You're going to love this discussion: What's your display gamma? (http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/277/8162)

Take a look at the last question, after everything that was discussed...

Ha. Oh well. I've done it, on this forum even. like recently.

Anyway, if anyone's interested, apparently there's a known issue with the newer ipads where the screen on some of them is either noticeably yellower than what looks "white" overall, as in, the white balance is off, or there will be portions of the screen that are like that . . .like the one i just got, where the left side (in portrait mode) has a noticeable yellow cast to it. some folks say this has something to do with glue that hasnt quite set yet and the problem will self-correct in days or weeks or months, some say it never changes. No one conclusively knows what the issue is or how to fix it other than exchanging ipads 'til you get a "perfect" one. i'll give this a few days and see what happens. leaving the brightness maxed and leaving the ipad on all the time with something pure white displayed is supposed to help.

long story short, if you had the idea to get and use the ipad to proof stuff for your photo or video work. . .good luck.

Let's go at this from another angle. . .

If one was to get an actual plasma TV to use rather than a computer monitor, which kind would you recommend? Does it need to be the higher end Panasonic Pro series (I think these are in the $2000-2500 range), or would something "lighter" do? Would any of the i/o boxes run to it? I realize with these it's generally advised to have it really and truly calibrated by a professional (i.e. adding hundreds of dollars to the cost), but simply using a calibration DVD or running bars to it can at least get you in the neighborhood

Let's go at this from another angle. . .

If one was to get an actual plasma TV to use rather than a computer monitor, which kind would you recommend? Does it need to be the higher end Panasonic Pro series (I think these are in the $2000-2500 range), or would something "lighter" do? Would any of the i/o boxes run to it? I realize with these it's generally advised to have it really and truly calibrated by a professional (i.e. adding hundreds of dollars to the cost), but simply using a calibration DVD or running bars to it can at least get you in the neighborhood

For digital photography the files will be printed by expensive calibrated printers. For digital cinema the files will be projected by expensive calibrated digital cinema projectors. For videography, the files will be played back on cheap LCD televisions and old CRT televisions. However, people get used to their misadjusted televisions so correctly calibrated video is still important. Moreover, before calibrating your editing monitor, it is important to realize that your eyes are already calibrated to whatever television is sitting in your own living room.

If you are used to purple skin tones and neon green grass, then all bets are off when trying to edit video using a reference monitor. Similarly, musicians who play Hindustani classical music do not listen to western popular music because it would ruin their artistic sense.

My personal experience has been the eyes will acclimate pretty quickly to new things. If you have a properly set up monitor, within a few minutes of looking at it, you'll see everything on it as "right" (providing the material being viewed is "right."), even if you were looking at purple skin tones 15 minutes before.

I have my mac monitor set up with a program called "flux" that changes the color temperature to really warm after sunset. Supposed to be better at letting you feel tired/sleepy when you should, whereas staring a blue monitor is supposed to keep you awake. Don't worry, if it's all BS, it was a free program so I didn't get "suckered." Point is, I barely notice the change, except when I see it happen. After a few minutes, it's just "there."

I think you're on a bit of a hiding to nothing on this one, Josh.

As I found out when I ventured into HD video, calibrated Hitachi CRT monitor ( a beauty, too), the works.

Stills? No problem, had everything calibrated, it was WYSIWYG, all along the chain.

Video? No matter what I did, I'd go to see where the content was being played (if possible) and discover their screens were all set to "showroom shock and awe" mode, made a mockery of anything I did in trying to balance the colour, the screens simply screwed it no matter what I had done.

In the end I simply shot it all as flat as a tack and left it at that, none of it was heading for broadcast anyway, and even if it was, so many screens out there that only approximate to "true colour" just made the entire process moot as far as I was concerned.

Did I get any complaints?

Nope, not a one, from a soul.

My suggestion, for what little its worth:

Get yourself a (half) decent editing monitor, an UltraSharp Dell will do, and run the finished product by your very own HDTV, set to your own preferences, and see how it looks.

If it looks good, go for it.

Mr and Mrs Joe Average, especially in NTSC challenged North America, would'nt know correct colour if it sat up and bit them.

I was always stunned by the neon/ flourescent TV grass of football games in Canada, well, neon everything actually, thank god for PAL in Europe/ Australasia and elsewhere.

I know, those days are supposedly past, but the punters, unfortunately, haven't, quite yet.

Just my 2 cents.

Regards,


CS

What you say may be true, but the sick neurotic part of me that isn't listening still has pride in his work and wants it to be seen the way he intended it, whether it comes out that way or not based on someone's flawed display. I think the idea behind the expense and effort of proper calibration is that your material, when graded/corrected on a calibrated system, has the BEST chance of looking the MOST correct on the HIGHEST number of displays.

Let's go at this from another angle. . .

If one was to get an actual plasma TV to use rather than a computer monitor, which kind would you recommend? Does it need to be the higher end Panasonic Pro series (I think these are in the $2000-2500 range), or would something "lighter" do?

I use Panasonic monitors regularly with the C300. With plasma, I will only recommend the best quality. However, plasmas are disappearing from the marketplace, and I wouldn't invest in one today.

Josh...............

Unless you're planning on shooting a better version of "Star Wars" or "Lord of the Rings" or some other epic, destined for cinema & TV release worldwide, give the "sick, neurotic" part a swift kick up the ass and just bloody well get on with it (producing content, that is).

No one, I can assure you, will know, but YOU!

Shoot it flat, it'll be cool.

