Calibug maybe?

No, not the Calibug.

This is a device that sits on the face of the screen. It is possiblity about 10 to 12 inches in diameter.

On of the models is used to calibrate home theater system TVs.

Was it possibly the Spyder2 from Colorvision?

Hey Jack, maybe you were thinking of this thread?

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=64809

Do you know of any way I can effectively calibrate the contrast & brightness levels of a monitor that doesn't have a blue gun? I've got a cheap Panasonic 13" S-video monitor and I really have no idea if the contrast & brightness are accurate at all.

Hi Bill,

Just use one of the Video Tweaking DVD's, like Avia or Video Essentials.

Harold

Do you have a camera, such as a Canon Xl1s, XL2, or XL H1?

If so, use the Color Bars function to feed the monitor.

Then, using the procedures for monitor setup available on the internet to set the brightness, contrast, and hue.

If you do not have Color Bars available, do you have an editor, such as Vegas? If you do, setup Color Bars in your editor and route the signal to your monitor.

Please lets know what you have and we will try to assist.

Hi Bill,

Just use one of the Video Tweaking DVD's, like Avia or Video Essentials.

Harold
Great idea!

Do you have a camera, such as a Canon Xl1s, XL2, or XL H1?

If so, use the Color Bars function to feed the monitor.

Then, using the procedures for monitor setup available on the internet to set the brightness, contrast, and hue.

If you do not have Color Bars available, do you have an editor, such as Vegas? If you do, setup Color Bars in your editor and route the signal to your monitor.

Please lets know what you have and we will try to assist.
I have Final Cut Pro and a JVC HD100, as well as Sony PD170s. So I can easily generate color bars to the monitor. Then what do I do?

setting up color bars.
http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

a decent guide, but it takes practice.

Here is one procedure:

http://www.simvideo.com/downloads/MonitorCalibration2.pdf

I will continue to search in an attempt to find a better procedure.

Here is a second procedure:

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~wvg/color%20bar.htm

I would recommend that you don't:
A- Use calibration DVDs. DVD players and/or your DV device may output non-standard levels, so there's a mismatch between your DVD player (what you're calibrating to) and your DV device (what you should calibrate to).
B- The blue gel trick. Blue gels let in light from the green elements of the monitor.

What to do:
A- On consumer TVs, the eyeball method may work better than the next method.
B- Set color temperature closer to D65.

Mostly follow the video university instructions.

The blue gel part:
Use a gel with a sharp cutoff in the SPD graph. If you get a swatchbook from Lee/GAM/Rosco (these are usually free) they will have nice graphs... look for a steep slope.
Use a blue or violet gel.

Then, you want an alternate color bars pattern... where on top of the normal color bars, you have flashing superimposed boxes of the opposing color. See the Avia calibration DVD or the DVD in my signature to see what this looks like, and make that pattern in your NLE (using your NLE's test pattern generator, not something else).
Then calibrate, tweaking hue and chroma/saturation to minimize flashing.

I'm using an LCD HDTV to monitor my stuff and I have no idea how to calibrate it. Being LCD, it just can't differentiate between the various black levels when I send it color bars. Does anyone have any idea how to calibrate it? Would I have to use one of those calibration DVDs?

Hi,
I'm working with XDCam HD Footage on a G5/FCP system and am monitoring the material using the following path: The HD SDI signal from our KONA LH goes into our HD LINK. The HD Link's DVI output is connected to our Apple 23" Cinema display. Our Sony SD Broadcast Monitor is connected to the analog component outputs of the KONA LH and simultaneously shows the downconverted HD footage. So far, so good.
The footage looks ok on the SD monitor but seems too bright to me on the cinema display. The whites tend to glare and the material looks as if it was overexposed.
The HD link utility that comes along with the HD Link provides some means of manipulating the appearance of the picture but I can't see how to calibrate the cinema display the "traditional" way.

http://www.t3rbo.com/photo/img/b15c194d1e16bc2e26640f6bad175804/HD Link.jpg (http://www.t3rbo.com)

Does anyone have a similar setup and can give me a quick "how to" calibrate the cinema display?

