Ron Priest
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Dec 12, 2007, 7:34 AM
Post #1 of 5
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Baby Steps - Troubleshooting External Video Monitoring
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Okay day 2 of actually working inside of FCP for the most part successful. However, I had an external monitoring problem when I decided to switch my DSR-11 tape deck out with a digital 8 camcorder firewire camcorder.
To make a long story short, Lisa was able to help me solve the problem. She had me look under View > External Video, and insure "All Frames" was selected. It was not, it was set to off. I don't know why, or how this got changed, or if it had been set to off all along. I never changed it, and I never came across any pre-configuration steps that instructed me to initially set anything here. I had never even looked at this setting until List told me about it. Evidently however, it's not required one way or another during capture because I could monitor my video on an external monitor just fine when capturing! So, that was the fix. These trouble shooting steps can be found in the manual on page 231 volume 1 titled: "Troubleshooting External Video Monitoring Problems". So, that was the fix, if you want to hear the whole story, keep reading.
The day before I had followed the 'manual' step by step in prepreaparation to capture video via firewire from my deck. Everything went flawlessly during the capture phase without incident. However, once I had finished capturing, I started to play around with the timeline and learn some basic editing techniques. I don't remember if I had shut FCP down and loaded it back up or what I did different, but now I wasn't able to monitor my video output via firewire through my deck to the monitor. After fumbling around some and going over the steps in the book again in chapter 14 "External Video Monitoring" starting at page 219 I couldn't figure out what was causing my problem. After turning on and off the deck, relaunching FCP a few times, and even going back into the Log and capture screen to initialize communication with my deck (which was successful by the way, so I know it was communicating with my deck via firewire), all of a sudden I was able to monitor my timeline on the external monitor again. So I just summed it up to a fluke without investigating the problem any further, until the next day (yesterday) I decided I wanted to use my Digital 8 camcorder as my firewire link from my computer to my external monitor. I didn't want to run my deck all the time while editing because of the wear and tear on the cooling fan inside the deck.
So I connect my Digital 8 camcorder's firewire up to the computer and fired up FCP and now I had the same problem as yesterday, except I couldn't stumble across a fix now. I went through all of the same steps, checking every setting I could think of. I had checked, double checked, and rechecked my settings under the Final Cut Pro tabs Audio/Video Settings menu. More specifically, I insured the following selections: Sequence Preset: DV NTSC 48 Khz; Capture Preset: DV NTSC 48 kHz; Device Control Preset: FireWire NTSC; Video Playback: Apple FireWire NTSC (720 x 480) and Audio Playback: Default. I believe these are all the default settings when using the "Create Easy Setup" I double checked my Preset under "Device Control Presets" tab and I was in fact using FireWire NTSC (the proper preset for my configuration). My Playback Output settings under the A/V Devices tab were set as follows: Video: Apple Firewire NTSC (720 x 480); Mirror on desktop was unchecked, and I had Default selected for my Audio output settings. Note: The output settings under this A/V Devices are the same settings you see under the Summary tab, this is just another place you can change them.
Finally I was able to contact Lisa (she goes off all day and leaves her phone at home, can you believe it!) and she lead me right to the fix I had mentioned at the begging of this episode. Sorry for being so long winded, but I like to document all of these initial problems so if I run across them again I can remember what I did to fix them. I also want to prevent anyone else from wasting time troubleshooting something they shouldn't have to troubleshoot. If the manual had initially informed me to check these settings it would be different, but the book doesn't seem to mention checking these settings until you run across the problem, then they list the steps in a troubleshooting procedure. Doesn't make much sense to me. I was kidding in another thread about fixing the problem after having to "READ the BOOK" well I was just being sarcastic actually, I'm a book geek when it comes to training myself how to do something. Being in the Air Force for 25 years taught me to follow the book step by step, and if a procedure was missing from the steps, I felt I had reason to point out the problem with the procedures and change them to prevent someone else from wasting time they shouldn't have to waste. Seems like I've spent my entire live wasting time trying to figure out why I'm wasting time? That aint right!
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Ron Priest - Louisville KY
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(This post was edited by Ron Priest on Dec 12, 2007, 8:19 AM)
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