Cubase and 4K monitors?

Can you explain font scalability as a problem? I thought that a 4K monitor would have the same pixel density (ppi) as my HD monitors but 4X the screen real estate.

think about what you just wrote

It seems to me that the fonts which are made up of pixels occupy the same screen real estate (physical size)on a 4K as on an HD monitor.

If this wrong could you please explain?

it depends on the type of font … just ask all the retina display people how a lot of apps are rendering for them.

so fonts that fully scale such as truetype … have a min max ratio … they will fill the same number of pixels but as a ratio. The denser the pixel space, the more warped the perspective gets, the blockier the font looks.

Non-scaling fonts that are prerendered at various points sizes have a different version of that problem. They only get so small or so big. And as the applications scale the dynamic background, the fonts start bleeding all over everything.

EDIT: It really has to do with how the font gets rendered before display and if that will translate to the pixel density that the video card and OS rendering system support.

Hi,

Interesting topic. Now I’m using Dell 2560x1440 pixels. Its good to see more (real estate). But not everything is perfect. Look at screens. Mix console stretched to full scale and sized to smaller. I decide to make it smaller because when every modules are on the screen is a mess to my eyes…

Full screen: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78857404/serenityMC.png

Sized: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78857404/Cubase%207.0.5.png

What are you favorite ?

Yeah, I see it now. Don’t think It’ll bother me though as I don’t wan’t the Console (for example) to be bigger. I just want more space for all the other windows, VST instruments especially.

Dislayport supports 3840 × 2160 × 30 bpp @ 60 Hz, HDMI does support 4096×2160 24bpp @ 60 but only if you have HDMI 2, none of the budget 4k TV’s support either of these standards, so far.

It doesn’t matter, if the software doesn’t handle font scaling for that resolution it will look anywhere from weird to unreadable, even if you have it taking up the same screen area as before. It’s the pixel density that is the problem. Again, it’s only some applications … and a major pain for web stuff.

Just as an example of the problem… let’s take our beloved new Mixer;

It is clearly designed to be scale-able. Good for the Borgz right? errr… that depends. If the designer are all scaling for pixel density on a 15" laptop screen at say 1400x900, that does not account for 3840x2160 at all. It might look fabulous on the laptop and be absolutely unreadable squiggles with the squiglled words all over the bounderies of the boxes they are supposed to be in at 3840x2160.

This is enlightening. I doubt that 30 vs 60 hz makes a diff to me, but if there is a scaling problem…

Or is there? Is C7 scaled for a small laptop display? If so the Console looks great at 1920X1080, a resolution which is so widespread I’m questioning the idea that Steinberg didn’t test it .

What I am looking for is someone who has actually USED C7 on a 4K monitor, not just opinions. Anyone? So far no takers.

I’d love to have a 3840X2160 monitor, but I don’t want to be the first one in the pool when nobody has checked for sharks yet.

It makes a huge difference, using 30Hz for any lenght of time is tiring


What I am looking for is someone who has actually USED C7 on a 4K monitor, not just opinions. Anyone? So far no takers.

Given that the cheapest 4k monitors are around 4000 euros I doubt many, or any, are using it as cubase monitors (the budget TV’s will not really make it as monitors due to lack of suitable interfaces, which will also limit their effectiveness as 4kTV’s or with UHD discs in the future, only the Sony TV’s are suitable as monitors and they are expensive)

I have used Cubase 6x with an IBM T221 at 3840x2400 (WQUXGA), actually a slightly higher resolution than 4k, a few items became too small for comfort but that monitor is fairly small, I imagine that with a monitor that is a whopping 80cm from corner to corner (ca 31") like those cheap 4k monitors this will not be an issue, and with Steinberg slowly but surely making the program scalable this will not be an issue in the future, regardless of resolution.

The Sony 4Ks are only 30Hz at 3840x2160 as well, because they only have HDMI 1.4 inputs. HDMI 2.0 is not likely to be out until later this year or into next. Then you have to wait until there are TVs that will handle it. LG has promised that their 4K TVs will be hardware upgradable to HDMI 2.0, but they are even more expensive than the Sony’s.

(Unfortunately, the Sonys have their fancy speakers at the sides, extending the width considerably. They might sound great, but they might not be comparable – in performance or familiarity – to the nearfield monitors you have now.)

We watch BluRays on our TVs at 24Hz, so Cubase’s fairly static display should not be a problem. If you do video, I suggest putting its window on its own display. No point in paying to make your video handle your whole 4K display when only a small part of it requires the performance - subcontract out your video to a cheap small TV, or if the 4K you get can handle picture-in-picture (Seikis can’t, and on some TVs, the antenna has to be one of the sources), feed one of the video card’s outputs with the video window into it as a ‘separate’ monitor.

