Playback through Firewire from Media Player?

[ScottZ]

I just picked up a Canopus ADVC-110 and getting great results with it in Premiere Pro 1.5.1.

However, is there anyway to force playback through firewire from Media Player? Ultimatly I'd like to get DV playback out through firewire from other apps that support Directshow.

At the moement I have a default WinXP SP2 install with no additional codecs installed.

[ScottZ]

Just to verify in advance, I do have the ADVC110 set to digital in and I do get simultanious playback on both an NTSC and Computer monitor in Premiere.

I'm just trying to make this work as my Matrox RTX100 system does in that I can play DV files out through firewire and on the computer monitor by default.

[mic]

If it helps... maybe gives a place to look if no one else posts definite answer. :)

I'm far from expert at this, but what I *think* you might getting is the overlay window sent out, & I think you might get the same results from playing other sorts of files, not just DV. I think your Matrox intercepts this & sends out, and Microsoft is working on similar software called Exhibitor for dual monitor.

That said, I don't think you'll get WMP to preview via firewire, but might find alternative software that will, possibly as option in DV capture software for preview.

[ScottZ]

I took a look at Video2DV which claims to play all kinds of things back out through firewire. In it's docs, it's saying for DV encoded video it is simply passing it through to the firewire port and not recompressing/encoding.

With the converter, I'm seeing the same in Adobe Premiere. So far it has been the only app (Video2DV aside) that is simultaniously outputing DV encoded video to the firewire port. I don't think it's re-encoding either as the CPU load is next to nothing on a simple playback. Also, my experience with Premiere is that it tends to want to render everything in advance on not on the fly.

I was hoping that there was a tweak, setting, or an app I was missing to get this to work with other apps (either VFW or DirectShow based).

I wanted to use Adobe Audtion (VFW based) or Nuendo (supports both) to output the DV video to an NTSC monitor while working with the soundtrack.

[mic]

@ScottZ
"I wanted to use Adobe Audtion (VFW based) or Nuendo (supports both) to output the DV video to an NTSC monitor while working with the soundtrack."

I did read on the Sony site that SoundForge 8 does provide firewire preview if that helps.

No implied offense or anything, but the 1 thing I really liked about Matrox was the external preview of the overlay window. It had a lot to do with getting my latest ati card -- their Catalyst Control Center drivers, Microsoft's Exhibitor, & Vegas so far each support external preview, & for relatively cheap $.

[ScottZ]

No offense taken.

My Matrox RTX100 Extreme is out of comission until I can find another motherboard that will work with it. The card is very picky about which motherboard/chipset you use with it and Matrox hasn't "approved" any modern motherboards.

In the meantime, I was trying to duplicate some of the preview features on another workstation that I use for doing audio soundtracks for video.

I had tried various video outs from several ATI/Nvidia cards a couple of years ago and wasn't all that impressed as the setup and quality was very cludgy. But that was a couple of years ago and maybe it's time to look at it again.

One thing I'm doing now though is dual-dvi and that complicates things.

[mic]

Maybe too detailed, but for what it's worth, more opinions then asked for... :)

The ATI cards are better then earlier versions, and do put out a decent signal to a 2ndary TV monitor, but I don't know that I'd use 2ndary TV output for recording to tape, if that's a good way to phrase it. :) Personally I don't think it'd be a problem with 2ndary dvi.

The drivers' Control Center I'd consider a work in process. It works well, but doesn't have the finished feel I'd like -- put it this way, every month around the 15th I'm checking their site for the latest version. I think there are 3 parts to the problem.

1) .NET ... If Microsoft gets it right in the next version, and ati uses it, probably go away.

2) Media Center PCs. ATI spends a lot of resources trying to make things compatible as an option when they design their software.

3) WinXP... I *think* the overlay window as clone or full-screen preview on a 2nd monitor is something recently supported through winXP updates. It feels to me like things video just before every other version of windows came out. Microsoft is trying new technology or code, but it's just not possible (or desireable) to fully implement it in older versions.

If you search out and believe rumors, some time in the future there may be some sort of GPU support on a lesser scale, but similar in concept to Matrox. It is programable, but so far all I'm aware of is hardware support of wmv playback.

But all should be taken with a grain of salt... With graphics cards, or m/boards, it's a jungle out there. :(

[ScottZ]

Thanks for the additional info.

I'm using both DVI's for Desktop as it's unfortunatly a requirement of this setup.

The video out I'm after is for preview only, but needs to be of quality to represent how the DV would show up on if the monitor was plugged into a camera (or in this case, the DV converter).

Hmmm.. so with the newer drivers they are supporting video overlay that shows up on primary monitor to be output through the video out? Cool deal.

I assume this still takes up the secondary display to do so?
My issues with this in the past was how you had to make the video out your secondary display and "tweak" to get colors and geometry right (ala TVtool or what have you).

I have an HIS 9600 Dual DVI with Video Out on it. I would love to keep the dual-dvi and have video overlay out enabled (i.e. Dual Display of the desktop through the DVI ports, and output the overlay to the video port). But didn't think this was possible.

This is something the Matrox p650/750 do, but all analog though (even though it's dual dvi, to use this feature, the dual display is analog).

Always something isn't it?

[mic]

RE: Controls...
Figured the easiest way to give a good idea of controls would be to just go through them and list the most relevant stuff. Don't think you'll find a listing in the docs, though please bear in mind this is with a 2ndary TV monitor -- I don't know if or what would change with 2ndary dvi.

I have controls to enable/disable 2ndary, set size/refresh/positioning/color, HDTV support, video mode (for better playback), underscan/overscan, video overlay color/gamma etc. per monitor, full screen or match source video window, deinterlace settings, rotate/swap display/stretch horiz or vert/clone.

To explain my earlier comments a bit, output to TV is actually quite good, but I'm not sure how legal it is -- suspect ati tweaks the signal to get the best display possible on what really is by nature an extremely poor PC monitor, and wouldn't expect it to be an issue with dvi.