External Monitor help

BPB wrote on 8/27/2004, 8:44 PM

A good friend gave me a really nice Sony monitor pvm 20n5u. I would like to use it as an external monitor and need some advice on setting it up.

My system is a DELL 8300 3 ghz P4 with HT 512 ram
I have an internal SATA media drive and a LACIE firwire media drive
only one fireport
I use a canon mini DV camera as a capture/encoder device
I'm assuming I'll have to go firewire to camera and s video to monitor..is that correct? What do I do with the Lacie firewire drive? will it daisy chain to the camera or do I need a separate firewire card? How is this monitor for color correction?
So many questions..sorry
Any and all replies are most appreciated..this forum has been my most used source of knowledge and I thank you all.

Bryan

Comments

FuTz wrote on 8/27/2004, 9:56 PM

I guess you have to keep the cam at the end of Firewire chain then plug your monitor thru it.
You have an output on your LaCie drive (I mean, 2 plugs)? If not, you'll have to choose between having a monitor or having access to the drive contents...

On your mobo:
no "in the case" firewire jack? Some PCI cards have one more there... In fact, you just need the good amount of plugs. Unscrew the side panel and have a look there... maybe you're up for good news, maybe not...

FuTz wrote on 8/27/2004, 10:01 PM

If this monitor has been "tuned", you definitely got a reference ! Congrats ! : D
Just have a look there for a starter...
http://www.greatdv.com/video/smptebars.htm

Spot|DSE wrote on 8/28/2004, 9:56 AM

If the LaCie doesn't have a daisychain on it, then you'll need a Firewire hub. I recommend NNovia's hub. Best I've found, buffered and clean.
Svid from cam to monitor, if you have it, yes.
This is a good monitor for color correction. Not the top, and certainly not the bottom. It's older, so you'll want to be sure it's calibrated. It's only a 500 line, if I remember right, but that's still better than a 300 line unit from your local bigbox store. Use the blue gun and underscans to check it out as well. One miffing feature about it, is since it senses PAL/SECAM/NTSC automatically, occasionally ours used to sense PAL when it was really 4:2:2 coming down the Rex. No idea why. Shutting it off and restarting it with an NTSC stream feeding it always fixed the issue.
Vegas can generate color bars for you to look/check with, see the Generated Media tab.
If you've never worked with an external, this is a decent place to start. Anf for free....friends like that are great to have.

BPB wrote on 8/31/2004, 10:54 AM

Thanks for the replies FuTz and Spot
and sorry for the slow thankyou...just getting over Hurricane Charlie down here in FLA and getting ready for Frances...sheesh!! My studio is much taller as I have been putting every thing up on crates..lets hope this one stays out to sea

Bryan