I have a Mac Pro 1,1 - OS X 10.68 with FCP 7.0.3. It feeds 2x22" computer screens for editing. There is an AJA Kona LHe board in another slot and a two stream eSATA board in a third slot. What is a GOOD quality (yet inexpensive) way to feed the sequence output of FCP to a flat screen TV through HDMI for client viewing.
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2 x 2.66 GHx Quad-Core Intel Xeon,
The original Mac Pro models featured:
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT video card with 256 MB of GDDR2 SDRAM, one dual-link DVI port and one single-link DVI port.
--according to everymac.com.
Single-link DVI can be converted directly to HDMI up to 1080p with a simple adapter.
If this is not the question you mean to be asking, you will need to provide more information.
My Geforce 7300 GT was 1st Gen. It only has 2 DVI ports. Do I need to install a different video board. Maybe HDMI only?
I have searched for MacPro 1,1 compatible video cards with HDMI out. Not sure if this is what I need to output my FCP sequence video/audio to an HD TV for client viewing. But the two cards of interest are: EVGA GEForce 8400 GS DirectX 10 01G-P3_1303-KR 1GB 64-Bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0x16 HDCP Ready and the Sapphire Radeon HD 6450 1GB 64-Bit DDR3 PCI express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready. Am I barking up the wrong tree? If this is a smart way to go does one card have an advantage over the other?
Thanks for suggesting the DVI to HDMI adapter. However, I am using both DVI ports from the Nvidia video card to feed two - 22" monitors for editing and would like to send a 3rd video source of the FCP sequence output via HDMI to an actual HD-TV for client view during the edit session.
Your older Mac Pro is severely limited in what video cards can be installed, because it features only 32-bit kernel and will not work with cards that want to work in 64-bit kernel. I do not think any of the cards you mentioned will work in it.
Do not dwell on direct HDMI output -- up to 1080p can be converted from DVI with a really cheap adapter, and from Mini DisplayPort with a fairly cheap adapter.
I think your best bet may be to replace your current card with the Apple-firmware 5770 (one aux connector required) or the Apple-firmware 5870 (two aux connects required). These each have three ports (one Dual-Link DVI and two mini DisplayPort) and will show a picture at all times, where newer cards (if they work at all) will not show a picture until the login screen.
An "actual HDTV" and an HDMI Display may seem different because of the way you use them, but they are indistinguishable.
Thanks Grant! I found an Apple-firmware 5770 that should be arriving in the next couple days. I do have another question. Right now I have the original ATI Radeon X1900 (S/B 650739012716 X1900XT PCIE 512M) in slot #1, a dual port eSATA board in slot #2, nothing in slot #3, and an AJA Kona LHe board in slot #4. It looks like there is enough room to move the eSATA to slot #3 and add the 5770 to slot #2 (looks like there is a 6 pin power connector available also). I could then leave X1900 in to feed the editing monitors (2 x Samsung 22") and use one of the DVI ports from the 5770 for the flat screen TV using a DVI to HDMI cable. This might give me higher quality to the TV with the DVI instead of the mini DisplayPort). Questions: Will it work? Could it pull too much power? Will it create too much heat? FYI... I could remove the AJA board (don't use Betacam much anymore) to make more air space. Thanks
The 5770 is a double-wide card -- it takes up two slot positions (but only has one PCI x16 connector).
The 5770 has three ports -- one Dual/Single-Link DVI and two mini DisplayPort. I think you should set the x1900 aside and just use the 5770 alone in the bottom slot. It can keep three displays going and do GPU computation without issue.
The adapters from Mini DisplayPort to HDMI are not very expensive as long as you stay at or below 1920 wide by 1080p. If you drive three displays and the third one does not light up, you may need one ACTIVE adapter (slightly more expensive) that contains signal boosters.
Perfect! Thanks!
Want to get FCP 7 to output to HDMI - HD TV
