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problems with external firewire monitor
I’m sinking my teeth into Vegas after having it for a good while and this is my first post to this forum. I’m having a problem with the external monitor. Currently, I have an AdsPyro A/V link box. I’ve run firewire to the box, and I have a JVC monitor connected to the composite output of the box. When not playing the timeline I get a nice clean picture on the JVC monitor. As soon as I start to play, the picture regularly breaks up and the entire screen then turns green every few seconds. I’ve searched the archives of this list but I haven’t come across quite this problem. I’ve tried the following:
updating my firewire driver (there wasn’t a new driver available)
updating my chipset drivers (no difference)
swapped out the firewire cable (no difference)
substituted my Sony VX 1000 camera for the A/V Link box (same result)
tried various settings in preferences such as setting confirm output to NTSC DV always, and turning on and off recompress edited frames.
If anyone could spot something I’ve overlooked, I’ve run out of ideas.
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8 Replies
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[ClaudeJones] “the picture regularly breaks up and the entire screen then turns green every few seconds.”
Could also be a port conflict with other ports on the machine. Have you tried moving the card to a different slot?
Edward Troxel
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A little more info: this is an HP Pavilion laptop with a P4 3GHz processor, 1.5 GB of ram, and an ATI mobile video card. I’m using the built in firewire port which is what I used to record the original video. I ran a Sony VX 1000 camera into this same firewire port and used Vegas to capture a 16 hour event. That went fairly well, though I did suffer a couple of random lost connections and had to restart capture on those occasions; also, on several captures, I got notifications of dropped frames – this was not consistent, and happenned maybe 3-4 times out of 15 or so captures – each session ran from 1-2 hours. I don’t have another firewire port on this machine, and I’m using the PCMCIA slot to run an external SATA drive which is where the footage lives. I could switch the external drive to USB and stick a firewire card in the PCMCIA slot if you think this could be the issue.
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[ClaudeJones] “When not playing the timeline I get a nice clean picture on the JVC monitor. As soon as I start to play, the picture regularly breaks up and the entire screen then turns green every few seconds.”
When not playing the timeline what “nice clean picture” do you see?
You should have no other firewire devices plugged in and no analog source plugged into Pyro-box while playing your timeline. This keeps Pyro from becoming confused.
Your project settings should be DV NTSC (interlaced).
Now, I hate to be a doom and gloomer but my first DV Interface was the Pyro and it never worked correctly for me.
I had the same issue you are having. Tech support sent me another unit, it had the same problem. I tried everything.
Then sent the unit back for a refund and purchased a Datavideo unit. It worked great out of the the box and has given me good results for about 4 years.Good luck, Rick.
Rick Mac
Director of Audio Production
TCT Network – Directv 377 -
>When not playing the timeline what “nice clean picture” do you see?
I get a still of whatever image the playhead is parked on
>You should have no other firewire devices plugged in and no analog >source plugged into Pyro-box while playing your timeline. This keeps >Pyro from becoming confused.
That’s the way it’s set up – only the two cables plugged in to the Pyro, firewire to computer, composite video to monitor. There are no other Firewire devices plugged in to this laptop.
>Your project settings should be DV NTSC (interlaced).
they are
>Now, I hate to be a doom and gloomer but my first DV Interface was the >Pyro and it never worked correctly for me.
>I had the same issue you are having. Tech support sent me another >unit, it had the same problem. I tried everything.
>Then sent the unit back for a refund and purchased a Datavideo unit. >It worked great out of the the box and has given me good results for >about 4 years.You remind me, I have a Datavideo sitting on the shelf in my office – I’ve sort of been suspecting the Ads/Pyro myself – for the price you pay for them, I could easily see the ‘you get what you pay for’ adage kicking in
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I swapped out the Pyro A/V Link for a DAC-100 and after some fiddling with the clock timing dip switches and a couple of restarts, I now have clean glitch-free video on the external monitor. BUT, there’s no audio. I can see there’s a waveform, and if I turn up the PC speakers, I can hear the audio (though out of sync with the external monitor display), but the RCA audio outputs on the DAC-100 are silent. Have I got a bad DAC? Is there some setting I’m missing? I’ve been through preferences several times, but nothing jumps off the screen…
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Have I got a bad DAC?
That’s a possibility.
One way to test it would be to hook up a miniDV camcorder to the DAC’s firewire input and the DAC’s analog outs to your JVC monitor.
If you hear something, you ‘ll know your DAC is OK.
Let us know what happens.
BTW Claude, welcome to the “dark side” of NLEs 🙂 -
When playing back the timeline, the video will go to the external monitor and the audio will go out the PC speakers. If they’re not in sync, you can adjust that under Options – Preferences. This is all NORMAL.
When you do a Tools – Print to Tape, you will get both video and audio over the firewire to the external monitor.
Edward Troxel
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Thanks Mike & Ed: Ed nailed the issue. I did so myself earlier today. I had somehow missed that part of the manual that explained that external preview was video-only.
As it turns out, my laptop was also a factor in some way because I hooked up both my transcoders, the DAC and the Pyro, to my desktop, and both work well now. I did try a PCMCIA firewire card in my laptop instead of coming out the internal firewire port, but that still did not cure my video issues. On my desktop, which has a slightly slower processor and slightly less ram than my laptop, things just work – video even continues to play on the computer monitor when I send output the the external preview, something my laptop never was able to do.
I also figured out how to adjust the audio delay so the external video is in sync with audio as well, so, I’ve removed the ‘sort of’ part from my ‘Solved’ statement in the subject line. Thanks to all for your input.
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