(BTW, if it's going for the afformentioned "blockbuster" category, you need do nothing anyway, that's what editors are for, they do have their uses).

Another 2 cents, this is starting to rack up, much more of this and you'll owe me a beer!


CS

Your beer's in the mail. If you don't receive it in a few days. . .the. . .um. . .mailman took it. That's why he's stumbling and putting other people's mail in your box.

Anyway, I may have found the unholy grail.

We're goin' old school here, but I'm finding a lot of validation for the practically ancient Sony PVM 14L5 (or if your spine wronged you in some way and you want to get revenge on it, the 20L5) monitors for color grading. They are old-timey, "they don't show Howdy Doody anymore, Grampa, jeez! And stop biting my head; it's not a cantaloupe" CRT monitors, 14 and 20" respectively. They take a component input as is, and can be upgraded with an SDI card. Granted, they don't show full HD resolution (at least the 14. . .it's like 800 lines) BUT they do show the proper color space, and are apparently very popular in grading suites. Can show SD too if you're into that, but need to be recalibrated each time you switch back and forth.

These thing are a couple hundred dollars on ebay, WITH the card sometimes, (obviously have to watch for the condition and age, etc.) But this is supposed to be an MC Hammer-worthy legit solution. Except for the tiny screen and ridiculous size.

We're goin' old school here, but I'm finding a lot of validation for the practically ancient Sony PVM 14L5 . . . These thing are a couple hundred dollars on ebay

That's a bargain! LOL, perhaps you should get one for your living room, too, so you eyes can get used to how commerically produced content looks with real SMPTE phosphor. Seriously, it would be great to hear how this works out. How do you plan to connect it to your computer?

Well it's a true production monitor, so from what I've read you just need a card/ i/o box that has SDI or component out (I would also swear there exists an HDMI to Component adaptor cable, so that would work too, I would think). I haven't looked into the "which i/o box do I get" side of things yet. Just got a a mid-2011 Imac so that'll limit the options somewhat, and I've also read certain programs don't support certain boxes. . .so depending on whether I want to monitor from After Effects, Premiere, FCP, or Davinci Lite, might not be able to use the same box. Maybe I'm wrong on that. I'd like to be.

Here's one:

Sony 14L5 PVM 14L5 14" SDI BKM 120D Card Multiformat DTV Monitor PAL NTSC | eBay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-14L5-PVM-14L5-14-SDI-BKM-120D-Card-Multiformat-DTV-Monitor-PAL-NTSC-/160945680197?_trksid=p5197.m1992&_trkparms=aid%3D111000%26algo%3DREC.CURRENT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D14%26meid%3D4669280669537978501%26pid%3 D100015%26prg%3D1006%26rk%3D1%26sd%3D160945680197%26)

I would not want to try and CC on a 14" monitor.

Theres a 20" version of that monitor too. Though a 20" crt is the size of a house in some neighborhoods.

You don't need an I/O card only for display. A 10-bit GPU is good enough, like Firepro and Quadro. Displayport is perfectly fine.

And by the way, the conversions from Y'CbCr to RGB and back are clearly defined mathematically (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUV#Converting_between_Y.27UV_and_RGB), with interpretations left to the user (you). If a manufacturer cannot do it correctly, they've made a simple math mistake. I have yet to see this in reality. If you're having color problems, or have heard of problems by other people, then something else was wrong.

Most consumer grade monitors can display 90% or more of Rec. 709 (sRGB), but a broadcast monitor should be capable of 100% - otherwise what's the point of spending extra?

My problem is that on an imac you can't have a 10-bit GPU, you're left with the onboard graphic card. Mine it's a ATI Radeon HD 4850, which should (specs: ATI Radeon? HD 4850 Graphics Specifications (http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/hd-4850/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-4850-specifications.aspx)) be able to handle 10-bit, but Mac os X doesn't support it.

Anyway, it seems that CS6 can deliver an accurate YUV to RGB and so do Avid MC6. If the Dreamcolor is well calibrated then it should be accurate connected directly via displayport.

For Color I've been pointed to these colorsync profiles:
Charbon-Studio profiles for Color (http://www.michaelcinquin.com/tools/profiles_for_color)

What I don't know (because I don't have received yet the monitor) it's that FCP, Premiere or Color will see the computer monitor connected via displayport as a video monitor or a computer monitor.

That's neat. I have an Imac too. Unfortunately that monitor I'm looking at (the CRT) doesn't have any connection compatible with displayport/etc. So I'll need an i/o box.

Ok. Research tells me the boxes I'm looking at right now (since getting the SDI connection option will cause me to spend way more than I want to), for component outputs into that CRT monitor (and HDMI down the line perhaps), are the Blackmagic Intensity extreme ($300) and the Matrox MXO2 mini/T ($500-ish). These will both connect to the thunderbolt port on the Imac.

Matrox is more money, but has calibration utilities. HOwever, I've read that calibration utility is useless (an opinion, maybe someone on here can chime in?) Blackmagic is cheaper but barebones as far as that kind of option goes.

Don't much care about h264 encoding, etc. etc. This is just for video monitoring.

LOTS of reported compatibility issues with the BMD Thunderbolt line... your mileage may vary and it may be a problem free install... I had an issue hooking up my Matrox MXO2LE and called Matrox, got someone on the phone in less than 3 minutes midday and had the issue resolved in less than ten (their online documentation didn't specifically state which drivers I needed for my application).

I own a number of BMD devices but won't use them for I/O.

sadly for my wallet that seems to be the consensus. upside is the included calibration software, provided it works.