Playing back full-screen video

Editing Video > Previewing a video program > Playing back full-screen video

The Print to Video command plays a clip or the Timeline centered on a computer or television monitor. If the clip or Timeline is smaller than the full screen, it plays alone on a black background. This is useful for previewing the program in the Timeline, for viewing source clips or individual video files, or for television playback such as recording to videotape. Print to Video can double the size of the frame during playback so that you can play a quarter-screen video at full-screen size.

Note: Some video-capture cards do not support this feature, or support it differently. If you see different options than the ones documented in this section, see the documentation included with your video-capture card.

To play a video on a black screen:

1 Do one of the following:

To play the Source view in the Monitor window, activate the Source view.

To play the program in the Timeline, activate the Program view in the Monitor window and make sure that the work area you want to preview is specified in the Timeline.

To play a clip or sequence in its own window, activate a Clip window or Storyboard window (see Adding multiple clips using an automated process).

2 Choose File > Export Clip > Print to Video or File > Export Timeline > Print to Video.

3 Specify the following options as necessary, and then click OK:

For Color Bars For, type the number of seconds to display color bars before playing the video.

For Play Black For, type the number of seconds to display a black screen after the color bars (if specified) and before playing the video. For recording on videotape, displaying 15 seconds of black screen works well in many cases.

Select Full Screen (Windows) or Zoom Screen (Mac OS) to scale the frame size to fill the screen for Print to Video only.

(Mac OS only) Choose Hardware from the Zoom Screen menu if you have a video card that supports hardware zooming; otherwise, choose Software.

If the frame size specified in Video Settings is less than about half the size of the display screen, the resulting picture may appear coarse or with obvious pixels; however, this effect may be less noticeable after recording on videotape.

(Windows only) Select Zoom by 2 to double the height and width of the frame size for Print to Video only. This is useful for project frame sizes of 320 x 240 or smaller.

For Screen Mode, choose Current to play on the main computer screen, or choose NTSC if you have an NTSC monitor connected to your system. The plug-in software included with some video-capture cards allows a temporary switch to the specified mode; see the documentation that came with your video-capture card.

Select Loop Playback to replay the video continuously.

For information about recording the Timeline on videotape, see Exporting to videotape.

To stop Print to Video playback:

Press Esc.

Editing Video > Previewing a video program > Playing back full-screen video