Video monitor usage; Final Cut Pro/G5
 

At home, my boss just bought a new G5 with Final Cut Pro. I use Premiere so I'm not helping much!

Here's the deal...he is using a Panasonic 2000 DV deck connected via Firewire to the G5, and is connected from the Panasonic deck to the video monitor via an S cable and RCA audio cables. He can play a tape and it shows up on the video monitor, is able to successfully capture video into Final Cut Pro, and can even Print to Tape or whatever they call it in Final Cut Pro and it plays to the video monitor. To me the Panasonic deck is doing just what it is supposed to do.

Here's what isn't working...he has no image on the video monitor during editing so he can't preview anything on a real video screen, only when he "prints to tape."

Is there some kind of control/switch somehere in Final Cut Pro that sends a signal via Firewire all the time like it does in Premiere?

Thanks for the help!

Try this:

View>External Video>All Frames

This has always seemed to turn itself off at random intervals for me.

Sometimes it requires rebooting FCP to get it cooking.

On many decks, particularly if a tape is present, you must hold down the record button to turn on a "record preview".

I ran into similar problems with FCP 4.0 if I didn't have my deck connected or turned on when I launched the app (I had the warning turned off). Nothing I did in the app worked, nor did restarting it or the computer.

I finally solved it by throwing away the prefs file (Final Cut Pro 4.0 Preferences). [If you do that don't forget to reset your scratch disks.]

I think this bug has been fixed in FCP 4.1.

Mike.

John,
If you've not yet solved this, and consequenctly feel you may be on the brink of termination, confirm the following setting (while running FCP):

Menu:
Final Cut Pro >> Audio/Video Settings

Make sure that the "Video Playback" option (towards the bottom of the panel) is set to Firewire. Also make sure that the deck is powered-up when you start FCP, otherwise it will remain undetected.

I have a Panasonic AG-DV1000 deck.

Good luck!

Charles, you just saved me many hours of frustration. I moved from premiere to FCP a few months ago, and my preview monitor hasn't worked since the first week and it's been driving me nuts.

I hate bringing up an old topic, but this jsut made my day

Excellent!

I also ran into another problem recently where I could not get FCP to recognize the deck via firewire. Turned out to be a known conflict between FCP 5.0, Quicktime 7 and OS 10.4. The solution is posted on Apple's site--involves deleting certain Quicktime receipts and reinstalling latest version of Quicktime. Took me several weeks of downtime to learn how to deal with this fiasco.

Sounds like the situation described in the following "sticky"...

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=49838