What is the cheapest way to accomplish hooking up an external monitor?

Would be nice if they made a cheap device that went from 1394 on the computer to composite inputs on a TV.

Capturing devices seem a bit overkill for this and if you don't have a DV cam at the computer the nice little converter would be great.

The Canopus ADVC-something (1000?) does this.

A lot of video cards also have a S-Video output, which are ok but you don't get to see the effects of DV compression as far as I know.

I have an ADVC100 I think it is, however, they cost like $300.

It would seem there is something out there very cheap that would allow a computer to display Vegas work on a TV.

I would hate to have to buy something like an ADVC100 for every Vegas workstation.

CHEAPEST:

Computer firewire to camera, camera RCA to TV, let the camera do the conversion (assuming the camera has that function).

Well I was aware of using a camera and a capture device but both of those are expensive solutions if you want to rig every Vegas workstation with an external monitor.

You guys haven't seen any other way to do it?

There are cheaper analog-digital convertors out there, but not as good. I've heard horror stories about Dazzle, but I suppose if it works for digital--> analog then it should be fine.

The S-Video out on most video cards may be able to do it. I haven't tried this myself though.

You should NOT use any "video out" ports on the cards for a couple of reasons:

1) Vegas does not support this so you would need to make it a "second monitor" and then just move the preview display to that screen.

2) It will NOT give you a true representation of colors. If you want to do any color correcting, I would NOT trust the colors using this method.

By going out the firewire port, you will be getting EXACTLY what you will seen on Print To Tape. Yes, it requires something attached between the computer and TV. If you use a camera, you could share it between multiple stations moving it as each station needed to check. I simply use the deck that is always attached to my desktop. When I want to check with the laptop, I hook it up to that deck.

Ok guys, searching these old threads for things I come up against as I put Vegas (and my home set-up) though its paces, I find you've covered (yet again) the topic I want answers to. Except, something here doesn't make sense.

If I can go out firewire, into my camera set to VCR, and view what's in Vegas on my little TV, how come the dumb Dazzle I have only shows up black when I sub it in, in place of the camera? As Glen says, "if it works for digital --> analog" (and it always has in the past, at least for input) it should be fine. I get a green light on the thing, which means the signal is passing through, but the tv remains black. I used the same cables (s-video and firewire) that I had just hooked up to my little cam. Weird, huh? Think I should just forget the Dazzle, or does anybody know a trick/setting/anything I could try? It squeezes into a much smaller space then leaving the little cam sitting around if I can get it to work.

ADS has a device similar to the Canopus ADVC-100, that is a little cheaper.

Currently I'm looking at the ADVC-100 and ADVC-300. I don't know if the sync restore and noise filtering is worth the price difference. Anyone with experience using the 300?

Does your Dazzle device support video out?

Yes, Harry. Finally got it to work last night, sort of. I've had it awhile and I guess the contacts are loose. Unplugged and jammed back in the in/outs, but I can't get rid of a green line that runs across the top 1/4 of the screen. Think I'm just going to abandon the thing. Thanks anyway, guys.

<<<-- By going out the firewire port, you will be getting EXACTLY what you will seen on Print To Tape. Yes, it requires something attached between the computer and TV. If you use a camera, you could share it between multiple stations moving it as each station needed to check. I simply use the deck that is always attached to my desktop. When I want to check with the laptop, I hook it up to that deck. -->>>

So I use my camcorder to convert the firewire to something the tv can display? I suppose I can view on my lcd camcorder screen then also?

How do you need to set up vegas and your camcorder to make this function?

Thanks,

KIM

Connect via firewire to the camera. Connect the camera via RCA to the TV. Click the external preview button above the preview screen in Vegas. Then you should be able view the preview on the tv.

Having followed this thread I thought I would try hooking up my Canon XM2 (GL2) via firewire as per Edward's suggestion in the thread above.

Interestingly, when I click external preview the current frame appears on my monitor (OK, my TV) BUT when I press play it disappears. When I then press stop, the current frame is displayed again.

Any thoughts as to what I should look at to resolve this?

Update : I wonder if I have found the problem - if so, it is a worrying one!

I thought I would try the above operation with a couple of different files. When I tried to open the first one, I got a very alarming error from both Vegas and Windows - the Vegas one was kind of unintelligable and the Windows message was just plain scary - it talked about being unable to open the file and stated that data HAD BEEN lost. Ouch. It then kicked me out of Vegas. I fired up Vegas again, tried to open a different file and bingo, same thing.

