External Monitor problem w/ FCP 6.0.5

[Shane Ross]

Shane’s Stock Answer #8: External Monitor Viewing

If you are working with DV, this is simple. First connect your computer to a camera or deck via firewire, Then connect the camera/deck to your TV/Monitor via RCA or S-Video.

Then start up your camera and tv, then open fcp.

Go to the View Menu, choose > External video > all frames
VIEW>Video playback should be Apple firewire NTSC (If you are using an NTSC set)
VIEW>Audio playback should be Audio follows Video

Techinially, this should send synched video to your TV

If for some reason you can’t view your timeline on your external monitor, there are a few things to try:

1) Make sure that the camera/deck is connected and powered on BEFORE you open FCP.

2) In the Final Cut Pro menu select AUDIO/VIDEO Preferences and make sure your signal is being sent out thru Firewire DV.

3) Go to the menu and select VIEW>EXTERNAL>ALL FRAMES.

4) Click in the % box above the image and select FIT TO WINDOW.

5) Go to VIEW->refresh A/V devices

6) Make sure the Log & Capture window is closed

If you want it to play in both the canvas and the external monitor you need to go to the FINAL CUT PRO menu and select AUDIO/VIDIO settings and make sure MIRROR ON DESKTOP is selected under the PLAYBACK OUTPUT section.

If you are working with HDV footage, FCP 6 allows you to view this via firewire, but ONLY as downconverted DV. It won’t look the best, but you can see it. To do this,

If you need to view any format other than DV at full resolution, then you need to look into capture cards. Several standard definition and high definition models are available from https://www.aja.com and https://www.decklink.com. With these options you’ll need a proper monitor to view full broadcast colors, but all models allow for realtime standard definition downconvert, allowing you to view HD on an SD monitor.

The Matrox MXO is another option that is output only, but allows you to view your footage on an Apple Cinema Display at full broadcast quality.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Joseph Colombatto]

Shane,
Thanks for getting back.
Did everything per your instruction, and the mirror image
is playing on the Mac Book Pro. but remains a frozen image on the
monitor.
The Audio does play thru the monitor.
Video remains frozen.
Seems to work thru my Mac Pro Tower. Is it the CPU of
the laptop? Not strong enough?
Need more Ram?
Processor on the Mac Book Pro is 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
with Memory 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
…while the Mac Pro tower is:
2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
with Memory 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2
Is that the problem?
Thanks for any advice.
Joe

[Shane Ross]

Is this SD video DV?

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Joseph Colombatto]

DV…material from standard camcorder mini tapes.
Material shot on…oh Jesus! I just realized something…
the mini tape material that didn’t play thru may
have been a different codec!
It may have been a HDV or HD transfered to a mini
tape. (I’m not sure.)
But, when I put material I shot with my Panasonic
DVX100A…it plays right thru, no problem!
Thanks, man.

[Elise London]

I am having a similar problem running FCP 7 from my MBP. I am running a dv sequence through firewire through a dv deck, and out to a tv monitor via S Video. Audio is going out to the speakers from the dv deck.

2 problems:

1. Audio is drifting out of sync with video. Given a couple minutes, the material will play out of sync. When I hit ‘stop’ and ‘play’ again, it’s back in sync … until … it drifts out of sync again.
2. Every now and then, I get a brief (1 sec) aberration in the video signal, like a patch of gray that goes across the screen, and then the video resumes again.

What’s going on? A friend of mine suggested that this is normal when playing off of a Macbook Pro because the processing power is not sufficient (like a tower would be) and that the only solution is to be watching the material at a lower resolution under the ‘RT’ dropdown menu.

Does that sound right?

[Elise London]

I am having a similar problem running FCP 7 from my MBP. I am running a dv sequence via firewire through a dv deck, and out to a monitor via S Video. Audio is out through the dv deck and into the speakers.

2 problems:

1. Audio is drifting out of sync with video. Given a couple minutes, the material will play out of sync. When I hit ‘stop’ and ‘play’ again, it’s back in sync … until … it drifts out of sync again.
2. Every now and then, I get a brief (1 sec) aberration in the video signal, like a patch of gray that goes across the screen, and then the video resumes again.

What’s going on? A friend of mine suggested that this is normal when playing off of a Macbook Pro because the processing power is not sufficient (like a tower would be) and that the only solution is to be watching the material at a lower resolution under the ‘RT’ dropdown menu.

Does that sound right?

[Elise London]

I am having a similar problem running FCP 7 from my MBP. I am running a dv sequence via firewire through a dv deck, and out to a monitor via S Video. Audio is out through the dv deck and into the speakers.

2 problems:

1. Audio is drifting out of sync with video. Given a couple minutes, the material will play out of sync. When I hit ‘stop’ and ‘play’ again, it’s back in sync … until … it drifts out of sync again.
2. Every now and then, I get a brief (1 sec) aberration in the video signal, like a patch of gray that goes across the screen, and then the video resumes again.

What’s going on? A friend of mine suggested that this is normal when playing off of a Macbook Pro because the processing power is not sufficient (like a tower would be) and that the only solution is to be watching the material at a lower resolution under the ‘RT’ dropdown menu.

Does that sound right?

[Elise London]

I figured out my problem – maybe it will help someone:

Switching over to the tower worked like a charm. Guess the MBP just can’t handle it.