I'm going to be looking into getting a tv for previewing my video work and need to know what cards are out there that can handle outputting to the PC's monitor *AND* the TV at the same time?

Failing that, has anyone had success with using two graphics cards and using one for the TV out and one for the monitor?

Cheers
Aaron

Aaron Matrox have a range of cards that do this quite well. There are dual and tripple head versions depending on what you need. The new Parhelia gives you 2 monitirs and a tv as well a 128MB or video ram. It's a tuff card but I'd say quite pricey down your way. The G550 is a dual head model that will give you one monitor plus your tele, and it would be quite a bit cheaper.

I'm still using the old 16MB G400 Dual head card and it works a treat. As far as I'm comcerned Matrox's graphics cards are first rate.

I'm using an ATI Radeon 9000 (I think) that gives me two monitors and 1 TV. I think it cost about $130us with the system I bought.

Dylan, is that two monitors AND one TV, or two monitors OR one monitor and a TV?

Three outputs total. Two monitor, one TV.

I'm pretty sure it's a Radeon 9000, but it might be an 8500.

And you can output on all three at once? --I'm impressed. Must have a pretty hefty video buffer. What kinds of resolutions and refresh rates can you do on the computer monitors?

Thanks Adrian and and Dylan.

Dylan, that Radeon sounds pretty good, but can you do monitor AND TV output *AT THE SAME TIME* like I want for previewing video? Just wanting to clarify cause if It can I think I'll go for that baby.

Also, what NLE's do you guys use as I'm thinking of going with Avid XPress DV but want to make sure whatever card I get will work with that.

Cheers
Aaron

You can get info on the ATI Radeons here http://mirror.ati.com/products/builtdesktoppc.html At least on the Mac, the cards output any 2 of the 3. Very stable product. ATI, in my opinion , has better drivers than NVidia, and they are updated more often.

Jeff

Correct me if i am wrong, but wouldn't using a video card's tv out pretty much be pointless??

Video cards have absolute crap video out for tv's and wouldn't actually be any good for the kind of use i think people here want.

Wouldn't the natural and best way to get a preview on a tv monitor be use either, a dv deck which has video outs to a tv, your dv camera or a cheap camera as a deck and have all these streaming out via firewire.

I have used tv out on even the most expensive nvidia cards, and matrox for that matter and it was soft and aweful.

zac

Yes Zac, I think you are correct. As you say, a better NTSC/PAL video out for video editing purposes would be a firewire out put through a camcorder/deck/DV-to-analog converter, or a box with a DV codec and an analog out like the Canopus DVStorm.

(BTW, wasn't Chris going to change your user name?)

Robert you tell me, i did email him, and asked Jeff and John L. as well.

Dosn't really bother me either way.

Zac

I am currently using the 128 MB Radeon 9000 card. It has an digital output for my flat panel, CRT Monitor, and television. The CRT monitor is on the out, so I am only using the flat panel and television.

Configuring Xpress DV is a pain in the ass and I haven't figured out why it doesn't output to the full window on the television screen. I played with resolutions... blahh blahh, its not working like I expected it to work. I'll work it some more...

However, outputting to my XL1S and connecting the XL1S output to a television yields the result that I need. So, I've been using that method...

I hope this helps in your decision making process...

I have been using a Matrox G450 eTV card (no longer in production) and the video out (S-VHS) is not soft and awful. Though using one's camera to translate the digital out via Firewire also works very well.

(Premier 6.0)



Ron Johnson
Portland, OR

Im thinking of buying the DVraptor PAL/NTSC card, it's a really good and cheap card($120). It got all the outputs to for viewing edited material on monitors as well as TV's. Pluss of course a great way to capture your footage, non-dropped frames guaranted. Check it out.

<<<-- Originally posted by Kermie Klien : Correct me if i am wrong, but wouldn't using a video card's tv out pretty much be pointless??

Video cards have absolute crap video out for tv's

I have a Radeon 7000 Mac edition (think there's also a PC version). It can output to a computer monitor and TV simultaneously with each port set to any desired resolution. Actually the s-video output looks really good to me at 720x480. There's a control panel that lets you tweak the color, contrast, brightness, sync, flicker filter and image size. If I'm using s-vhs then this gives much better output than my VX-2000 over firewire. One thing I like is that I can set the image size to show the full frame without overscan.

Again, I'm using a Mac with Final Cut Pro, but I suspect the PC version gives you similar abilities.