Video Preview Redux

On the Mac side, you can combine Echo Fire with Color Finesse to get external preview capability. Echo Fire supports FireWire/DV output, as well as supporting the various Blackmagic Design and AJA cards, including the Io.

With Echo Fire installed, just select Echo Fire previews in the Color Finesse prefs. For use with After Effects, you'll want to turn off AE's video previewing--if it's on--and use Echo Fire for previewing in both AE and Color Finesse.

Bob Currier
Synthetic Aperture

Since most all of the video hardware is set up to allow access by only one app at a time, it can get complicated when trying to share. Most software these days at least trys to be a good citizen, but it doesn't always work as planned.

For non-FireWire/DV video hardware (DeckLink, Kona, etc.), then you just need to turn off previewing in FCP before firing up the Color Finesse UI. Fortunately, this is just a single keystroke (shift-F12) to toggle it on and off.

FireWire/DV is a problem, because of a bug in the FireWire software. FCP tries to release the connection, but even though it does everything right, it doesn't really get released, which causes Echo Fire (or any other software) to get an error when it tries to get a FireWire connection. I don't know of a workaround to this.

Bob Currier
Synthetic Aperture