Comments

Retropunk wrote on 7/16/2003, 8:12 PM
You should be able to. Isn't that what the card is made for?
Did you buy that card yet? If so how do you like it?
BillyBoy wrote on 7/16/2003, 9:16 PM
Your video card has nothing to do with viewing on a external monitor. You need a firewire card and digital camera or a ADV device. Any off the shelf TV will serve as your external monitor. It just needs a video in jack.
BillyBoy wrote on 7/16/2003, 9:32 PM
Just to clarify...

In the context used in the forum, an 'external monitor' is used to view the preview window on either a NTSC moniitor (TV standards, not computer) or just a regular TV. The reason is colors (hue) as well as levels are based on different values in television verses computers. So if you make the mistake of adjusting these while looking at your computer monitor for video to be viewed off a TV in its finished form, the result will look "off" and you won't be happy with the result.

You can in addition extend your desktop by dragging elements to a second monitor. This refers to another regular computer monitor. Depnding on which version of Windows you're using this can be accomplished with two video cards or with a newer video card that has two or more video outputs. There is no real need to do this, rather it is more a personal choice. Some people like to spread the desktop around by undocking and dragging some elements.

So if you want you could in effect have three monitors. One for the timeline and some docked windows, the second with one or more undocked windows and the third as either a NTSC moniotr or a regular TV to (the external monitor) to view the preview window to get a better idea how the final project will look once rendered.
John_Cline wrote on 7/16/2003, 11:11 PM
The Matrox Parhelia indeed has three outputs. Two for computer monitors and a third output which can be used with a computer monitor or an NTSC video monitor. I have one in a computer running Premiere, After Effects and 3D Studio. I have the NTSC output of the Parhelia feeding a Sony professional NTSC monitor, it looks and works absolutely great. I've checked the Parhelia on an external waveform monitor and a vectorscope and the NTSC output is "spot-on." I've never tried it with Vegas as it's not installed on that machine.

Anyway, check out this link: Matrox Parhelia

The Matrox Millennium P750 also has the three outputs and is less expensive than the Parhelia.

Matrox Millennium P750

John
daves2 wrote on 7/16/2003, 11:41 PM
maybe you guys could clarify this for me as I was thinking about the same thing:

If I use my existing firewire w/ my advc100 w/ a NTSC monitor connected, I can preview on the monitor (although I need to pre-render the effects)

If I add a video card that supports video /s-video out that I hook up to a monitor (NTSC) to that card, I would really not be previewing the project using the 'external monitor' but could drag the preview window to the ntsc monitor and presumably see my preview there (including my effects, although a bit slower than real time)

What's the difference to me between the two?
jetdv wrote on 7/17/2003, 9:06 AM
If I use my existing firewire w/ my advc100 w/ a NTSC monitor connected, I can preview on the monitor (although I need to pre-render the effects)

This is the CORRECT way to view it - and you DON'T have to pre-render effects. Go to Options - Preferences to the Video Device tab. Make sure "Recompress Edited Frames" is CHECKED.
akg wrote on 7/17/2003, 1:12 PM
I have that card !!
But I think V4 don`t support to view !!
I hope Sofo will do this on V5 !!
wcoxe1 wrote on 7/17/2003, 1:23 PM
John Cline:

