The Great “Video Preview” Myth

[Stone Reader]

We firewire out to a Canopus ADVC-100, then composite or S-Video into a monitor. Cheap, effective, though not the most beautiful.

Not sure why you’re having so much trouble…

[Bendex]

Yes, it is switched to DV. Thank you for the suggestion though. You’re rigt, we’ve been cought by those sorts of things before. Any other switches you recommend we check?

We just bought a brand new edit suite and I was hoping it would just work on this one. But no dice.

Bendex.

[Bendex]

I use Photoshop, but didn’t know one could get video preview to work with it. I can’t find any options for it. It doesn’t come up automatically when the deck and monitor are on.

Bendex.

[Jonathan Miller]

Hmmm. Too bad, I was hoping that would be the A-HA (hand to forehead) solution…

I don’t think it’s the deck then. I’ve used the firewire preview on one of my stations for years now with no problems. Although, I am on a Mac so I can’t really help you troubleshoot any further.

As far as Photoshop, I believe you need CS2 for the firewire preview.

Have you downloaded the EchoFire demo and tried that? It’s good for 72 hours so there should be plenty of opportunity to see it it works for you.

https://www.synthetic-ap.com/products/echofire/winindex.html

I hope you can find a solution before having to buy any additional hardware. The video preview is so essential, especially with interlaced material.

Jon

[Thomas Leong]

Hope you know that there are different flavours of Firewire/IEEE1394/ilink whatever you call it. The most compatible, and what AE is looking for is an “OHCI-compatible” IEEE1394. It is likely that other flavours would give you that error message. Example, my Canopus DVStorm card’s Firewire is not OHCI-compatible, so it needs a Canopus-provided driver to get AE preview-to-TV-monitor out of it. Your AVID may be similar.

Thomas Leong

[Bendex]

You mean the firewire cable?

The one in it at the moment is the one that came with the deck. It’s black and has the big connection on one end and the small connection on the other (small goes into deck). I’ll try finding a different cable and see if that helps.

The new computer has flat panel monitors and the colours are way different than PAL, which is why we’ve become increasingly desperate.

Bendex.

[Steve Roberts]

I’m with Thomas — maybe your DV card isn’t compliant?

If you suspect the deck, why not hook up a camcorder for a test?

Steve

[Thomas Leong]

No, I did not mean the cable, though these have been known to be faulty, and so has the female end of the connection itself. The bigger end of the cable carries power (6-pin), and the smaller end (4-pin) carries no power. That’s the only difference apart from the fitting 🙂

I meant the Firewire device itself, especially the one in your PC. As Steve has just suggested, check with a DV camera attached to the pc. AFAIK, all DV cameras are OHCI-compliant. So if AE sees that and outputs to the camera, then you know the Firewire device in your pc is OHCI-compliant, and the problem then lies in the cable, or Sony.

Unfortunately, troubleshooting is a step by step process of trial and error, and elimination of components in the chain. Tedious but necessary.

Thomas Leong

[Bendex]

Our DV camera gets back today. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Bendex.

[Bendex]

DV card? You mean the deck? We have a new Pyro firewire card in the computer.

Bendex.