Alister CHAPMAN

Alister CHAPMAN is a Stereographer and Filmmaker using the CineMonitorHD6 3DView.

About 3DView: "This is a very serious piece of kit!"

"I have been using one of the new TRANSVIDEO Cinemonitor 6 3D monitors with my 3D rigs and I have to say it really rocks. On opening the pelicase that the monitor came in it was immediately obvious that I was dealing with a piece of professional hardware. The construction of the monitor is superb, it feels like it will shrug off the knocks and bumps that are a fact of life on a busy production. The body is made of solid aluminum, no cheap plastic here! The screen is a little odd as it is a 4:3 screen, but when you switch the monitor on you soon realize that this is actually quite clever as the top 16:9 part of the screen (6″ diagonal) is used to show your pictures while the lower part is used to display video waveforms, audio levels and other image information. The monitor can even decode the HDSDi streams embedded timecode, this is an excellent feature. I am using a pair of Convergent Design NanoFlashes (Nano3D) to record the outputs from the cameras at a higher quality level than the internal recordings, so I can’t use the cameras video overlays to show timecode and safe areas as these would end up getting recorded. So having the ability to add all of these things with the monitor is an important feature.

What makes this little monitor really special however is it’s 3D capabilities. It has two HD SDI inputs on the rear and can take two sync sources and combine them into a 3D image. To view the image you can choose either shutter glasses or anaglyph.

The shutter glasses switch between left and right views at the source frame rate, so there is a fair amount of flicker. But you can view, in real time, your 3D video and this makes camera set up really easy and you know that your shots are working in 3D. If the flicker is too bad for you then you can set the monitor to provide an anaglyph display using the traditional red/cyan glasses or a range of other color combinations.

If your using a mirror rig or beam splitter then one of your sources is likely to be flopped (back to front), flipped (upside down) or both. The Cinemonitor 3D can flip and flop (or both) one of the HDSDi inputs, so even with a mirror rig, 3D monitoring is a breeze. The monitors menu system is very simple to use and I was able to set up the 3D monitoring in a matter of moments without having refer to the manual. A large rotary knob is used to scroll through the various menu options and pressing the knob selects them.

Of course a monitor is only ever as good as it’s display screen. The Cinemonitors screen is exceptionally bright and clear, it uses LED back lights, so even though it’s very bright and viewable in daylight, power consumption is still very good. The resolution is very high, blacks are very deep and colours are accurate. You can add custom frame markers such as safe area and it even has a type of colored peaking circuit that TRANSVIDEO call “Focus Helper”, it certainly works and makes focusing very easy!

This is a great monitor for 3D work. It’s doesn’t come cheap, but if you serious about 3D production you will need some kind of 3D monitoring solution and this does an excellent job of just that, in a small, simple to use, rugged package."