I've recently been getting into some heavier film scoring, and worried that I might be running into CPU issues soon. So....I am looking at a third monitor just for the video portion. The manual for X2 says that I could use a "Firewire DV Device", but I can't seem to find anything concrete on the internet as to what "devices" are available out there. Does anyone here have one of these, and if so, could you please refer me to a few options?

Basic Specs:

i7 2700K
32GB Ram
Win 7 Pro
Sonar X2

Thanks in advance!

I can run three monitors with my NVIDIA GT640LP (2GB RAM). I'm only using two (one is my TV set) but three shouldn't be any problem.

jscomposer

...worried that I might be running into CPU issues soon. So....I am looking at a third monitor...

I'm confused.  How would adding another monitor prevent CPU issues?

It wont, it will increase GPU usage. First off DV is obsolete. HD is the new standard and may be replaced by 4k sooner than we think. Firewire DV devices is probably a capture and render DSP. The question is are you capturing and importing and then editing the film? If not, all you need is a supported hardware accelerated video overlay device with is what any modern GPU is capable of. To be really efficient, Cakewalk would need to program sonar to off load certain portions of the pipeline to the GPU/ALU as part of its process paralleling/threading. This I doubt is going to happen any time soon.

Kev999

jscomposer

...worried that I might be running into CPU issues soon. So....I am looking at a third monitor...

I'm confused.  How would adding another monitor prevent CPU issues?

Adding a third monitor wouldn't prevent CPU issues, but the interface feeding the monitor would. There are interfaces that take the video load off the CPU and re-route it. Another forum member suggested a Canopus ADVC 110, which might do the trick. For some reason, Sonar is very taxing when scoring to video, and I run fairly large orchestral templates for soundtrack work. As Chappel mentioned, perhaps there's a suitable video card that can achieve this as well. Ideally, I'd like to keep Sonar on the dual display and send the video/timecode to a 42" LCD while scoring.