hardware video online that outputs only the picture that can be fed to screens and projectors)

You can genlock the picture (if the playback video card supports it) so that the picture is in frame sync. This one is important to post-production and dialogue editors to keep absolute sync. The video offsets in Pro Tools are nowhere near as consistently accurate as actually have a playback video card and Pro Tools both on genlock/black burst sync (need Sync HD also for Pro Tools to do this)

Not to mention the benefits if has for stuff like ADR, working/viewing with clients, or even creativity. The last is probably quite subjective, but I do like having a playback monitor that is more associated with my audio monitoring than my Pro Tools workspaces. The former is larger and mounted in a fixed location - more or less treated as 'the end game', while I have a pair of monitors on arms that I can drag forward, etc for the Pro Tools edit and mix window.

I do still playback video from within a window in Pro Tools for editing, etc... but I do often get amazed by how much sync, or the tone and feel of work changes when moving to a bigger, dedicated screen.