Thanks in advance,
Christian

i cant effort a true color monitor, so i have to calibrate colors on my samsung(syncmaster940n) LCD-TFT monitor. Which tutorial and program for that i should use? Or is there anywhere already good for colorcorrection profile files which could be downloaded?

I would recommend an external CRT TV since (for SD work anyways) it will show you things that won't be visible on a LCD monitor like interlacing issues, overscan, etc. Even a cheap consumer CRT TV will be better than a very expensive computer monitor.

You can make a computer monitor perform a little better; however, it won't make you aware of what your video will look like (like an external monitor would). As well, you can't calibrate the monitor to get rid of inherent flaws.

2- You could check that:

There are no activeoverlay settings on the video card
That the video card's LUT (look-up table) is normal; Conversely, you can somewhat calibrate your monitor with this.

Color temperatures between your monitors and room lighting are all similar. The closer the better. A less important issue is to get them close to D65.

You can calibrate the interface to the monitor (with DVI this isn't an issue). Make sure that the monitor is reading white and black level correctly.

Setup your NLE to show the most accurate image. A lot of NLEs will, be default, show an inaccurate image.

And if you really must use a computer monitor, make sure you know about interlace flicker and overscan.

Hey,

recently I bought a Sony PVM-1371QM video monitor. I hooked it up to my iMac 24" via a VGA to Comp cable from Apple.

Can some tell me wich method is the best to calibrate the video monitor? (color, brightness etc.)

Thanks!

Does your monitor have a "blue only" switch. If so, put it into blue only mode, and display SMPTE color bars on it. In Blue Only mode, the effect on color bars is to create alternating bright and dark vertical columns. All the dark columns should be equally dark and all the bright columns should be equally bright. If the two outer bright columns don't match, then the chroma/saturation control on the monitor is turned until they do. For the inner bright columns, the hue/tint or phase control is turned until they match.

If you are using full split field color bars you will see two slender vertical bars in the middle of the horizontal black bar. If you don't see them, and the bar is a solid black, turn the brightness up till you see both of them. Then turn the brightness back down slowly, so the slightly darker one on the left just dissapears in the black, and the sligtly brighter vertical bar on the right is just visible.

Now your monitor is displaying hue, color, and brightness appropriately. However, it could be off in regards to color temperature. You can not adjust color temperature properly without test equipment.

Mark

BTW, Julian -

For the past decade, Hal Landon's "Video University" web site has had a really nice step-by-step tutorial for setting up a monitor with bars available for free. www.videouniversity.com

Just do a site search under "color bars"

You might want to check it out if you've never previously calibrated a monitor.

Hi,
I just got a Gateway FPD 2185W LCD monitor for my 251 camera.
Is there any way to calibrate it?
I found many ways to calibrate it if I connect it to a computer, but if is connected to the camera only what do I have to do?
Out of the box looks OK color wise but the details in the underexposed parts of the image are completely lost.
Thank you very much for your help,
Eugen

Personally I hate LCD monitors, and really only use them when portability is required or if the production can't afford a HD-CRT rental. They are fine for indicating focus/sharpness, but not very trustworthy in most environments.

Unfortunately they are usually only limited to brightness and contrast adjustment when component in is used.
Send bars to the monitor and do your best to calibrate the each time you move to a new environment or the light levels change.

If you've never calibrated bars, please let me know and I'll attempt to explain it.

Hi Eugen,

I think you're seeing what I've also discovered with the Gateway 21" LCD. It's not a bad computer monitor, and a good value for the cost. But I have given up trying to bring it into any sort of calibration using the component video inputs while connected to my Z1. When you turn the brightness to the max the image is still too dark to show shadow details. So your only choice is to turn the contrast way up. When you do that the highlights start to blow out (you lose all detail in the bright parts of the image). I have the exact same problem with standard definition video when I connect it to my DVD recorder via component.

So it seems that this screen is always too dark when used with the analog inputs. What is a "251" camera? If I try to view standard definition video on the Gateway there's another problem which is even worse IMO. The screen is physically in the 16:10 aspect ratio, like many LCD's. When feeding it a high definition component video signal you have the option of letterboxing the image with a small black bar above and below so that it's in the correct 16:9 proportion. But with a standard definition image via component or s-video, you don't get this choice. So if you're trying to monitor 16:9 standard definition material the image is always stretched out of proportion on the 16:10 screen.

