I belive Canopus makes a card that doesn DV/in out and Analog video in/out. It comes bundled with Vegas and isn't very expensive (around $450-500).

For VGA preview - SoFo Vegas isn't fussy. A good 2D card, perhaps dual head, perhaps dual-head where you can extend the primary desktop over more than one monitor (as opposed to windows primary/secondary). That shortlists nvidia and Matrox P series to be extendable primary, AFAIK. That way you'll have more freedom with motion graphics and where their window is best located.

Sark, so you're heading down the route of playing with Flash! animations in Vegas?

I'd go with the Canopus AcedVio or something like that you get a great card plus Vegas for about the same price as Vegas alone, I believe it's around $499, but I know you can find it cheaper if you do a little searching.


http://www.canopus.us/US/products/ACEDVio/pm_ACEDVio.asp

Thanks for the advice, it's greatly appreciated.

My current Matrox G450 will, I assume, give acceptable previews on the PC, but I want to see what I will be getting on a video monitor as DVD-R will be my intended final output. I guess it's a choice between the slightly more affordable 1394 card and an ADVC, or the more versatile Video Editing card route.

RBartlett.......Yes, just want to play around with Flash animations for home TV.

I had considered After Effects with a Matrox Parhelia which can preview from AE, but because I don't expect to be applying a lot of effects, other than the usual, color, deinterlace, etc, VV's audio tools with its realtime preview seemed a better choice. (The envelope function looks interesting as well). Also, I've never really liked the Adobe interface on a PC.

In your opinion is VV a good choice for video from Flash?

Thanks again for the replies.

Sark

One other question I forgot to ask.

Does VV's MPEG-2 encoder hold its own amongst stand alone products.
I've been told Canopus Procoder is the best software encoder available, but this is a bit pricey for me at the moment.
I've tried TMPG, but have not yet purchased a video monitor to fully guage the results, but it seems reasonable on the PC's monitor.
Do VV users generally use its own encoder, or look elsewhere.

Thanks again.

Sark

Yes, the included MC encoder not only holds its own, it is on of the best software encoders for digital video regardless of price. Why? Because the version that comes with Vegas has been "tuned" to work best with what Vegas generates. Also do yourself a favor. Do NOT fiddle with the settings. This forum is filled with posts of people that have, only to report problems. The default settings are fine, 99.9% of the time.