Thanks! Got it working right. I am using an Edirol VMC-1 to go analog to digital and digital to analog. It does what I needed. Again, thanks. Bill

I use a TV as a second monitor by using the TV out on the video card. There are a few settings in Catalyst and Vegas that have be set but it does work without an external solution.

FWIW...

I'd appreciate seeing some comparison images, I've yet to see a video card correctly hand off an accurate image via SVid or even component for SD video. But...there's always a first.

I find that outputting to the monitor is not really my main concern as I have found most of the pollution of the video comes from my capture card (POS pinnacle). The only reason I know this is I recently got a TBC that has a color bar generator and found the analog capture card sucks big ol' piles! It did take a while to "balance" everything though as to the apparent quality/colors across the different monitors. There was quite a bit of tweaking using the colors bars and the capture/video/monitor adjustments.

However, since all I do is analog capturing and DVD creation for watching on a TV, it gives me a pretty good idea of how the DVD will look like and can adjust the video accordingly.

Other than taking a picture of the monitor (I know is not a good comparison), I'm not sure how to make an accurate comparison, that I can post, without feeding back through the pcrap card... How would I make some comparisons?

Get a cheapo IEEE488 (Firewire) card for your PC. Connect a firewire cable between that card and a Firewire miniDV or D8 camcorder. Then feed the video from that camcorder through an analog cable (either a yellow video RCA connector, or an S-video cable) to a TV set. You can use a regular old TV, or can spend more money and get a professional monitor. Either way, you'll get a heck of a lot more accuracy in predicting what the final result will look like on a REAL television set.

Try to capture video via firewire. It's a very elegant and accurate way of getting bit-accurate video from a DV camera. No degradation.

My Dad always tells me, to stop knocking my head against a brick wall .. . well the secret, I tell him, is not to start . . take Spot's and riredale's advise . . you will not . .repeat NOT look back. You may even, in a quiet moment think, " .. hmmm . .what have I been missing!" Stuff that is put out on TV has been colour corrected by pros; directors of Photography have spent years and years in honing their craft; camera operators bust guts to get "the" shot; lighting MASTERS and riggers make damn sure the lights are perfect .. . and then . .. and then . .. .

Just my opinion .. .

Grazie

Or you can use both methods as I do.

JJK

To elaborate on this...

Generally, the most accurate preview output to a TV from Vegas will be as riredale describes: Out of the computer via Firewire to a converter (DV video camera, deck, or converter like the ADVC110) and from the converter to a TV (or studio monitor if you can possibly get one). This almost always looks a heck of a lot better than the svideo output of a graphics card (although maybe Vegas 6 is doing a better job of it these days).

The up side of this method is that the picture will be very accurate. The down side is that the firewire output always undergoes a conversion to DV25 so you can lose a bit of crispness where colors make sharp transitions-like titles, for example. If you were planning to output to DV tape then the picture is totally accurate, otherwise it's "good enough".

Regarding the svideo output from a graphics card, you can configure that output to be a second monitor through the windows display properties control panel. From there I assume that Vegas 6 can be set up to output it's preview window to that secondary display, without any of the preview window widgets, just the overlay buffer output. I've never felt the need to try this since my setup is different and I don't care to change it.

Where Vegas' output to secondary screen function seems useful (probably "required" is the better word) is if you need to preview at HDTV resolutions. In that case you can set up a wide screen HDTV resolution display as your second monitor over a DVI cable and then use it as a preview monitor.

Rob Mack