Do I need a Production Monitor??

[bmblack]

I edit DV in Premiere Pro 2.0. I'm interested in getting a better idea of what my video is going to look like on DVD before I burn it. For example, I'm concerned about interlacing issues, stills being too detailed, slow motion, color, sharpness etc. I'm thinking a production/studio monitor connected to the PC is what I need. Would this be my best option? Money is a bit of a factor.

If a monitor would be a good idea, what would be the reccomended way to hook it up to my PC and use it with Premiere Pro 2.0? The only real outputs I have on my PC are firewire and usb. I am considering possibly getting a new dedicated video card. I also have a Canon GL2 DV Camera.

[ozymango]

I use my DV camcorder as a pass-through device when editing in Premiere, and just feed the camera out (composite video) to my TV, for preview use. Now, if I could afford a separate studio monitor (and had space for one!), I'd love to get one, but that ain't happening soon so this is a nice, cheap fix.

Previewing your edits in even just a regular TV is really helpful, the one thing I've found it's indispensable for is titling -- you'd be amazed how many fonts sucks when played back on a standard resolution TV.

[redwudz]

For cheap, you could pick up a 12" - 13" color TV with composite video input. There are a lot of them out there at places like Walmart, etc. Then you just need a video card with composite output, which is fairly common. That should give you a good idea how it will look on the average TV set.

I still use an old 12" color composite monitor from when I had a Amiga computer. Works fine with my ADVC-100 DV converter box.

A real studio monitor may set you back quite a few dollars. And you may need to calibrate it to get the best performance.

And welcome to our forums.

[wwaag]

As an alternative, I use a networked DVD player that is connected directlly to my 65" HDTV. After rendering from Premiere or Vegas, I can immediately "play" the resulting MPG file on the TV. I've found this to be a real time-saver since I no longer have to "burn" my encoded files to a re-writable DVD to see if they "work" properly. Moreoever, most of my work is now HDV, which is also supported by the networked player (Zensonic Z500). Before the player, I used to "print to tape" my rendered HDV files to a Sony HC1 which I would then take and "play" on the large TV (very, very time-consuming). An added advantage is that the use of a large TV will show problems that will never be visible on a small monitor. In fact, most things IMO look pretty good on a 13" monitor. Just another suggestion.

wwaag