Make SURE that the Firewire card you get is OHCI compliant. ADS, SIIG, Unibrain are all good cards. The video image quality will be the same on all OHCI cards, it's a ubiquitous standard. However, cheap cards will suck voltage with less stability and cause dropped frames, crashes, and other irritations, so avoid the bargain basement no name cards. Stay away from the CompUSA brand cards, and other mass store brand cards, because they are just jobbered from the cheapest card makers in Taiwan.
The Firewire/OHCI card is the card supported for output to an external monitor for ADR or Foley work. The card spits the video out in digital form. A camera, deck, or converter device are required to turn the digital signal back to an NTSC or PAL signal for the monitor to receive.
"The card spits the video out in digital form. A camera, deck, or converter device are required to turn the digital signal back to an NTSC or PAL signal for the monitor to receive."
Thanks for your reply. I was under the impression that there was actually a delay when using the firewire to do this. Do you happen to know the name of the converter you referenced?
Sony DVMC-DA2 media converter...great for capturing (converting to) DV with an analog camera...and also for hookin your firewire to an external monitor... a great little box for about $300...check out www.emscomputing.com...
There is a latency with ext. monitor because the audio goes directly out of the computer while the video has to stream through firewire. There is a pref for setting an offset to compensate for this in the Preferences.