Mac External Display Resolution Issues
An editor I work with likes to have his iMac in the center, his Apple Thunderbolt Display to the left, a broadcast monitor to the right, and a large consumer TV on the wall for clients to see from the couch behind him. He also doesn’t like to use I/O devices from the likes of AJA, Blackmagic Design, and Matrox as he finds them fussy. He’s not wrong, but supporting this setup without dedicated hardware has its own set of problems.
The iMac has two Thunderbolt ports so naturally one is taken up by the Thunderbolt Display which then has two Thunderbolt hard drives daisy-chained off of it. The iMac’s second port then has a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter which runs to an HDMI splitter which goes to the two broadcast monitors. It’s not pretty, but it does mean he gets three Desktop screens to work with when the broadcast monitor is not in use by Premiere Pro’s Mercury Transmit.
Recently this editor called me in to his bay because he realized his client monitors (which, remember, are running off the same HDMI signal) were being squeezed down and letterboxing was occurring. I tried the usual round of power cycling and reconnecting monitors, restarting the machine, and turning Mercury Transmit on and off. Nothing helped. I finally checked the settings on one monitor and noticed it was claiming the signal it was receiving was 1920×1200 which was funny because a) it should have been 1920×1080 and b) that was a 1080p monitor, so it couldn’t even show all the 1920×1200 it was claiming to receive. The next stop was to System Preferences > Displays to find that yes, OS X (version 10.9.5) was sending a display signal at 1920×1200.
The Trick
Clearly some part of the HDMI handshake was getting confused. However, under the list of available resolutions there was no 1920×1080. There is, however, a trick. Hold the option key when clicking Scaled in System Preferences > Displays and OS X will show you all possible resolutions as a sort of override to what it thinks.
Finally, on that list, I found 1080p as an option. The editor could get back to work.
Effect Masks as a Better Garbage Matte in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014
Easily one of the most anticipated and discussed features in Premiere Pro CC 2014 has been Masking and Tracking Effects. It is an incredibly useful feature, but one whose boundaries were quickly found. The CC 2014.1 release blessed us with a free-draw polygon pen tool and adjustable on-screen Bezier adjustments. These are quite frankly awesome and I already do not like to think about using Premiere Pro without them.
However, having fine masking controls over effects only highlights the comparatively crude Garbage Matte the program has to offer. 16 points are only so useful when they are hard polygons with not a feather in sight.
So I’ve come up with a little trick that lets you use the more advanced masking and tracking features when using the Garbage Matte effect. This will work in Premiere Pro CC 2014 and 2014.1.
- Apply a Four-Point Garbage Matte to the clip in question.
- In the Effect Controls Panel (Shift+5) click on the effect name so the points are visible in the Program Monitor.
- Drag all the points off of your frame. It can help to change the Zoom level so you can see the space outside your frame. The clip you are masking is now invisible.
- In the Effect Controls click on the type of mask you’d like: ellipse, polygon, or free draw.
- Adjust, invert, and feather to taste.
This little trick is fast and also means you can use tracking as well. I use this often when I have a client in the room during a finishing session and we notice a little something in the frame that needs to be removed. By duping the clip to a second layer and masking around a clean part of the frame you can then reposition the masked clip to cover the unwanted part of the bottom layer. Obviously for more complex keyframing and tracking a Dynamic Link to AfterEffects will be better, but this method can work wonders when the quick and dirty is what you need.