I have set up a regular TV monitor with rca inputs but I can't view my timeline during playback. I am going out of my G4 and into my GL2 via firewire and then out of the camera and into the monitor via rca's. My FCP external video settings are on NTSC. I can see a still frame when I pause in the timeline and what's more confusing is that I can view a clip in the viewer through the external monitor.

Anyone know how to solve this problem.

KP

Maybe you have an older computer and it cannot handle it? Or some other hardware is connected to your mac that disturbs it. Do you have some other software running at the same time.

Oh, maybe you have the wrong codec or audio format chosen. The viewer is the original footage, check your settings, it's probably something there.

Make sure that your external video setting is for DV NTSC. (I know you remarked it is set for NTSC, but just to be sure.

Do you see -anything- in your monitor while the timeline is playing? Does the still frame appear when you stop? The GL2's Power switch is set to Play?

I have checked everything I can think of and nothing works. I see a blue screen on the external monitor and my GL2 LCD. Yes, it is in Play(VCR) mode. Yes, when I stop in the timeline it does appear in both the LCD and external monitor.

When I play the timeline the bluescreen hiccups every few seconds, other than that nothing happens until I stop in the timeline.

OK, I have, indeed, experienced this or something similar to it. In my case it seemed related to a particular Firewire drive being on the Firewire bus during playback. My external monitors are connected through my deck via Firewire. A still frame from the timeline would appear when the playhead was stopped. But putting the playhead in motion would send a scrambled mess to the external monitors (a small Sony field production monitor and a 27" Sony consumer television) as long as this particular Firewire drive was connected and powered-up. I worked with the drive's vendor to track the problem down, and they even replaced the drive. But to no avail.

So how did I solve the problem? Well, I did...and I didn't. For several months I just worked around the problem and avoided having the "offending" drive online while editing. But after recently buying a new 14" Sony production monitor to replace the small one I noticed that the problem was suddenly gone! The same "offending" drive was online. But the new Sony looked fine. The 27" Sony tv looked fine, too!

For me, this was just one of the many little mysteries that passed through my life unexplained but ultimately resolved. Maybe my little story will give you a clue towards solving your mystery.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Ken,
Any chance you did a windows update or patch during that interval? Or some other softwre update ot patch that may have introduced a updated driver?

Ken,

I turned off and unhooked the external firewire drive and all my problems went away. However, all my media is on that drive so I had to turn it back on. Is this an issue with the drive itself or what?

Thanks,
KP

Did you daisy chain the firewire devices? If you have a spare
firewire port (my pc has 3) try another port. Otherwise a seperate
firewire card might help (try before you buy is the word here!)

What OS and Service Pack are you running. Either Windows 2000
or XP had a few firewire problems that were fixed in one of the
latest Service Packs..

Don,
No, actually I'm a Mac user and there were no updates that could really account for the phenomenon.

KP (Say, what's your first name?)
Ha! Isn't that interesting?! No, I believe that the drive itself is just fine. My problem occurred with a Wiebetech Micro GB+ drive. I have 3 of their drives and one 0Gb enclosure, all of which operate perfectly except this one. It's beyond my electrical engineering knowledge and, apparently, beyond Weibetech's. They tried everything to make me happy. They replaced the drive and, when that failed, they sent me a Firewire cable with a filter block.

The real mystery was the serendipitous "solution"; a change in my pro monitor which also cleared-up the problem on my consumer tv! So there's clearly some weird relationship between a drive's Firewire circuitry and the signal processors in monitors.

KP, I would suggest contacting your drive's manufacturer. Perhaps they've heard of this problem (although it's doubtful). Still, they may be able to offer a solution such as changing the drive's enclosure to a completely different model.

Failing that, you may be able to change the enclosure yourself by buying a 0Gb enclosure. Or you may be able to remove your drive from the Firewire enclosure and install it internally.

Good luck and let us know how your mystery turns out.

The Weibtech people recently posted a white patper implicating cheap firewire cables as the source of many woes. I'd suggest a new cable as a test.