I need to use the s video output so that whan editing footage it is easier to see colour correction/filters etc. On a professional monitor this is easy, but on a normal tv with analogue av type connection this is difficult. Today i walked into a TV shop to try out the s video connections when linking with my xm2. The picture using svideo clearly had much less noise than the analogue (AV) output, however, the pictures were in black and white. Please help! Should this happen? Does s video produce colour picures? Im sure it should. Is there something i need to do?

Switch cables. The one you used wasn't passing the color info, and is probably bad. Try that first. If it's still b&w then you're looking at a bad S-video jack either on the monitor or the camera.

cheers... will try tommorrow, any other advice out there...?

Check the PAL / NTSC switch on the monitor? I wonder if that would affect the color output...

it would do yes, it would appear black n white. but it is a pal tv with a pal camera, i hope its just the wire but i have that feeling that it isnt, hope im wrong, and this is not an xm2 issue! cheers.

Hello! I had this happen once, I saw video but only in B&W, found out one of the pins on one end of the cable broke off!

It might also be that the TV is only accepting composite in and
not s-video. How did you hook it up (through what kind of
connector)?

Keep in mind that s-video is still analogue. So I'm not sure what
other connection you where using earlier.

If you are using SCART then it usually accepts both composit and
s-video (which internally actually go over some of the same pins!),
but the TV might still NOT support it (quite common with at least
older TV's in Europe)!

i was using an actual s video cable into s video socket on tv (not through scart adaptor). I need to try another cable i guess but shop was closed today half day lazy beggars! tomorrow.....

On my TV, I have the front in with both Svideo and composite (separate connectors). Anyway, if I plug in the Svideo cable but the video-in on TV is set to the composite, I see black and white image.
I had some frustrations (when I bought the TV) untill my wife pushed the right button. :)

Michael,

I do know on some TV's you have to go into the picture setup and select Svideo as the input to get colour. This is mostly on old TV's.

cheers everyone, i went back to shop with another lead and it worked. I ended up not buying the tv after all becuse of a fault i then noticed the screen had (with or wthout my xm2 connected). So now on look out for second hand tv shop in n.e england with s video television! They are actually becomming a little hard to find here in the UK, unless you buy a big expensive one.

You don't need S-video connection if color correction/filter is yr first concern. AV doesnt show more noise, appart from some cross color/luminance effects. Also chroma (color) isn't much different.

okay why then do television proffesionals use an s video into a monitor as opposed to an analogue? Simply because s video gives more lines than standard analogue. perhaps someone could explain the difference, i think analogue is sometwhere in the region of 312 pal, 5oo s vid and 600+ scart as a rough guestimate????! There is a notable amount of improvement even on a standard TV. I used to play with various filters and tools on my pc screen, there was barely any difference. However on a monitor using s video these filters could be played with sucessfully. For example dropping a bit of motion blur effect or a sharpnes filter on a poor NTSC to pal conversion, then playing with the colour range, can make a horrible picture be acceptable enough for broadcast here in the UK. As for the use of a TV... i know its not gonna be ideal, but im sure there will be a difference. I could see a ifference in the shop... but if you know better, and happen to have a spare pal mo9nitor you want to give away, then, im your friend!
cheers.

There is indeed a (potential) resolution difference in the luma channel. The chroma channel (color) is exactly the same for S-video and composite video. F.Y.I Michael, real professionals use (used to use...today it's SDI) component video. At the time JVC invented S-VHS consumer video recording, Y/C video connection became popular, and some lower end "pro" monitors got the Y/C input.

however complicated or simple you make it.... s video offers more lines and is far superior to analogue. The standard was a big jump and pushed out purely for commercial reasons. There are broadcasters in the UK using s video as a capture medium for dvd, and achiving proffesional, i mean by this broadcastable, results. Im not talking about film standard, but certainly uk standard which exeeds that of crappy usa ntsc!

Right Michael, Y/C is better, but did you know that over 99% of the TV receivers (also most top end PAL receiver, unless they use combfiltering) receive and process in composite and not in Y/C. Even the best BBC programs which look much better (in apparent resolution and color) than most people can get with their prosumer cams in S-video, are composite signals. So composite isn't all that bad...and good enough for some ediiting work on a small TV.

well all i know is that if i drop chrominance or white ballance or sharpness etc type filters on some footage it is difficult to see on the monitor or TV screen any impact these make at all unless you use the effect to an extreme. Obviously a high resolution monitor allows you to see small changes very clearly indeed. The analogue out im using does not give a good picture on a tv screen. For example if i were to stick the smae footage onto a dvd and play in my dvd player, the pic quality would be better. So something is being lost in the output of the footage, which may be for example an avi file in my editing programme. firewire out feeds it back into my camera, which converts it into an anologue out. It is here that i believe an s video lead instead will improve the output quality. It is a means to an end. Obviously a monitor will be better, if you have one spare feel free to donate. Or maybe its a better analogue out than the one on the xm2? I feel that s vieeo is the obvious thing to try???
Interestingly there seems to be a brighter pic when i plug in both leads, tho this is not neccecarily a true representation of what the final encoded result will be so perhaps not worth bothering with.