Ok, I'm trying again this morning and I get another thing: when in Explorer, I get *black* video clips with their respective audio track. After a moment, I drag a clip on timeline and it becomes OK. Never happened before.
Now when I try to get to preview by activating the switch (mon. icon over monitor preview) it opens the Preferences window and I still get no preview thru FireWire.

?!??!? :(

I just downoaded the Vegas Demo. I tried hooking up my Canon GL1 to test the "external monitor preview". I was able to capture video from the GL1, so I know that Vegas is recognizing it as a connected DV device. But when I try to play back the same captured clip from the timeline, and click the "preview on external monitor" button, nothing shows up.

Is this is any way related to the issues you are having? I would like to get external preview working as well, and is sort of a prerequisite to me buying the product. I have been working with Adobe Premiere 6 using the Pinnacle DV500, but with the direction Adobe has gone, I think I want to jump ship and go Vegas.....

Closed everything then re-opened . Now it's working for the clips (no black clips).
But I still wonder why it did that...

The preview monitor still doesn't function.
I got Clips capture with Vegas Vid Cap.
It's in preview mode (auto).
I tried with dynamic RAM'd section. No success.
I tried with Prerendered section. No success.

***diadempro***
Yes, you got the same issues. Exactly the same problem. And I bet when you hit Pause during playback and wait around 3 seconds, your preview works (in "still" mode; not very usefull for *video*...)

Next step (even if I triy it every month): go to the ADS Tech site for latest drivers (even if there haven't been a new one for months... who knows.
Then going to "control pannel" and try to update driver to my 1394 card...

No new driver available at ADS Tech.
I let Windows choose the driver (which is a Texass instr. driver, says control pannel)
Got latest Direct X (9.0b)
Re-tried with both prerendered and dynamic RAM'd: no success.
With dynamic RAM'd or not pre-rendered it's the same: I get preview in "still" mode (pause) AND if I just move my mouse, I lose this preview. Doesn't do that with prerendered part of clip though...
I don't know...

I had a similar problem recently with my new Canopus card.
Captured fine. Could see the preview within the Vidcap window.

Closed Vidcap after naming the captured clip.

Opened Vegas, placed the video on the timeline, selected the external monitor, and; nothing.

I was somewhat comfused until I went back into VIDCap and pressed "stop" on the little tape machine controls that appeared in the Video properties window since installing the card.

Went back into vegas. Preview on external monitor worked again.

Maybe you have to do something similar?

Okay, I sorted out my issues. First, I was having problems getting it to preview with clips captured outside of Vegas - specifically with the DV500. But I noticed that if I changed the project settings (FIle-Properties) to use one of the other templates, such as DV widescreen, or standard NTSC, I would get preview. It was only for regular DV template that no preview. Interesting.

Then I found that when I captured clips in Vegas, and played back, it worked. For all this, I also found I needed to have the preview window set to Preview->Auto.

Did some tweaks on XP SP1, according to Videoguys/Dave Laborde. Mild things that're supposed to augment efficiency and sure it does. Boothing is now WAY shorter for instance...
But I still don't get my preview.
I got all the latest drivers/Vegas version/Win Updates/scanned for viruses, you name it...

I get a intermittent preview on ext mon.
I use files captured with VidCap from Vegas.
I set to Preview(auto) OR even Draft (auto).
No s-u-c-c-e-s-s...

All I can do now is getting my computer exorcised by some voodoo priest..!

This seems to be becoming a more common issue. I had no problems at all capturing from my Sony Camera, using its Analog->DV conversion capabilities, but all attempts to use it for external preview failed with a blank display. Thinking my camera DV-IN may be broken, I just purchased an ADVC-100. Again, capture works perfectly but no preview. I have tried different leads and firewire ports on my PC.

For comparison my PC is Athlon 2700+, Asus Nvidia 2 motherboard, 1Gb RAM running Vegas 4.0d. The firewire ports are the ones integrated on the motherboard. Anyone with this problem have similar/different hardware, or found a solution? Is there any point in trying Tech Support on this? It is now driving me nuts having to do a burn to DVD just to preview.

I'll sure put it on the "wish list" for the next version... an ext. monitor that *works*. All the time. Month after month. Upgrade after upgrade.
All the time...
All...
... the time.

:/

Um, tfurnell. I can capture analog to DV with my VX2000, but to get preview to work I have to go into the menu and turn av->dv_out OFF.

Analog/DV can go one way or the other depending on menu settings, but not both at the same time.

I too have an Nforce 2 board with onboard firewire. Could this be the problem?

The only way I've been able to get any sort of external monitor preview is to make sure my camera was turned on and connected to the computer before booting up (restart works too). Even still, I don't get ANY effects unless I prerender those sections (otherwise the external preview cuts out and comes back on when normal DV is showing). Also note that if I turn off the camera or deck connected via firewire to the computer, external preview no longer works when I turn the cam/deck back on (unless of course I restart the computer). I've got a very current system so I always assumed this was the extent to which external monitor works.

