External HD monitor preview while editing?

[booggerg2]

What are the solutions right now to allow a realtime output of the NLE's preview screen to an external HD monitor? I use Sony Vegas, are there any videos cards with such capability?

Back in the DV days, I can just hook up a DV device via firewire and Vegas will be able to via the OHCI driver. Can this be done with the HMC150? Thanks.

 

[KeithAndrews.TV]

Real time output will obviously depend upon the limitations of your editing platform, and whether or not you are using software, or hardware to provide the real time playback. With software, you often rely upon the native editing capabilities of the program along with the speed of your CPU, RAM, Hard Drive transfer speed, etc...to provide the real time playback. With hardware, you are using a proprietary video codec that works in conjunction with the hardware to provide the real time playback.

The cheapest solution is going to be to use the native editing capabilities of the editing software, along with the power of the editing platform, in conjunction with a video card like an ATI, or nVidia that can output either a component, or HDMI signal. Both companies offer several models that are capable of this.

The more costly solution is to purchase something like a Black Magic Intensity/Intensity Pro card which will give you dedicated HDMI video out from editing products like Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Vegas. I believe the way the card offers more real time playback capabilities is through the use of it's proprietary codec, which of course means, unless you use the Black Magic codec to capture, or convert your video, you will not be getting the real time playback that the card is capable of providing.

There are other cards out there as well from manufacturers like Matrox, Canopus, and AJA, but I am trying to keep to the topic of your post and list cost-effective solutions that will enable you to output the video from your editing software to an HD monitor. There is no IEEE-1394 port on the HMC150, so you will not be able to use the camera as a throughput device to a monitor.

First choose how you wish to get the video from your computer to your HD monitor (software-based, or hardware-based), then decide what solution works within your budget.

 

[booggerg2]

Thanks for the reply..

In the past, I've used the S-Video capability of my Nvidia card to output the video overlay to an external TV.. This was when I was using AVID XpressDV so the resolution of the outputted video matched the resolution of the preview window ( it was lower than NTSC)

My question is, if I edit 720P footage in Sony Vegas, would a video card that can output an HDMI signal be capable of sending out the HD(or HD-ish) video from Vegas' preview screen to an external HD display via HDMI?

If I do decide to go with a Black Magic card, how will that card with the media from the HMC150? There isn't really a "capture" process, so does it offer software to transcode the AVCHD files to Black Magic's codec?