4K through the Mac Pro HDMI port with 10.9.3

Paul Antico sent in this report on his experience with the 10.9.3 update:

I just downloaded 10.9.3 and tested it on my 8 core late 2013 "new" Mac Pro D700s and my 5" late 2013 15" Retina Macbook Pro.

I have a 40" Seiki 4K display hooked up to the Mac Pro HDMI port.

You can now do "retina" on the 4K panel (HIDPI scaling) and it works ok in most situations. This means photos/video/visual content etc. are shown at native 4K resolution on a big 4K monitor or HDMI 4K/UHD TV, but the screen elements and UI remain at a normal size - say what you see on an iMac at 2560x1440 - but much sharper.

It's quite nice, and how the Retina Macbook Pros work. It's not a straight 2x scaling (it actually scales to 5120x2880 and scales down to UHD resolution, but from a slight distance it looks as good as the Retina screen does on my Macbook Pro.)

FCPX on those mentioned computers supports broadcast monitoring (HD, and 4K) via HDMI right out of the computer - in "A/V Output" mode the HDMI panel will show up if turned on. It won't however work with Final Cut Pro X to monitor in 4K UNLESS you turn the HiDPI "retina" scaling off first. That's easy enough to do and is a quick click of a button in display preferences. In fact FCPX won't show any video out on the panel in A/V Output unless the monitor is shown at its native resolution.

This is a little annoying, but not a huge deal. (I mostly monitor 1080P, so I use an AJA T-Tap for that.) That way I keep the 4K set at scaled to "retina" for general computing and using FCPX monitor 1080 off the AJA box on a different HDMI input. That way I can have the best of both worlds... a retina computer screen for watching 4K videos, retina websites, etc, and monitoring in 1080 with FCPX. But if I want to monitor 4K while editing, I have to switch the panel back to native resolution... which looks great in FCPX but makes anything else look tiny. Same goes if I want to use A/V output with any resolution if I didn't have a T-Tap; the 4K panel must not be set to scaling in OSX.

I thought that might be useful info; especially for those who might not even realize they could playout at 4K 24/30 out of HDMI on a 3rd screen while editing in FCPX with two other screens on a late 2013 Mac Pro or 15" Retina Macbook Pro.

On Premiere Pro CC you need a 4K playout box for unadulterated broadcast monitoring, OR you can simply move your viewer window up there. It will play in 4K in either scaled or native panel resolution. But that will be your program window, not a separate broadcast style monitoring with no UI elements. You can still use 3 screens in "retina" mode by splitting up the windows between the three screen with the 4K panel being HIDPI/Retina.


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