Too bad, because initially I thought this screen was very cool for its price. It can still be useful to judge focus, like Tim says. But I don't think it can be calibrated to make exposure judgements. It looks OK with a brightly lit low contrast scene, but anything dark with a lot of contrast just looks bad unfortunately.

BTW, if you want to learn how to use color bars this is a nice quick overview: http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

Would an LCD HDTV be any better ?

Well I guess that depends on the particular model. I don't think you could make any generalizations because there's a whole range of quality there.

But I have a Sony 17" widescreen LCD and a Samsung 22" widescreen LCD TV. Both of these are several years old now; the Sony is 768x1280 and the Samsung is 720x1280. They aren't fantastic, but neither of them have this sort of problem, I can adjust them to get a reasonable level of brightness and contrast.

Your mileage may vary...

True about making generalizations, but I've been reading about a lot of widescreen LCD 24" computer monitors that are having problems when fed with a signal other than a DVI-PC. Aspect ratios, poor coloring, contrast, resolutions, etc..

Makes me wonder if I should just get an LCD HDTV as my HD preview monitor. At least I can be confident it will show my HD camcorder footage correctly.

Tim, Boyd and Ron, thank you very much for your answers.
Tim, I think that I know how to calibrate bars. I use the procedure described in the DVRACK help menu. Unfortunately the LCD doesn't have the blue only button.
Boyd the 251 is the GY HD 251E JVC camera. Thank you very much for the link too.
Ron, I have a LCD HDTV and it is not any better.
In conclusion I am following Tim's advice and use this monitor on the field for indicating focus/sharpness.
Thanks a lot for your help,
Eugen

So to tell if I've calibrated my TV correctly, I look at the PLUGE bars, the first of which should be indistinguishable from the second and the third of which should stand out from the other two. Is it really that simple? I'm using some test bars I exported from Vegas and put on a DVD.

Perhaps this will help? http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

I have this monitor but I hate it's colors. Does anybody know how I can accurately calibrate it's contrast and color?

Feed color bars into it and calibrate it as you would any broadcast monitor.

Maybe this will help? http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

That's helpful, thanks. Sounds like going by the PLUGE bars for brightness/contrast is right. I love how my TV lacks brightness or contrast controls other than two generic modes... I need a better TV.

Alright, I'm still confused. This article says, "Turn the contrast all the way up. The white (100 unit) bar will bloom and flare. Now turn the contrast down until this white bar just begins to respond." What does that mean? Just begins to respond? This is very subjective. Is there any more concrete way of doing this? Any monitors that come already calibrated or could I use some kind of waveform? I'm making these tiny adjustments to my video, but they could all be for nothing if my monitor isn't set up right, which is very disturbing.

Well, I did some checking around. Looks like I could pay a professional to calibrate it or buy something like the SpyderTV to eliminate some of the guesswork. Anyone use that device? I know this is a little extreme, but the project I'm working on is very important to me, and I feel I don't have enough experience or confidence in calibating my TV using simple DVD test patterns to know if I did it correctly... and the adjustments I'm making to the image are really finetuning, which is in vain if my white or black levels are off.

When contrast is set too high, the electron beam will lose focus and/or the geometry of your image may distort.

It's easier to see if you take a small piece of paper and stick it on the monitor until you see a little sliver of light.

2- In some consumer TVs, the geometry will always change as you adjust the "contrast" (white level) setting... so it's kind of hard to tell what a decent calibration is.

3- Check that the white bar appears white to you and not grey. If it's grey, you should increase the contrast on your TV since whites should appear white. (This is a necessary compromise.)

4- Some consumer TVs can't be calibrated for hue and chroma ("saturation/color").

Your best bet for a fairly accurate image would be to get a broadcast CRT monitor ($600 up). I wouldn't bother with calibration DVDs or the SpyderTV. I wouldn't waste money trying to fix a consumer TV, because some of them have inherent problems that can't be calibrated away.

