With money being a consideration, what is the best external monitoring solution for Vegas. I want to be able to see corrected color and tone.

Currently I have a two monitor solution with a very accurate NEC LCD2690wuxi as monitor 1 and a very cheap Dell monitor as monitor 2. My NEC came with Spectraview software and a X-Rite profiler which workes very well for proofing prints in Photoshop and for color managed applications. That said I don't think it's well suited to video editing in Vegas.

Who can explain the proper setup or direct me to a detailed article aimed at Vegas editors.

Hi Jonathon

IMO the external preview on Vegas really and truely sucks!! What I do is edit on a 22" LCD and have a 19" for preview BUT I don't enable external monitor preview!! All I do is undock the preview window and drag it across to the 2nd monitor and then resize it to fill the screen. It runs with excellent resolution and colour and your preview is sharp and accurate. The preview is set to Full Screen and Best.

Vegas will remember this setup for you so when you start up again the preview will automatically be assigned to the 2nd monitor. The only small issue is that you will have to live with the interlacing lines but for me it's a small price to pay for a decent preview.

The idea was actually from this very forum and I was so relieved to have, at long last, a workable preview after struggling with really poor external monitor images.

Chris

Chris

Thx for reply. I'm looking for the video equivolent of soft proofing in Photoshop. I want the proper tone/color to make good editing decisions.

To complicate matters I hear from guys like David Newman of Cineform that Vegas preview in off.

Hi Jonathan

In that case you are going to have to look at a new card and a broadcast monitor that's been perfectly calibrated!! and checked on a regular basis

If, of course, you are shooting for broadcast and need accurate colour grading that is required as part of the delivery terms then you do need an external calibrated monitor but if your end result is consumer based I really think that going to all that trouble is an overkill since the viewer certainly won't be watching it on a studio monitor but more than likely a 15 year old CRT TV that should have been scrapped years ago!!

Chris

In most cases my viewer will be watching this from a blu-ray disc on a new HD television. It seems there should be a calibration standard and a set up that will yield a balanced result to my editing eyes that will be a middle ground for all these TV's. I know it wont be exact on all TV's, I'm just looking for a standard to calibrate to and a hardware set-up that will allow me to do so.

Just my two cents worth of course, but the chances of any domestic LCD/Plasma TV being seriously out of calibration when compared to your monitor is very slim.

I would think that both devices (monitors and TV's) are calibrated to a standard which should be more than sufficient for your needs.

I do wedding videos and have always accepted my monitors calibration along with Vegas and trusted it. Any serious colour imbalance is more than likely going to be with your source footage if anywhere and I would just trust your monitor.

I guess a professional broadcast equipment company could calibrate your monitor but as already said it seems like an awful overkill for me. If the colours look good then there is a 99.999% chance they will also look good on any other decent TV too. Also remember that the average viewer is looking purely at content not technical expertise!! You can spend months getting colour saturation correct but applied to poor footage you still get a poor end result

Chris

I always run at least two monitors that are calibrated with slightly different color temperature and brightness settings, much like a recording studio does with audio monitors. When it looks good on both, it usually looks good everywhere. I use the external monitor as well as the preview window.

Hmmm... that's not sounding like a solid idea.

I think I may have found the solution. It looks like I may be able to hook up an hdmi monitor and calibrate it with something designed for TV's. I found this solution: ChromaPure Video Calibration Software (http://www.chromapure.com/default.asp)

The problem is as I see it - if I calibrate the TV using it's controls and this software with a usb spectro type device and then hook the TV to the computer it would seem the calibration profile for my other monitor would take precidence and screw things up.