Previewing Video in Final Cut Pro
If you do not have a preview monitor on which to preview your work in Final Cut Pro, you can use one of your computer monitors to see a full screen preview.
1 Simply go to View > Video Playback > Digital Cinema Desktop Preview-Full Screen.
2 Go to View > External Video > All Frames so that FCP knows to send the information found in your project frame by frame to the external monitor.
May I point out that you may already posses the hardware to preview to an external NTSC monitor. Do you have an inexpensive Mini-DV camera with firewire and and S-Video ports? I'm talking about the type of Mini-DV camera that you would commonly take on a vacation. Do you have a television set with an S-Video in? If you do, then you're in luck!
1 Run the firewire cable from your computer to the Mini-DV Camera.
2 Run an S-Video Cable from the Mini-DV camera to the television set. Make sure your camera is in VTR mode and not in Camera mode.
3 Go to View > External Video > All Frames
4 Go to View > Video Playback > Apple Firewire NTSC (720x480).
Your audio source will have to be connected to the Mini-DV Camera for you to be able to monitor the audio. Now, you have a relatively inexpensive VTR!