As for font scaling and comparisons to ‘retina’ displays, if the pixels on the 4K monitor are roughly the same size as on the current monitors, there is NO ISSUE with scaling, because there is no need to scale. A 40" 4K TV is like 4 x 20" 1920x1080 monitors, and a 50" is like 4 x 25". The pixels sizes would only be a few % different in size to most monitors, and hence neither of these would require scaling for use with computers.

The issue with retina displays is that the pixels are much smaller than on normal monitors, because they are meant to be too small to be seen individually, but this conflicts with OSs like Windows and OSX, that have relied upon the pixels being sharply seen so that text can be readable. Instead, all dialogs and icons end up being tiny, and hence the requirement for everything to be scaled up so that they look like the size we are used to.

We are keenly interested in going 4K, but ideally we would want to be able to use them as TVs as well, reducing monitors and a TV to one. While the Seikis have been praised for the look of their 4K screens, they are not so keenly received as to their standard Full HD performance. However, their price is low enough (especially compared to my Dell 30"s) that they could be used as monitors for a year while the market sorts itself out. 4K is twice the pixels that each Dell 30" (2560x1600) has, but one large monitor is way more flexible.

Now we just have to wait until they (or reasonable ones from another Chinese OEM) are available in Australia.

Well done Patanjali. Thanks for the explanation.

This isn’t 100% correct … video is typically shot or converted to 24fps which can be translated by whatever video engine the display has to a comparable refresh rate. Computers generate refresh rate based feeds which can be very irritating at lower or non-matching frequencies.

Well, what refresh rate stuff gets into the TV, what it is actually displayed at, and what it looks like are different things.

That is why a particular TV has to be seen to know whether it actually works as a monitor. At this stage, all anecdotal observations/reviews are that the Seikis appear to be a reasonable 4K monitors, as long as the vertical lock is off. The Seiki site even proffers their use as 4K monitors. They are not gloss screens either. However, the same reviewers cite that as Full HD TVs, there are much better TVs at lower prices.

Until DisplayPort connections are included, they (and any other HDMI 1.4 only TVs) are just not going to cut it for gamers, or video professionals. Mind you, Red (professional video camera makers) bought heaps of them.

If one wants to run 4K video at high refresh rates, multiple top-end video cards are required, which is why I suggested feeding video in at lower resolution into another monitor or an actual TV(with overscan off), or timecode sync to a separate video machine.

I get what you are saying, but the techy part is usually too confusing to most people who just want to use TVs as monitors but then find out it sucks for the average guy who went out and bought a low end TV and hooked it up to a low end laptop. They think HD is HD, or hell that HD is actually a high resolution for that matter. It is a good resolution for TV/Video.

However, when you start getting into pixel density and refresh rates required to support a computer experience … that’s an entirely different kettle of fish, and TVs are NOT typically set up to support that. Nor are computers/video cards necessarily set up to support going to a TV either, other than what a TV expects for video, which again, is not ideal for computer screens.

24 fps not Hz, no TV on the market uses 24 Hz as its display rate, or ever did, LCD panels are a single light source, it would be unwatchable at 24Hz due to flicker, your TV is displaying them at 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 times that rate depending on age and technology.

There are projectors that can run on 24Hz without flicker but that is because they are multiple light sources but even the digital movie projectors used in theaters use 48 or 96 fps even though they are dual light sources.

That HDMI is sending the signal as 24Hz does not mean that they will be displayed as such

Nope, Nvidia does not support it in software but AMD/ATI and some Matrox cards with dual outputs allow output combining, so we can use fairly cheap cards to drive 4K screens, we have been using them with IBM T221 and DVI adapters for that purpose for years.

Generically, the limitation with current 4K TVs is exactly about the input rate, not about the display rate after that.

The quality of up-conversion is the next issue with the likes of the Seikis, compared to the major brands that are charging 4-5 times as much. As I have said, if the Seikis will at least work as reasonable monitors for Cubase and general computing (but not necessarily TVs or video editing)

Sorry, what do you mean by ‘output combining’ as it relates to current and future 4K TVs?

When I said about multiple video cards, I was referring to CrossfireX (AMD) and SLI (NVidia) links to combine the GPU power to go out one high bandwidth video port, like DisplayPort or DL-DVI. Most of the power is about getting high framerates for gaming/video, because only one card will handle Cubase non-video stuff at 4K.

I have been eyeing that very monitor and also considering getting 2- 2560x1080 Ultra-wide monitors Stacked

The one thing that I noticed in the reviews for the 4k Monitor is the 30hz rate gives noticeable lag on the mouse.
The reviewer said while it’s noticeable, you can get used to it…sigh… I think I’ll wait til at least 60hz to jump onto my 4k or just go w/an Ultra-wide stacked setup :slight_smile: