Has anyone used the HV20's component or HDMI outputs to hook up a HD monitor for NLE output? I have done this with cheap mini-DV cams with Adobe Premiere before and it works great. Instead of buying a breakout box (eg. matrox) to facilitate the use of an external preview monitor you can use a firewire connection from the PC to a DV camera, then analog out from there to a Monitor.
Can someone confirm that the HV20 allows for this?

Thank you!

OK, I bought a HD monitor to test this out with. The monitor accepts 1080i as well as standard def signals through component inputs. So the HV20 hooks up through its component outs to the monitor. The PC is connected to the HV20 via firewire.
If I set the HV20 to Standard Definition (DV) input the previews from Adobe Premier Pro 1 or Vegas 7 work great. The signal sent to the monitor is then Standard Definition also. However, if I set the HV20 to High Defintion (HDV 1080i) input then the PC does not recognize it. It looks like Premiere Pro and Vegas will not output a HD signal to an external monitor.
This doesn't surprise me from Premiere, it is an older version that doesn't play well with HD, but it does surprise me from Vegas 7 which is supposed to fully support HDV.
Has anyone else gotten true HD previews to an external monitor from any other NLE software? If not, I may have wasted moy money on this monitor!

Keith,

I get "normal" HDV previews from Prem Pro 2 TIMELINE using a Matrox
APVE graphics card / component output.

Herman.

OK, but I think that card has a specific software plug-in for Premiere Pro, so not the setup I have described. I need someone to try the Monitor pass-thru setup as I have described from Vegas or Premiere Pro to get true 1080i previews.

Can anyone do this?

I don't own a HDV yet (HV20 it will be, when it finally comes out in Europe), but I did some research on the net to find out exactly what you want to know. I've been working for years with the firewire passthru of my DV cam, going to an old Commodore Amiga monitor (cheap and better than a standard tv, if you can't afford a studio monitor).

To get to the point: unfortunately I had to find out that timeline output of HDV footage via firewire doesn't work in Premiere, unless you use some compatible addtional hardware. The explanation for this on various websites makes sense: the HDV Mpeg2 codec takes significantly longer to encode than standard DV and today's computers are not powerful enough. Additionally there are issues because of HDV being a long GOP codec. I tried it myself with some downloaded PAL HDV footage - no luck.

It's a shame, because I could even live with a downscaled DV quality output, which After Effects is capable of.

Not really what you asked but FWIW my edit setup includes an external 32" LCD HDTV hooked up to my graphics card via component out. I spread my Windows desktop across my Dell 24" LCD and the HDTV as a second display and then in Vegas 5 I drag the video preview window onto the HDTV and expand it to fit the entire screen. The actual video window is a bit smaller than the full screen but plenty big to watch my previews and make adjustments in real time. I'm using a pretty weak ATI X700 (256MB) graphics card with no problem. Thus I've never had to use my camcorder to preview on an external monitor.

Yes, at this point it looks like I may be shopping for a Dual Head Video Card that also has component outs. Bummer.
I already have a dual monitor setup and can drag the preview window onto a second monitor as described in the above post, but I have always liked having a dedicated preview monitor that I could set color/brightness/contrast/etc. on get consistent results.

Thanks all who responded.