I find it rather frustrating that no matter how well I calibrate my own equipment, my customer(potential customer) always has a DVD/TV that is out of cal, so the comments about the images being "too bright" or "too dark" are all too common. When I suggest that their system is out of cal, I get suspicious glances of distrust. So, I've given up on being anal about calibrating my TV monitor. To add insult to injury, there seems to be no industry standard with DVD player manufacturers. Some add pedestal, some don't. And none of them give the user a switch to select pedestal or not. Hell, they don't even tell you in the product literature what you're dealing with.

I edited a music video on my computer screen with a Viewsonic LCD screen. I desaturated a lot of the colour, to give the video a certain look, and was happy with how it looked on my computer screen

Then i saved the file, and sent in back to my HDV Tape, to watch on my TV, the TV made it look all colourful again, and took away some of the desaturation I had applied when editing on my computer.

Is it my computer monitor thats too dull, or is it my TV thats making the image look too colourful. I also find this when watching ATSC HDTV on my computers tuner, when watching a show like Lost on my computer, the colours are more dulled looking, whereas when I watch on my TV, the colours are extremely bright and feel enhanced. I'm not sure whether a show like Lost is edited to look very bright and vibrant, or if it is made to look more natural and a bit less contrasted.

Some consumer TVs intentionally mess around with the image. It may have different modes... e.g. "vibrant" or "vivid".

LCDs also inherently have a s-shaped curve to their transfer function, so it will add a little contrast and saturation to your colors if it isn't calibrated off.

2- What you see on your computer screen (in your NLE) may be inaccurate in different ways.

Jay -
One of the challenges in editing is calibrating everything... is your computer monitor adjusted for color and gamma, as well as ambient light? I've got a color adjustment on my Nvida video cards which I really like (it seems to balance the minor inconsistencies between two "identical" monitors - yes two of the same model are slightly "off"...), plus a Pantone Huey which adjusts (hopefully) more accurately and for room light...

I've used the THX adjustments that come on some DVD's to adjust my TV's as close as possible to their "ideal" settings - there are still subtle differences...

However, overall I feel like I'm "closer" to a "correct" image - I still have to brighten up anything from my computer screen just a touch to keep it from appearing too dark on the DVD/TV... or for that matter my printer...

EVERY device has a sort of color curve "built in" by whoever designed it - cameras, monitors, TV's, printers, etc... partly so that when you go buy a device you go "wow, don't the colors pop/look pretty..."

This doesn't mean that the colors are accurate, just the engineers and marketers thought they LOOKED good and they probably tested them to see what sold better... more saturated looks better than "flat". AND as you also note, TV shows and movies are color graded to achieve specific "looks" - thereby achieving an atmosphere or distinctive "feel" to a show or production... "movie look" can mean a lot of things in this context - WHICH movie was that...?

The most you can hope for is to calibrate your systems as best as possible within your budget, and then adjust as you work to get your desired final result... render short portions of your project and test before you go rendering BIG projects...

HTH

In general, the more expensive and pro-grade a piece of equipment is, the less faux "bells and whistles" is has!

Translation: the more expensive, the more nuetral the image

I'm using a Sharp HDTV to monitor my HD productions. How do I calibrate it? The normal rules for NTSC SD monitors don't seem to apply... or do they?

1- If you are sending an analog signal to the monitor, then that might need to be calibrated.

see
http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

*the blue gel trick doesn't work.

Digital signals don't need calibration.

2- Other aspects of the monitor may not be ideal (e.g. white point), but the monitor may or may not have controls that would let you change that.

3- Your real problem is likely that the Sharp HDTV does weird things to the signal.

Scaling, sharpening, poor deinterlacing (e.g. bob), image "enhancements", non-standard primaries, s-shaped transfer curve (inherent to LCDs, should be calibrated away), low bit depth with poor dithering, etc.

whatever signal you send to whatever monitor you use, calibration is needed.
while it is easy with computer (you find USB calibration tools for cheap), it is more difficult with video. The are some tools (like special DVD) to help this.
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/Video-calibration.html

Glenn...

again you're right in theory but wrong in actual practice.

ahhh, but the display most certainly does. With the plethora of brightness, contrast, color gain, bias, etc., etc., nothing comes out of the box already set up.

And many LCD screens, these days, e.g. Samsung LCD's, come with auto settings and sensors to adjust for room light. Beware of these automated adjustments. You never really know what you're working with.

Glenn...

again you're right in theory but wrong in actual practice.

ahhh, but the display most certainly does. With the plethora of brightness, contrast, color gain, bias, etc., etc., nothing comes out of the box already set up.
Exactly. How do I know if I have my brightness, contrast, hue, color set properly?

that is the problem. you never know.
what you know that all your screens give same result (from camera monitor, to editing preview monitor, to you big LCD screen in living room.).
and prefferably.. this must be close to what you see with your eyes.
At least with such calibration you do not know if you are right, but you know that what you get at one end will stay the same at the other end.
Now if you distribute DVD directly to your customer, it is pretty much all what you can do, since you can not guess the settings your customers have.
if you work with professional equipement, it is easier, since calibration actually means something it term of physical settings. (the vectorscope summarize this almost in one view).
What you need to know, is that consumer product (especially LCD ) tends to display very strong colors, most alway with a cast into one red,green,blue primary color. (Sony screens have really hot/bright red, while others screen goes easily on blue).
My advise is to set colors low, so you will not be disappointed on how nice the blue was displayed on you computer screen and how bad it renders on your DVD.
That is for colors.
From the luminance side, you find two schools. The one in favor of bright, but has very poor dark rendering (most of batman movies are a good scale to measure), the other one is in favor of darkness, but tends to burn easily all bright pictures and gives no real black.
a simple gray scale allow to set up your screen, but that does not help on you customers screens, except if you put as goodies on your DVD a little movie with an explanation on how to set the screen properly.(i have seen that on few DVD)
for example in a very dark picture, you can hide a message that people can read only if their screen is properly set.
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm

Calibration for cheap:

* Buy Datacolor ColorVision Spyder2express colorimeter (~$70)
* Download HCFR Colorimeter program from here, it is free: http://www.homecinema-fr.com/colorimetre/index_en.php
* Get one of the test DVDs, either burn the image provided by HCFR, or buy a GetGray disk or other TV setup disks.
* Install HCFR Colorimeter onto your laptop
* Read this thread on how to use HCFR Colorimeter program: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=737550
* Connect the Spyder to the computer
* Play your test disk and log monitor output with the Spyder colorimeter

You will get several graphs, it is your job to make sense of them and to adjust your TV accordingly. It is likely that you will not have access to all needed controls from a regular TV's menu, you may need to access special service menu.

Below are couple of charts graphed with HCFR, the TV is my 50-inch Panasonic plasma. The results are not perfect but still better than original setup.

Gamma, before: http://www.jspcontrols.net/misc/panasonic/std_gamma.jpg
Gamma, after: http://www.jspcontrols.net/misc/panasonic/calib_gamma.jpg

Grayscale, before: http://www.jspcontrols.net/misc/panasonic/std_grayscale.jpg
Grayscale, after: http://www.jspcontrols.net/misc/panasonic/calib_grayscale.jpg

Color temperature, before: http://www.jspcontrols.net/misc/panasonic/std_temp.jpg
Color temperature, after: http://www.jspcontrols.net/misc/panasonic/calib_temp.jpg

Primary and secondary colors: http://www.jspcontrols.net/misc/panasonic/panasonic_cie_709.jpg

I used "warm" standard preset as it was the closest to neutral. The TV does not have explicit gamma control, so I had to play with black/white levels to adjust gamma curve. I prefer my blacks to be discernable, not crushed, you can see it by the adjusted gamma curve.

As with most plasmas, the green is oversaturated and cyan and magenta are off.

Note, that Rec 709 (HD) and Rec 601 (SD) are different, particularly in CIE colors and in gamma profile. SD gamma is 2.5, HD gamma is 2.2.

The same SpyderExpress can be used to calibrate your computer monitor, luckily if you have reasonably new computer, monitor and OS, this process is fully automatic.

