On Sat, 10 Nov 2001 16:44:22 -0500, flaybin wrote:

>Just got a new HP XT868 and I'm trying to capture using the basic capture
>card that came installed and Adobe Premiere from my Sony TRV-900 but the
>video looks much darker than it looks on the camera monitor and I don't
>know how to adjust it so I can see to edit effectively. Anybody have any
>ideas???

You need to start somewhere with standards...
If you rely on the camera auto exposure, I find
the TRV-900 generally exposes well with the AE-bias
set to "0" (or "-1" with some subject types). The
finder brightnesses have no standards - you need to
optimize your TV for best picture with the greatest
number of signal-sources/broadcast-stations, then hook
up the camcorder to the TV and adjust the finder
brightness and color saturation to best approximate
what you see on the TV in the same room. Go out and
shoot video, and see if it still looks good on that
TV (or needs biasing, which can be done by shifting
the reference finders [or learning to use zebras...]).
Once you are fairly sure your camera exposures are
fairly "normal", then bring that footage into the
computer, and try to adjust the monitor for best
output. PC monitors are often set rather dark, and
TV and computer-monitor gamma standards are different,
so you will not be able to get an exact match between
the reference TV and the monitor (not to mention the
different motion-rendering of the PS-mode monitor
and the interlaced TV...;-), but you can adjust the
monitor light and "flat" enough for a fairly useful
approximation (especially if you can also adjust
the colors by adjusting RGB [not just "warm/cool"]
for a reasonable color match also).