Video playback on a FireWire DV device

You can view your video projects on an external FireWire DV device.

Note 1: You can only view video projects on an external FireWire DV device when using SONAR’s DirectShow video engine. The default Media Foundation engine does not support this feature.

Note 2: This feature will decrease the processor load to your computer if the video stream is a DV AVI file. If the stream is not DV AVI, the CPU load will significantly increase, compared to playing back on-screen with SONAR’s Video view.

To specify the default video engine

When importing a video file, SONAR will first attempt to use the default Media Foundation video engine. If the video format is not supported, SONAR will next attempt to use the legacy DirectShow video engine.

To specify the default video engine:

1.	Go to Edit > Preferences > Audio - Configuration File.

2.	Under Configuration Settings, click Edit Config File.

The Aud.ini file opens in the default Windows text editor.

3.	In Aud.ini, create a new [Video] section and add a new entry called VideoEngine and set its value to 0. For example:

[Video]

VideoEngine=0

Valid values are as follows:

0 = DirectShow engine.

1 = Media Foundation engine (default).

4.	Save Aud.ini and close the Windows text editor.

5.	Click Reload Config Settings to reload the current audio configuration settings from Aud.ini.

 

Tip: To confirm which video engine is currently used, right-click the Video view or video thumbnail and select Video Properties on the pop-up menu, then click the Info tab.

To convert a Video project to DV AVI format

1.	Use the File > Export > Video command.

The Export Video dialog box appears.

2.	In the File Name field, type a name for your new video.

3.	In the Save as Type field, choose Video for Windows.

4.	Click the Encoding Options button to open the AVI Encoder options dialog box, and choose DV Video Encoder in the Video Codec field. Click OK.

5.	Click the Audio Mixdown Options button to open a dialog box of audio mixdown options. Choose the audio options you want, but remember that if you plan to save the project to DV tape, choose the following audio format:

Channel Format. Choose Stereo.

Sample Rate. Choose 48000.

Bit Depth. Choose 16.

6.	Click Save to export your video.

Once you save the video file, it can be re-inserted into a project (see Importing and playing back videos). If the project will ultimately be exported to tape, that project will need to have an audio sample rate of 48 KHz playing back at 16 bits.

To play video on an external DV device

1.	Connect your external FireWire device. Make sure Windows recognizes the device, and displays the device’s icon on the Windows taskbar.

2.	Launch SONAR and open your video project.

3.	In SONAR’s video view (Views > Video command), right-click the Video view and choose External DV Output > <name of external DV device> from the pop-up menu.

4.	Play your SONAR project.

The video disappears from the Video view and appears on your external monitor or camcorder. Leave the Video view open so that you can move the Now Time frame-by-frame with the Video view keyboard shortcuts.

If the Video view is the active window, you can use keyboard shortcuts to advance by a frame or a frame increment. The +/-, and left/right arrow keys move forward/backwards by a single frame. If you hold down the CTRL key, then the frame increment value is used (default = 5 frames). You can also use the [ and ] keys to seek by the frame increment.

If your video does not play back in sync with your audio, see Synchronizing external video playback to audio.

External DV output (IEEE 1394/FireWire)

SONAR relies on the Microsoft AV/C drivers to communicate with DV devices that are connected to a IEEE 1394 FireWire bus on your computer, in order to control and preview video to digital video devices.

If another software application overwrites or disables these drivers, the Preview to FireWire and Print to Tape feature may not function correctly. If you are going to install a software application that uses DV devices connected to the IEEE 1394 FireWire bus, please check with the software vendor about DV device drivers it may install. Also, please check with the manufacturer of your DV device for AV/C-compliance information. The following devices have been tested and known to work properly with SONAR:

ADS Pyro A/V Link DV transcoder

Canopus ADVC-100 DV transcoder

Canon ZR-85 MiniDV camcorder

Note: When using DV AVI movies, the transcoding unit must be set to the same format (NTSC or PAL) as the video file, or Preview to FireWire and Print to Tape will fail to work properly. Also, CPU consumption will be lower when the source material is in DV format, since the format is native to the FireWire device and doesn't incur a CPU hit for transcoding video.