As a "professional", one must adhere to the standards of the industry. To try to second guess what an average user might have his/her monitor set to is whistling in the dark. To the best of my knowledge, MOST users are still viewing on NTSC compliant monitors. If this is the case, it is necessary to make your editting monitor conform to this standard, which, I guess is SMPTE. If you're working in HD and the delivery schema is TV, then SMPTE it is. If you happen to be delivering to an HDTV, things change. HDTV isn't SMPTE. I do know that there is a different version of the SMPTE color bars that are used for HDv. The color bars defined for HDv are ITU 709 compliant. Perhaps these are the best standards to use on an monitor intended for HDTV distribution. But, I'm just guessing. I don't really know.

This is where Glenn Chan could jump in and tell us what the color mapping is for HDTV. Is it RGB? And would that be RGB16-235 or RGB 0-255?

1- Sorry, I wasn't clear in my original post. There are different aspects of the monitor that can be calibrated... the interface (e.g. composite, S-video, component, HDMI, DVI, etc. etc.) may or may not need calibration... digital interfaces don't need calibration.

Other aspects of the monitor can be calibrated.

The monitor may also have settings that let you change certain aspects of the image processing (e.g. turn off overscan to get 1:1 pixel mapping). This will depend on the menu structures in the monitor.

2- A properly-designed LCD broadcast monitor that doesn't drift will not need the user to calibrate it.

3- The real problem with most consumer monitors is that they do wacky things to the image. They don't look the same as a reference monitor. Put them side by side with a reference broadcast monitor and they don't look the same.
They may also have limitations like limited color gamut, whatever deinterlacing circuit they have, and raised black level that you will never be able to calibrate/adjust/tweak away.

3b- It's generally easiest/best to get a broadcast monitor.
*Many old LCD broadcast monitors have some problems... they are getting better at quite a fast pace. And it looks like this might be the year where they finally surpass the Sony BVM CRTs in performance for HD.
(For SD, a CRT broadcast monitor is a much better idea IMO.)

3c- The exception to 3c might be something like the Apple Cinema Display + eCinemasys's EDP100. The EDP100 is a signal processing box that does the appropriate signal processing to get good color, deinterlacing, etc. the ACD (AFAIK). It has since been discontinued for better approaches (they rebuild the LCD panel and integrate everything into a single device). This approach doesn't work well if you have one of the newer flawed ACDs with the pink cast problem.

3d- You might be able to take a consumer display + add something to it that would make it reasonably good (like what ecinemasys did with the EDP100). I'm not familiar enough with the current options for this (e.g. Decklink) to know how well those solutions work.

Monitoring standards:

1- Viewing conditions:
For TV, there might be different standards here. (Not sure.)
SMPTE RP 166
ITU-R BT.710

In practice, this is not always followed.

2- Primary Chromaticities - just a fancy way of saying the exact shade of red, green, and blue. Chromaticity is an objective way of measuring the "shade" of a color. Primaries = red, green, blue

For SD, for NTSC countries (except Japan), the standard is the SMPTE C primaries.
For SD, for PAL countries (and Japan), the standard is the EBU primaries. *Sorry, I don't know the exact name of the standards documents.
For modern HD systems (i.e. not 1035i, not analog HD), the standard is the Rec. 709 primaries. ITU-R BT. Rec. 709 should be the document.

In practice, a lot of HD material is monitored on Sony BVMs which have SMPTE C phosphors. The Sony BVMs are probably the de facto standard (and they have particular shortcomings; though less than most LCDs).

In practice, the difference between the standard primaries is often glossed over. And people don't notice (so in a practical sense this omission works; it's ok).

2b- The original NTSC primaries are obsolete. No consumer display has primaries like those.

3- There is actually no standard defining some aspects of the reference monitor. The reference monitor was always assumed to be a CRT, with the CRT's natural transfer function and motion reproduction.

There are some working groups working on a standard there.

It will likely be something that emulates the CRT (but not its flaws... e.g. not that bright, resolution not that good for high frequencies).

4- Color mapping for HDTV:
Laid out in ITU-R BT. 709. It calls for Y'CbCr (with Rec. 709 luma co-efficients).
16-235 range for Y', for 8-bit formats (black at 16 Y', white at 235 Y'). 16-240 range for chroma.