Then it dawned on me: I have a 250Gb external firewire disk hanging off the same firewire controller. That disk is now not seen on the system, even after disconnecting the cam. I haven't rebooted yet so I hope it will be there again soon!

Clearly there is a disturbing conflict of interests here (ie between the disk and the firewire out to the cam)?

Can anyone advise on any solution? Thanks.

Edward,
Why do you recommend RCA from the camera to the TV? Wouldn't an S-video connection give a better picture?

Assuming you can connect S-Video to the TV, then Yes, you could use S-Video. I wasn't necessarily trying to recommend "the best way", just that the camera had to be connected to the TV. Plus, I don't know that ALL cameras have an S-Video out - the vast majority DO have RCA outs.


Ian, I have an external firewire drive connected to my laptop. The deck is then connected to the firewire drive. In my case, I can still get external previews. The files are read from the external drive, used by Vegas, and sent to the deck THROUGH the connection to the drive and then on to the TV.

I have also tried external preview with an XL-1. This has always worked as well.

Thanks for the advice, Edward. If you have a moment, can you please confirm that I understand correctly (sorry to be dumb!).

The (in series) connection you describe is as follows:

Laptop
to
Firewire Card
to
Firewire Drive
to
DV Deck
to
Monitor

which, in my case would be

PC
to
Firewire Card
to
Firewire Drive
to
Canon
to
TV

I didn't realise that different types of firewire devices could be linked in series although I was aware that there was another firewire port on the drive (which I thought was to enable me to chain additional WD firewire drives).

Is there any performance issue do you think? I guess it must be acceptable if you have successfully been doing this, but I'm trying to understand why I would need three firewire ports on the PCI card.

Thanks again for the advice.

Yes, that is how I am hooked up - daisy chained through the hard drive enclosure.

Thanks again Edward. I tried this method but sadly with no success.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the Western Digital drive is causing a conflict as when I removed the drive from the system, playback via cam to external monitor worked perfectly well (with the exception that widescreen is not supported on the TV I use!). When I reintroduced the drive, it collapsed.

Not sure where I can go from here, short of investing in a USB 2 card and running the drive from that.

If anyone has a similar configuration (ie WD External Firewire 250Gb, Canon XL2/GM2) and has successfully managed to preview to an external monitor I'd be delighted to hear how you did it!

This link to the Sony Knowledge Base suggests that it is NOT, in fact, the external firewire drive causing problems but rather the Canon - at least as far as hanging the Canon off the external drive is concerned. I wonder if this is the same issue affecting previewing through the cam to an external monitor.

Thank god for copy and paste. If some kind sould could tell me how to make these links live I'd be happy to edit the post!

http://www.custcenter.com/cgi-bin/sonypictures.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=429&p_created=1027314000&p_sid=WHBgTI6h&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NyZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PWZpcmV3aXJlJnBfc2V hcmNoX3R5cGU9c2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcHJvZF9sdmwxPTE3JnBfcHJvZF9sdmwyPTc2JnBfY2F0X2x2bDE9JnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=

I've never tried daisy chaining the Canon camera. All of my daisy chaining experience has been with the Panasonic deck which has worked fine. All my pass-thru experience with the Canon(s) has been straight computer to camera to TV.

Thanks for the link.

You're most welcome.

But just to confuse the issue further, here's a link to the Vegas Forum at Sony which makes me wonder again about the external drive!!!

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=257603

<weary sigh>

I have a Hollywood Bridge lying around somewhere. I bought it to capture from analogue sources but it never worked as decsribed in the blurb. Maybe I'll dig it out and try it out as a DV-analogue converter.

My hopes aren't high though!

I have a Sony TRV27. Does it support the feature to use it as a converter from DV to video for tv display?

I havethe camcorder connected to my computer via firewire. Then I have the camcoder plugged into my tv using RCA.

I set the camcorder to vcr mode.

I play my video in Vegas and click the little button in the preview window.

Nothing happens.

Do I have it implemented correctly? Does this camera have the proper feature?

Thanks,

KIM

Update to my post of 19th March re the Hollywood Bridge.

No joy. UNLESS I take the firewire drive offline, which is a shame as that's where I store my video data.

So it looks kinda like the WD 250gb firewire/USB2 external drive doesn't like to play with other firewire devices.

If anyone can shed any further light on this I'd be delighted to hear from you.