I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I figure almost everyone in this forum knows their computers well. I have a PC and and I have an older graphics card (ALL IN WONDER RADEON 32MEG). It only has single monitor support. What I'm trying to achieve is to have a semi pro setup(I've seen this in many behind the scenes on DVD's). I would like to have one monitor displaying my timeline,effects etc. One monitor displaying my thumbnailed clips, and a small 13" Television displaying just the video(So I can see if the colors are corrected properly). How would I go about doing this? And does anybody have any suggestions on what graphics card to buy? Oh yeah and does anybody know if this would slow down the performance of my computer by displaying all this stuff simultaneously?

I have that setup at home. It's your basic 2-monitor setup (either with two video cards or a dual monitor card), but then you run a NTSC monitor off however you export your video (firewire is most common). So, I have two video cards, and then a firewire cable running to a minidv deck. From the dv deck, I run a s-video cable to a tv monitor. This way you know exactly what you're getting.
It doesn't slow me down too much because it's mostly handled by the video cards. But I don't do a lot of 3d stuff.

Get a Mac and a 23" cinema display. The Avid machines are set up with dual-monitors and it's the most annoying thing ever. But the 23" inch screen lets you put all the stuff you need, plus you can still use the desktop to drag stuff onto.

I know you have a PC,so I'm kind of kidding, but kind of not.

is the dual display thing really annoying? i've got a 17" apple display and i've been planning on adding another.

I can't live without it. I hate editing on my 17"PB because I have less than half the real estate. For editing, I put my browser window on the far left screen; my timeline, viewer, canvas, and tools on the middles screen; and my tv monitor on the right. They're all 19" screens. I'd have trouble adjusting to the smaller size of the 23" cinema display.
But the same thing works with after effects, photoshop, dreamweaver, even web browsing and all the office stuff.

I must say, those new apple displays with the very small aluminum borders (aprox 18% grey, even) are perfect for doing multi-monitor setups. ...if it weren't for the astronomical cost, it would be the perfect monitor--for a lcd (I still prefer CRTs for visual design work).

^^^

I presume you put the TV out the S-Video slot, or do you do that fire wire dealy the other guy mentioned?

Yeah Ive been using a TV lately, but I want it to be just full screen video and not just preview the entire desktop. I have previewed on my camera through firewire, but how can I do this for the tv. I have it plugged in through the TV port in my graphics card.

As for multiple monitors, I used to use them when I had my old setup, but it was a horribly small 15 " monitor, that was on a 16mb video card. I would love to have two of the same 17" monitors but I don't have the cash right now, and I have already spent far too much money on my setup already.

you guys need to jam a chewed piece of bubblicious in the tv port of your video card. For video editing, it can be very misleading.  It takes your interlaced video, makes it progressive scan, then makes it interlaced again (WTF?). Then, you have no assurances you're seeing pixel for pixel the finished product because you may have the video misaligned, or the wrong scale. Finally, your computer and video monitor applies a color/gamma profile to it that is not native NTSC and won't always look like your finished output video. The TV port on the video card acts just like another computer monitor--and it's only 640x480. You might as well just hook up another real monitor because then you'd get more screen real estate.

You need to monitor the video from your video input/output device. If you capture from your video camera through a firewire cable, connect the tv to your video camera as you edit. If you capture from a pinnacle card, or a canopus card, or one of those breakout boxes, you should hook the tv up to that. It's not that difficult. Then you set your NLE to monitor your canvas to your output device. Then you have WYSIWYG

The matrox parhelia triple head cards have some pretty impressive specs:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/video/products/parhelia/256mb.cfm

three versions - a dual head, a triple head, and a dual head + TV out. Pretty sweet card. Pretty pricey too last i checked.

and by the way, just an fyi - another way to get to two or more monitors is to add additional video cards to your comp in addition to the one you have already. Pick up a pci video card and XP will recognize both. The only thing is you -may- depending on your bios have to set your primary video card to the pci slot to get both the AGP and PCI cards to work together. This is the configuration i am currently using on my audio workstation. (Audio requires dual monitors even more critically than video!)