Cheap/budget Hardware Video Output solution? TV or Computer Monitor?

[Gary Kleiner]

Do you already have the means to transcode the firewire out so you can input to your TV such as a camcorder or Canopus box? You’d need that for the TV.

For the dual monitor card, it depends on your system. If you can pop in an old Matrox 450 or 550, you can get those pretty cheap these days.

[Rick Mac]

By going the TV route you get a better look at what your video really looks
like in the NTSC TV world. What you monitor on your computer monitor can look a lot different on a video monitor.
I use a DataVideo converter box for this purpose. You could do a pass-thru
your camcorder to your TV. Of course your TV needs to have a video input for this to work. If most of your work is to be seen on computer monitors it might be better to monitor on a second monitor.
The graphics card that Gary suggested is a good one. I have the
Matrox 450 and it works well. I monitor both on a LCD and NTSC Video Monitor and compare the results.

[Fucdemas]

I do not have a canopus box. i was considering one. i do have a camcorder but i don’t want to keep it in all the time to monitor stuff thru if there is a better solution.

i have heard of those matrox cards being pretty cheap.

which model datavideo box do you have? is there any frame lag (very important for my scoring work to be spot on)

[Rick Mac]

“i have heard of those matrox cards being pretty cheap.”

No way. The Matrox G450 is a great dual monitor video card.
If all you are doing is editing in Vegas it is awsome.
If you will be useing some type of application that needs
Open GL accelreation (ie Boris Blue as an example) to speed up
preview renders, than you could make the argument for a high end card.
Do remember your header? Cheap/Budget.

“which model datavideo box do you have?”

DataVideo-100.

“is there any frame lag (very important for my scoring work to be spot on)”

If by “frame lag” you mean preview framerate, such as 29.97 FPS for NTSC Video, that depends. Sony by it’s nature will adjust your preview framerate depending on many things. The speed of your computer, the quality setting for your preview monitor, file type being played, are you playing back a rendered file or playing back a project with multi-layers and effects.
As an example, On my modest computer, a AMD-3000+ 1gig RAM ATA-100 7200rpm video drive, playing a rendered DV-AVI File I get full 29.97 framerate easy.
Since you are scoring I would guess you are being supplied a pre-edited and rendered file, which is easy to get full playback rates from.

I have had very good results with the DataVideo-100. It is less expensive than the Canopus brand. However, I have heard good things about canopus.
Stay away from the ADS Pyro AVlink, many people have reported problems with it, including myself. If you are running WIN2000 you might be better off with the canopus. I love my DataVideo-100 useing XP but for some reason WIN2000 does not give me stable operation.

The Canopus Converter capture quality is very good but cost is higher than DataVideo. If you are on a budget the DataVideo will give you very good previews and good quality captures.

Regards, Rick.

[Doug Graham]

“…is there any frame lag (very important for my scoring work to be spot on)”

Any time you feed video out of Vegas via Firewire, through a conversion device (a camcorder, deck, or box) to an NTSC monitor, the signal going by this path will be delayed about a half second behind the timeline cursor. The audio and video will be in sync, but you can’t, for example, watch the video on the monitor and listen to the audio from your computer’s sound card. You have to watch and listen from the same location.

Regards,
Doug Graham

[Gary Kleiner]

[Doug Graham] “The audio and video will be in sync, but you can’t, for example, watch the video on the monitor and listen to the audio from your computer’s sound card. You have to watch and listen from the same location.”

I have never found this to be the case. How are you monitoring the audio while watching the external preview then?

Gary Kleiner

Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com