Could someone please verify something for me? Should external preview allow me to see my entire edit with effects and all (within a limit) WITHOUT prerendering every effect to a file? Also, should external preview work without having to restart the computer?

When I first installed Vegas I never could get the external preview to work correctly. I literally spent weeks working with the Vegas techs and Vegas users to find a solution, to no avail. Then I installed Vegas on another system and external preview worked perfectly!

I compared the settings of the two systems, made them virtually identical, etc. Still couldn't get the first system to work. Then, just for grins, I wiped the drive clean and re-installed Winbloze and all myapps.

External monitor preview started working, pefectly. Looked fantastic. All my effects could be previewed, couldn't ask for more.

Then one day I started having problems again, not all the time but about half the time external monitor preview wouldn't work. So I tried re-installing the OHCI drivers. B-A-D mistake. Now external preview doesn't work at all.

My point is, I believe that Vegas is just fine, it's something about the FireWire card and drivers that isn't quite right. I have the same card in both systems but the second system still works like a champ, never had a minute's problem with it. So it's obviously something to do with the way system number one is setup.

YMMV, but I'd try wiping the hard disk clean and re-installing everything from scratch. Yeah, I know it's a pain but that's the best way to be certain you have a pristine platform to start with. Don't install anything after you get Winbloze going except Vegas. If that doesn't work then take a sledgehammer to your puter and start drinking heavily :-)

It does indeed look like it is the integrated Firewire on the nVidia 2 motherboards that is the problem (for me anyway!). I disabled the Firewire in the BIOS and installed a cheap PCI Firewire card, and now both the Sony camera and ADVC-100 work perfectly as external monitors as well as for capture.

I don't think this is just a problem with VV, as I have found similar reports of problems from users of other NLE's including Premiere. It doesn't appear to be a IRQ sharing problem either, as there was no device other than the default NVidia integrated Network controller sharing with the onboard Firewire. The new Firewire PCI card is now sharing interrupts with many devices, but is working perfectly.

I will now try to contact Asus to see if they have any idea whether this is a hardware or driver issue. Hope this helps anyone having similar problems.

It's very difficult to know since for different persons/configs the output is working ok or not. And it becomes even more complicated since for a same person it can work or not on the same system.
I don't know if designing the next version with an added possibility of using a TV out from a graphics card would be of great help..?
The last time I tried to get this ext. preview I had a fresh installed XP with SP1 and all bells and whistles plus tweaks and it was worse than running Vegas 3 one year ago which worked (for a while...) kind of well.
Let us know what these guys at Asus tell you and thanks for the efforts!

My latest system has a ASUS board too. As I reported in some other threads awhile back I too had firewire problems with the onboard firewire. It worked fine for capture, dropped frames like crazy trying to print to tape. Go figure. Just doesn't really add anything to the thread except to acknowledge it may be a fairly common problem. If it just impacts Vegas and only if firewire on ASUS boards, don't know. Personally I think it is more due to firewire cards/the interface and Windows handling it correctly. The Web is awash in firewire horror stories and you've see a good sampling in the forum. Cameras go off and on, drives are there only to go to sleep on disappear from Window's radar and so on.

So what have you done to rectify your firewire problems? Or do you still have them?

I'll add my voice to it being a driverish kind of problem or else VV not quite handling the interface correclty.

Always capture seems to work OK, but if I start up VV with the fwire device turned off it can be hard to get the external monitor running, VV just doesn't see that it's there OR else doesn't configure the Windows crossbar switch correclty. Obviously it cannot do that when it starts up as the device isn't there for it to find.

I'd love to know how well this is going to work if I use one fwire port for capture and PTT and another one to drive the monitor.

I suspect there's a block of code that VV runs at startup to look for fwire devices to connect to but that doesn't run again, even when you switch ext. preview on and off although SOMETIMES this does get it going.

When I first installed Vegas 4, I fitted a Snazzi 1394 card, and external preview worked fine under Win2000. Later, I changed the OS to Win XP Proand suddenly the external preview was gone. If it worked at all, it was only when no timeline rendering was required, but sometimes it only worked for a few seconds before switching off.

It turned out that Win XP had allocated the same IRQ to the Snazzi card and the graphics card, so this was probably causing data starvation for the 1394 port. Since there was no way I could find to reallocate the IRQs, the solution was to move the Snazzi card to a different slot. It has all worked fine since doing this.

(Of course, this doesn't help anyone who has a built-in 1394 port. In that situation, I would probably disable the MB port and buy a PCI 1394 card.)

Richard Hunter

I had a SIIG fireware card I've used before. Always has worked flawlessly for me. Never any capture or PTT problems with it.

Not the exact model I have an older one with firewire only.

http://www.siig.com/product.asp?partnum=JU-2NE012

The issue I think is Vegas needs a 100% compliant card. Some are, others aren't.

If the card isn't 100% OHCI compliant, you'll have errors/issues.
SIIG
ADS Technology
Unibrain
Canopus ADVC 1394 are the only cards I've seen that are pretty well 100% hassle-free.