Assuming you can connect S-Video to the TV, then Yes, you could use S-Video. I wasn't necessarily trying to recommend "the best way", just that the camera had to be connected to the TV. Plus, I don't know that ALL cameras have an S-Video out - the vast majority DO have RCA outs.


Ian, I have an external firewire drive connected to my laptop. The deck is then connected to the firewire drive. In my case, I can still get external previews. The files are read from the external drive, used by Vegas, and sent to the deck THROUGH the connection to the drive and then on to the TV.

I have also tried external preview with an XL-1. This has always worked as well.

Thanks for the advice, Edward. If you have a moment, can you please confirm that I understand correctly (sorry to be dumb!).

The (in series) connection you describe is as follows:

Laptop
to
Firewire Card
to
Firewire Drive
to
DV Deck
to
Monitor

which, in my case would be

PC
to
Firewire Card
to
Firewire Drive
to
Canon
to
TV

I didn't realise that different types of firewire devices could be linked in series although I was aware that there was another firewire port on the drive (which I thought was to enable me to chain additional WD firewire drives).

Is there any performance issue do you think? I guess it must be acceptable if you have successfully been doing this, but I'm trying to understand why I would need three firewire ports on the PCI card.

Thanks again for the advice.

Yes, that is how I am hooked up - daisy chained through the hard drive enclosure.

Thanks again Edward. I tried this method but sadly with no success.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the Western Digital drive is causing a conflict as when I removed the drive from the system, playback via cam to external monitor worked perfectly well (with the exception that widescreen is not supported on the TV I use!). When I reintroduced the drive, it collapsed.

Not sure where I can go from here, short of investing in a USB 2 card and running the drive from that.

If anyone has a similar configuration (ie WD External Firewire 250Gb, Canon XL2/GM2) and has successfully managed to preview to an external monitor I'd be delighted to hear how you did it!

This link to the Sony Knowledge Base suggests that it is NOT, in fact, the external firewire drive causing problems but rather the Canon - at least as far as hanging the Canon off the external drive is concerned. I wonder if this is the same issue affecting previewing through the cam to an external monitor.

Thank god for copy and paste. If some kind sould could tell me how to make these links live I'd be happy to edit the post!

http://www.custcenter.com/cgi-bin/so...cGFnZT0x&p_li=

I've never tried daisy chaining the Canon camera. All of my daisy chaining experience has been with the Panasonic deck which has worked fine. All my pass-thru experience with the Canon(s) has been straight computer to camera to TV.

Thanks for the link.

You're most welcome.

But just to confuse the issue further, here's a link to the Vegas Forum at Sony which makes me wonder again about the external drive!!!

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.co...ssageID=257603

<weary sigh>

I have a Hollywood Bridge lying around somewhere. I bought it to capture from analogue sources but it never worked as decsribed in the blurb. Maybe I'll dig it out and try it out as a DV-analogue converter.

My hopes aren't high though!

I have a Sony TRV27. Does it support the feature to use it as a converter from DV to video for tv display?

I havethe camcorder connected to my computer via firewire. Then I have the camcoder plugged into my tv using RCA.

I set the camcorder to vcr mode.

I play my video in Vegas and click the little button in the preview window.

Nothing happens.

Do I have it implemented correctly? Does this camera have the proper feature?

Thanks,

KIM

Update to my post of 19th March re the Hollywood Bridge.

No joy. UNLESS I take the firewire drive offline, which is a shame as that's where I store my video data.

So it looks kinda like the WD 250gb firewire/USB2 external drive doesn't like to play with other firewire devices.

If anyone can shed any further light on this I'd be delighted to hear from you.