How does one use an external monitor? I have plugged into my Video port the video line to a television that I want to use to watch my edit. Or is this possible? Any help would greatly be appreciated.
You can use the video port on your video card, but it's not color accurate nor resolution accurate. If it's just a placement reference, then it's perfectly fine. If it's for color correction or finding small faults, you need to use the 1394 output of your computer, connected to a digital to analog converter. Your camera can be a convertor if you wish.
There is a brief tutorial on how to accomplish this here