Im a film enthusiast makin movies for school and i was wondering if anyone could help me figure out how to setup a monitor on my computer for external previewing, especially with Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 and Avid Xpress Pro

Hello Evan, welcome aboard (H)DVInfo.net!

If you want to display the signal on a secondary monitor you should be able
to detach the preview and drag it over to that monitor. There you can resize
it to the size wanted.

If you want to display the signal on an external (broadcast) monitor / TV you
need a DV (<)-> anlog converter. Almost all DV camera's should be able to
do this, together with DV decks and converters like the Canopus ADVC range.

In Premiere you need to set options for external monitoring in that case (I
don't know what this exact option is called in Premiere since I'm using another
NLE myself).

Good luck!