It came with the computer. LOL Kinda true, but I've made very good use of it. I also don't have two VGA monitors, but a bunch of 14" Svideo NTSC monitors
I have a Geforce 2MX card with Windows ME. This lets me set my 17" VGA monitor at 1024x768/60 mhz and my Svideo output at 640x480/60mhz. When I drag my preview window over to the Svideo monitor, I size it at 639x413. This shows all title safe area and most of the action safe area. Action safe area is 647x432. The screen is frame based, you can't get interlaced with Geforce cards (AFAIK). The up side to this is that I have a very "easy on the eyes" preview screen with zero flicker. Gamma, brightness, color saturation is all adjustable via the graphics card drivers. I have it looking really close to OHCI output to the same monitor. When needed, I can drop to 360x240 for higher framerate just by unselecting "display at project size" via a right click.
Now I'm sure some of you are thinking I don't have a clue about video and how important it is to watch you stuff on a full screen/interlaced monitor. Wrong
My OHCI card feeds my camera, it goes to an Svideo switch box. With a click of the ext. monitor button on the vegas preview window and a push of a button on the Svideo box, I have full NTSC previews. I check for jitter in stills, speed changes, graphics this way, plus color adjustments. That fact that I know Vegas isn't going to do anything screwy on most edits lets me edit 90%+ on the geforce output.
With a two video clip dissolve, I get a higher framerate with the geforce ouptut. It taxes the CPU less and leaves alittle more for the video steams. On generated media (text), they are really close. That is until I discovered my new trick (See Holy Moley post). Now OHCI beats the geforce on generated media by a few frames.
The matrox cards sound like they might do full 720x480 interlaced. Anybody know?
As for the new Geforce 4 MX series, they should be faster than my 2MX. The Geforce4 Ti series would be even faster, plus you can run two VGA monitors or a VGA and an Svideo. When I get a faster system, I'll go with twin VGA and only preview with OHCI. At least that is my thoughts at this time.
Craig H.
I have a Geforce 2MX card with Windows ME. This lets me set my 17" VGA monitor at 1024x768/60 mhz and my Svideo output at 640x480/60mhz. When I drag my preview window over to the Svideo monitor, I size it at 639x413. This shows all title safe area and most of the action safe area. Action safe area is 647x432. The screen is frame based, you can't get interlaced with Geforce cards (AFAIK). The up side to this is that I have a very "easy on the eyes" preview screen with zero flicker. Gamma, brightness, color saturation is all adjustable via the graphics card drivers. I have it looking really close to OHCI output to the same monitor. When needed, I can drop to 360x240 for higher framerate just by unselecting "display at project size" via a right click.
Now I'm sure some of you are thinking I don't have a clue about video and how important it is to watch you stuff on a full screen/interlaced monitor. Wrong
My OHCI card feeds my camera, it goes to an Svideo switch box. With a click of the ext. monitor button on the vegas preview window and a push of a button on the Svideo box, I have full NTSC previews. I check for jitter in stills, speed changes, graphics this way, plus color adjustments. That fact that I know Vegas isn't going to do anything screwy on most edits lets me edit 90%+ on the geforce output.
With a two video clip dissolve, I get a higher framerate with the geforce ouptut. It taxes the CPU less and leaves alittle more for the video steams. On generated media (text), they are really close. That is until I discovered my new trick (See Holy Moley post). Now OHCI beats the geforce on generated media by a few frames.
The matrox cards sound like they might do full 720x480 interlaced. Anybody know?
As for the new Geforce 4 MX series, they should be faster than my 2MX. The Geforce4 Ti series would be even faster, plus you can run two VGA monitors or a VGA and an Svideo. When I get a faster system, I'll go with twin VGA and only preview with OHCI. At least that is my thoughts at this time.
Craig H.