Either through my Svideo on the Vidcard to an NTSC monitor which displays the whole desktop - then I check the picture in Vegas on the NTSC while color correcting

-OR-

When Vegas is set to external monitor and the output picture is being sent to my old camcorder (panny DV852) VIA firewire and then S-video'd out from the 852 to the monitor?

-They are a bit different - being sent through my 852 seems to be a bit darker....

Just guessing here, but my opinion is that running the monitor off your cam (or tape deck) is better because it allows you to see what the original tape looked like and what the edited tape will look like because it is being processed through the electronics of the deck.

Monitoring directly from your NLE show you what the computer thinks is accurate, but it still needs to be converted by the deck, or in your case, camera.

This is the way I have my NLE set up, I'll be interested in hearing other opinions.

Driving your NTSC monitor from the video card give you an incorrect picture because it delivers a picture using the computer's color-space, not the NTSC color space.

Converting through your camera solves the problem.

Awesome, thanks guys....