Your editing software has a preview window, and at first glance it probably seems to work well enough. But if you plan to record your movie on videotape or DVD, just previewing it on the computer screen can cause a couple of problems:- TVs usually provide a bigger view. A larger TV screen reveals camera movements and other flaws that might not be obvious in the tiny preview window on your computer screen.
- Computer monitors and TVs show color differently. Colors that look right on your computer may not look the same on a TV.
- Most TVs are interlaced. TVs are usually interlaced, whereas computer monitors are progressively scanned, or non-interlaced. Titles or other graphics that have very thin lines may look fine on your computer monitor, but when viewed on a TV, those thin lines may flicker or appear to shimmer or crawl.
Apple iMovie makes previewing your work on an external TV monitor very easy. In iMovie, choose iMovie ➪ Preferences. The iMovie Preferences dialog box appears as shown in Figure. Place a check mark next to Play Video Through to Camera under Advanced options. Now that this option is enabled, whenever you play the timeline, the video will be sent out to your camcorder if it is connected to your FireWire port and turned on in Player or VTR mode. If you have a TV monitor hooked up to the camcorder’s analog outputs, the video image should appear there as well.
Pinnacle Studio also allows you to preview video on an external monitor, although it’s a little more complicated. Basically, you have to export the movie as if you were done and ready to record it on tape. After the movie is exported for tape, you can play the export file and preview it on an external monitor as many times as you like without actually recording the tape.
