My preview with ext. monitor stinks...now I'm worried!

jmpatrick wrote on 10/5/2001, 4:16 PM
OK...
I'm using V.V. with a Pyro Firewire card, a Datavideo A/D-D/A converter, dual 1 gig P3's, LOTS of RAM, and a 60 gig RAID using 7200rpm ATA100 drives.

I can digitize DVD and Analog sources no problem. But, when I lay down a couple of video tracks in V.V. (overlays, picture-in-picture), and play from the timeline, the preview starts to chop when it hits the overlay. Same story if I render the segment with the overlay, then bring it back into V.V. by itself. How am I supposed to lay a finished piece off to an Analog deck if I can't even play it without chops? Now, I believe I CAN dump the rendered piece onto DVD-R and it'll play fine (I'm testing tonight). But that doesn't help me with Analog dubs. Also, I wanted to test the A/D-D/A converter to see if it was having trouble keeping up with the DV. So I ran Firewire line from a Sony DV deck, into the Datavideo, and into a monitor. No problem. Beautiful image quality, so it looks like the A/D-D/A converter has no trouble keeping up with a DV stream. So where does that leave me? The folks at S.F. mentioned that they use a Sony converter into F.W. with no problems. I looked at that unit, but I went with the Datavideo because I wanted component in's and out's for the future. It is mandatory that I'm able to lay off to VHS for customers. Is this a potential RAM problem? Are dual 1 gig P3's not enough? What am I doing wrong? I've defragged the RAID...same story. As I play from the timeline, the video previews to the external monitor fine UNTIL it hits the picture-in-picture segment. Then, the external monitor goes black and the preview switches back to the small on-screen preview. Frustrating! I've changed the preview quality to "Preview," no luck. I've also tried the "Recompress Preview" option. The result is so choppy, I could never use it to dump to Analog.

I'm open to all suggestions...from obvious blunders on my part, to wild hunches on yours.

Anyone?

jp

Comments

jboy wrote on 10/5/2001, 4:41 PM
Are you trying to play back and record from the timeline without rendering ? Kinda sounds like you are and it'll never work because VV is real time in a functional sense only. When you hit a manipulated segment the frame rate drops, (gets choppy), to accomodate all the changes the cpu has to make. Also, I think you have to import and export thru the capture utility, although I'm not sure of this because I use a different non-vegas utility to capture and export.
HPV wrote on 10/5/2001, 5:54 PM
You need to use Vidcap 2 or Vidcap 2.5 to print-to-tape. This is after you render the project. I use Pinnacle Studio DV for my print-to-tape needs.
I find the "recompress" feature only works for checking a frame at a time unless you do a "render to preview" witch is in the "tools" menu. Quality set to preview renders very fast for me.

Craig H.
pelvis wrote on 10/5/2001, 9:15 PM
pre-render the sections that need it to DV, then all video will playback smoothly. This is all you need for recording to analog from the timeline (take audio from the sound card, video from the media converter)
DR wrote on 10/7/2001, 8:25 PM
I too have the same prob on external moniters just for playing back.
It will go blank when it reaches something that has been edited or fx added and reverts back to the computer screen till out of edit.
I am using the suggested sonydvmc-da2 as well.This is just playing back the vid after editing.
Help as well on this!!
HPV wrote on 10/7/2001, 11:59 PM
To view timeline playback out the OHCI 1394 port on anything edited requires activating "recompress edit frames".
Options/preferences/external monitor/ it's near the bottom.
Don't expect it to be useable (dropped frames)for anything but a single frame buffer. Works great for this and should be used often for checking graphics, filters, and other things. But it won't show fields so you won't know if you have the jitters in your graphics/still frames/filter settings.
Soooo, to fix everything mentioned one must use region select and the prerender feature. Quality of render set to preview. No you really have WYSIWYG output. ; )

Cheers,
Craig H.