HMDI output on new video cards any good to Vegas?

[Jaums Sutton]

I recently bought an HP 4090 "Media" PC and loaded Vegas. The 4090 came with NVidia GeForce 8400 GS which has DVI, HMDI and Svid. It also has inputs for capturing DV via firewire as well s Svid & composite.

I connected 2 LCD PC monitors to the DVI by using Matrox Dual2Go. I connected an HD LCD TV using HMDI. After a lot of tweaking, it all is working, tho I'm wondering if it's the best arrangement. The NVidia is set for multiple monitors with the PC monitor as primary and the TV as secondary. I'm currently doing SD, plan to by an HD cam soon. [Sony HVR-Z7?]

The 2 PC monitors have Vegas spread over them. The TV shows the desktop wallpaper image until I drag something onto it, such as Media Player to play an AVI I rendered from what I edited in Vegas. Or I can drag the Vegas Preview window there and stretch it out, which of course reduces the resolution.

What I'd really like is a way to view what I've edited on a TV connected as a TV, rather than a TV connected to a PC graphics card. But, without having to spend a lot or having to crack the case and add something inside. I'm anxious to see what the image looks like on the TV once I get an HD cam.

Just my 2 cents.

[Jim Browning]

Originally Posted by Ron Chau

I have a Sony HDTV setup as a 2nd monitor. My video card has 2 DVI outputs. I bought a DVI to HDMI cable, set Vegas for secondary monitor preview and voila.

I'm trying to do the same thing. My 8600GTS Nvidia card has options to use either "clone" mode where both monitors display the same thing, or to extend the desktop. The only way I can get the preview onto the HDTV is to extend the desktop and move the preview window into the HDTVs desktop space.

I'm new to Vegas, but I thought that setting the preview preferences to the secondary display would send the preview to that display, as opposed to a window on the same desktop. What am I missing?

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by Jim Browning

...The only way I can get the preview onto the HDTV is to extend the desktop and move the preview window into the HDTVs desktop space.

I'm new to Vegas, but I thought that setting the preview preferences to the secondary display would send the preview to that display, as opposed to a window on the same desktop. What am I missing?

You're half-way there - setting up the secondary display as an extended desktop is the right way to set up your displays in Windows.

Now go to Options | Preferences | Preview Device | Device and select "Windows Secondary Display". You should now be able to click the little screen icon over the preview window and see preview full screen on the secondary display.

Note that dragging the preview window to the secondary display also has its uses. That way you can get a preview of a specific size when you need it. Eg., if you're doing a 640x480 project for PC viewing you can precisely size the preview window to that size.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Inspired by the reappearance of this thread, I've been emailing with Black Magic tech support regarding compatibility with Vegas of their Intensity and Intensity Pro HDMI cards.

They say:
"Beta" support of Vegas 8.
Preview out to HDMI works.
Intensity is seen as a capture device by Vegas. If the source expects HDCP handshaking (eg. copy protection on a set-top DVD player) it won't get it from Intensity and you'll not be able to capture from that source.

I had asked specifically about capture from the Sony HVR-V1 (an HDV camcorder with HDMI output), they had no direct experience of it.

Over in the Cineform forum there was discussion a couple months back of experiences with V1 > Intensity, using the Cineform capture software for direct transcode to Cineform's codec at 10 bit - apparently this works.

[Jim Browning]

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

You're half-way there - setting up the secondary display as an extended desktop is the right way to set up your displays in Windows.

Now go to Options | Preferences | Preview Device | Device and select "Windows Secondary Display". You should now be able to click the little screen icon over the preview window and see preview full screen on the secondary display.

Note that dragging the preview window to the secondary display also has its uses. That way you can get a preview of a specific size when you need it. Eg., if you're doing a 640x480 project for PC viewing you can precisely size the preview window to that size.

Thanks... good tip about the sizing... and for some reason yesterday it started showing the preview full screen when I pressed the button, when it hadn't before, even though I had set the options as you stated. /shrug But I've chosen to -not- use the extended desktop with the HDTV, because that forces both displays to use the same resolution, which is less than optimal for my editing monitor. My Panny 50" commercial, when connected by HDMI, won't accept native resolution (to do that you have use a DVI input card... Grrrr), and the resolution options are limited. The resolution options available using HDMI mess up the resolution on my primary display, as the native resolution of the display is no longer available! (double Grrrr). In clone mode, I can set the resolutions separately. If I had enough foresight and knowledge (didn't know I'd be doing this when I bought the HDTV), I'd have chosen a TV and editing display that both had the same native resolution, and interfaces that would work the way they needed to.

So anyway, when I preview now, the full screen is used on -both- displays. I'd rather have that than a sloppy resolution on the editing screen (looks pretty bad at a resolution the TV will support), and it appears I have to choose one or the other... sigh. There may be a way to sort it out using powerstrip or something.. but for now I'm going to actually start editing stuff :-)

[Harold Brown]

Perhaps this is what was said...
I have 2 monitors one is DVI/VGA and the other is DVI/HDMI (Gateway FHD2400).
The Gateway is connected DVI and the other is VGA. I can open windows to different displays or drag Vegas across both displays. Could I do the same with the 8400 GS only use HDMI on my Gateway and the DVI on the other? Would every thing look and act the same as I have now?

One other question that I have. When I set the gateway to 1920x1080 I have to scroll the desktop left and right to see every thing. What am I doing wrong? I am currently running 1680 x1050 so I don't have to scroll. My video cards is a FX 5700LE. Drivers are current.