Since I seem to remember posts to this forum saying that the Parhelia did NOT work with Vegas in the configuration you mentioned (two monitors, 1 TV), I think that quite a few of us would appreciate it if you could find the time to install Vegas temporarily on the computer with that card and see if it works properly with Vegas, specifically using the time line one one monitor and the preview screen dragged to the other monitor. I know that I, personally, would appreciate it.
tvwonder wrote on 7/17/2003, 2:03 PM
The Parhelia has drivers to make Premiere, Photoshop and, I think, After Effects, display directly to the third output, which can be used as a video output. There are currently no drivers to allow Vegas to output, although it is possible that they will be written. I think it's more of a Matrox issue than a Sonic Foundry issue as far as getting the drivers written is concerned, although I'm not totally sure about that.
JJKizak wrote on 7/17/2003, 2:12 PM
According to my Parhelia info sheet (have not installed the card yet) I can view
3 HD-15 moniters and one Vegas TV , 2HD-15 moniters + TV and Vegas TV,
one HD-15 moniter and Vegas TV, One DVI monitor and Vegas TV, 2 HD-15
monitors and one Vegas TV, two DVI monitors and one Vegas tv, one DVI and one
HD-15 monitor with one Vegas TV, one HD-15 monitor and one TV plus Vegas TV, one DVI monitor and
oneTV plus one Vegas TV, one DVI and two HD-15 monitors and Vegas TV,
One DVI and one HD-15 monitors and one TV plus Vegas TV. I hope I have
cleared up this confusion.

JJK
ouben wrote on 7/17/2003, 2:12 PM
This is my guess as well....would be nice to have this option, it's a great card.....works great with my other applications + media player.
ouben wrote on 7/17/2003, 2:17 PM
Parhelia is a triple head card.......3 monitors max, different configurations.....very flexible. What do you mean by vegas tv. The card works with applications that support Directshow. Vegas does not show....i thinks it's a driver issue.
JJKizak wrote on 7/17/2003, 6:01 PM
Vegas outputs thru firewire thru Canopus ADVC-100 to TV in addition to your
three outputs from the video card, at least theoretically.

JJK
RBartlett wrote on 7/18/2003, 4:21 AM
There would be some CPU efficiency for vegas with a full Parhelia installed. AND SUPPORTED THROUGH AT LEAST DIRECTSHOW. SoFo wouldn't have to render changed media through their DV codec - as uncompressed footage supposedly can be taken from the directshow interface and out through the SVIDEO (YCrCb too with the right external box/cable adaption of RGB).

G450 has Premiere support (with a few field dominance tweaks for your TV standard/number of lines). Yet Matrox didn't have to write any drivers for Adobe per se on that card. Premiere6 uses directshow for its preview monitor - so that works fine in that NLE.

G series cards only get output where the project uses a codec which is rendered by directshow. So zero-codecs defined with uncompressed footage in uncompressed projects don't appear on them. P750 doesn't have the Adobe drivers but is otherwise an AGP8x Parhelia with slightly less texture/max-triple-head res. memory.

Matrox plug-ins for Premiere definitely give it DV, MJPEG and uncompressed output to a preview monitor via the full Parhelia (any RAM size) on the more recent drivers (12 months ago or thereabouts).

It is a pity to be forced down the DV-OHCI route when Vegas is a pro grade app/engine. Especially if you have uncompressed media - it would be better to render through a new codec that did no compression - but wasn't the NULL codec normally assigned. Going through directshow would be the easiest Vegas-driver-less way to efficiently hit the Matrox SVIDEO-out port.

Lastly,

There can be some milage in having two-heads for VGA and moving your windows about so that the preview window fills slightly less than a frame. Then change the analogue screen positioning in the Matrox desktop controls to clone that single display onto video-out and reduce the presence of the window border so it goes off-screen. Might be OK even for a final output depending on how accurate your AR needs to be. Audio sync issues can take you to doing a final render however - in that case mediaplayer plays most compressed formats to Parhelia anyway.

Personally I don't do everything on the video-out monitor anyway. I learn from the cause-effect of what I do and try to keep a similar gamma setting by tweaking the inner VGA monitor settings. video-out is my tag along friend for assurance - then again - I'm no pro.

Come-on Sonic Foundry - give us a DV and directshow preview. I don't want you to loose the BLiT behaviour on the application preview window - just the option to use a preview-codec that hits directshow. A null-codec would upset at least G series Matrox cards. Either a real codec or one that "processed" (but actually didn't) would suit the display driver overlay surface mapping.

BlackMagic/Kona could use this abstraction for their extraction of the video part - also.