Still previewing your video projects on your computer monitor? Then you're not seeing what your project really looks like. You're not seeing differences in color, the interlace and color coding artifacts, and the image overscan. And working with non-square pixels on a square pixel computer monitor means your image is always stretched or squashed. Being able to see your project previewed on a real NTSC or PAL video monitor lets you work accurately and more quickly. Echo Fire displays the current After Effects composition or Photoshop document on your NTSC or PAL video monitor, letting you see how your artwork really looks.

Echo Fire for Mac Highlights:   • Feature List   • What's New in 2.1      Mac OS X Support        Clipboard Previews        Timecode Overlay in AE      New Waveform Monitor Options      New Scaling Options       and more...   • Video Output Devices     • Echo Fire and Digital Audio     • Reviews   • Frequently Asked Questions     • Pricing and Availability   • Upgrades   • System Requirements   • Datasheet   • Order Your Copy   • Get a Free Demo

FireWire/DV, Uncompressed Video, and Everything In-Between

Choose the video output that fits your needs, whether the FireWire ports built into your Macintosh or an uncompressed video card. Echo Fire can connect your computer to your video monitor via a camcorder or FireWire converter box, giving you an inexpensive video interface that doesn't need another PCI slot. Plus, it also supports a wide variety of other video output boards, including AJA Io and Kona, Digital Voodoo D1 Desktop, Media 100, and Blackmagic Design DeckLink.

Realtime Video Previews in Adobe After Effects

Echo Fire's After Effects video previews include realtime playback, giving designers the ability to see exactly what their work looks like on video without the need to render separate movie files. Previews can loop and be paused, stepped, rewound, and fast-forwarded, allowing for detailed checks of key areas. Previews can be saved to disk for future reference and client approval. And previews include audio, making it easy to check for proper audio/video synchronization.

Clipboard Previewing

Echo Fire 2.1 provides video previewing of the current clipboard contents. Select an image in your favorite application, do a command-C to copy it to the clipboard, and you have a video preview via Echo Fire! Virtually all applications support clipboard operations, so you now have video previews virtually everywhere, including 3-D applications, painting programs, etc. (Available under OS X only.)

LiveFire - FireWire Video Routing

Using Echo Fire for Macintosh's LiveFire video-to-FireWire routing feature, any application that can play QuickTime movies can now have DV-compressed movies routed to the FireWire connection. For professional audio applications like DigiDesign ProTools, this means video playback locked to audio without the mechanical delays of a VTR, a miniature image on the computer screen, or the need for another PCI-bus slot. Echo Fire is fully compatible with Apple QuickTime 4.1 and 5.0 so it won't interfere with the operation of other QuickTime applications. It even offers single-field still images to eliminate annoying interlace flicker when the video is paused, without degrading video playback.

NOTE: LiveFire is not currently available under OS X or with QuickTime 6.0. It is fully supported under OS 9.x with QuickTime 5.0.2. We are working to resolve these limitations.

What's New in Echo Fire 2.1 for Macintosh

• Support for Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) as well as Mac OS 8.6 and 9.x.
• Previews of the current clipboard contents (OS X only). This is ideal for working with applications without any other video preview capability.
• Can now overlay the current After Effects comp timecode on the video preview.
• New scaling option to perform field-based scaling, eliminating distortion of interlaced footage.
• New waveform monitor overlay options, including RGB display and field-based displays.
• New vectorscope overlay option to allow for use with 100% color bars.

• Displays video previews via FireWire and other video output boards.
• Displays the current comp (AE) or document (PS).
• Realtime video previews in After Effects, with audio.
• Handles 4:3, 16:9, and 14:9 aspect ratios.
• Can overlay waveform monitor, vectorscope, safe title and action areas, and test patterns on the video preview.
• Drag and drop video playback to FireWire. Includes timecode display and VTR-style playback control, as well as the ability to display still images.
• Screen previewer outputs Mac desktop to video.
• Exports DV (video and audio) to FireWire from QuickTime Player. (Mac OS 9 only.)
• Video-to-FireWire routing allows any application that can play QuickTime movies to play DV movies out the FireWire, including DigiDesign ProTools and Logic Audio. (Mac OS 9/QT 5 only.)
• Video color picker lets you preview your color choice on the video monitor and automatically "legalize" chosen colors for broadcast use. Available in Photoshop (under OS X) or system wide (under OS 9).
• Compatible with NTSC and PAL.
• Includes 60-page User's Guide in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.