It sounds as tho' there are some fundamental problems that still need to be worked out. For example, if an NLE displays only in RGB, it's going to misrepresent HD colors in preview, if the display is thinking in Y'CbCr, and the NLE is trying to display in RGB...well, you can see there's a problem, no? So the editor has to juggle the color space, during editting, to fool the monitor to display right colors.

But, if understand what you're saying, the best calibration one could do, right now, is to use Rec709 color bar. Provided, of course, the end user is on an HD capable monitor. Most of the world I know, is still using SMPTE specced equipment. Here's a comparison of the SMPTE SD colorbars and the SMPTE HD color bars...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_bars

Care should be taken because the pluge bars are significantly different from the SD version.

The conversion from Y'CbCr <--> R'G'B' is defined by the standards documents.

The editor should not have to juggle the color space to get the monitor to show the right thing, in a well-designed system. (By that definition, Vegas is not because you do have to juggle color spaces.)

2- I didn't think about this:
There are different flavours of Y'CbCr depending on which set of numbers they use (based off of the Rec. 601 or Rec. 709 luma co-efficients; there is also a third obsolete set).

Some TVs may let you choose which luma co-efficients are assumed when decoding Y'CbCr signals (because Y'CbCr signals either use Rec. 601 or Rec. 709 numbers). Using the wrong set of numbers will cause dramatic color shifts/inaccuracy and clipping of certain highly saturated colors. It is worth checking that your system gets the numbers right.

One way to check is to send color bars and eyeball them to see if they look correct... though that method is not 100% foolproof. It's possible to make a test pattern that makes it easier to see.

2b- Many consumer sets will always use the Rec. 601 numbers... which is wrong for a lot of HD.


But, if understand what you're saying, the best calibration one could do, right now, is to use Rec709 color bar. Provided, of course, the end user is on an HD capable monitor. Most of the world I know, is still using SMPTE specced equipment.
I don't think there is such thing as the Rec. 709 color bar?

2- Color bars should have the same R'G'B' code values in the end... their Y'CbCr values differ. If you originate them in R'G'B', then they should be correct as long as you do the right R'G'B'-->Y'CbCr conversion.
The Y'CbCr values differ depending on whether you used the Rec. 601 or Rec. 709 luma coefficients to encode.

here's another set of what someone is calling HD colorbars, a little more credibility than wikipedia

http://www.belle-nuit.com/testchart.html

The problem there is that it assumes a particular mapping from R'G'B' to Y'CbCr... e.g. 16 16 16 RGB gets mapped to 16 Y' (and neutral chroma).
A- Some programs (or rather, codecs) will map 0 0 0 RGB to 16 Y'.
B- Quicktime may apply inappropriate color management onto the still.

So those things will screw everything up.

electronic color chart are great, but useless if you do not get a paper version to compare with..... which is still the best way to quick calibrate a screen.

1- Paper charts suffer from metamerism (e.g. from illumination, and the camera's spectral sensitivities; and most cameras cheat in their color matrix, which is not correct; and then there is metamerism between different observers' eyes).

You wouldn't use them to calibrate a monitor.

2-
These days, getting manufacturers to agree on a standard, even for something so universal as color reproduction, is a nightmare. No wonder the Roman Empire fell.
The standards are pretty good in specifying how levels should get converted... it's pretty much followed in the professional realms (software bugs and user errors aside).

In the consumer side of things... the main problem is that the wrong luma coefficients are *intentionally* being used... I believe this is a cost-saving measure in low-cost hardware implementations. The ITU-R BT.709 committee really should have listened to Charles Poynton and not have changed the luma co-efficients.

2b- Manufacturers of consumer TVs don't try to make their sets color accurate / conform to the standard. So that is why we don't have similar color reproduction between sets.

3- One could argue that the bellenuit approach to their test chart and Vegas' approach to levels is not good design.

Hi,
Ok so i just got my JVC TM H150C after reading great reviews for it, and i was all set for calibrating it due to hundreds of 'how to's' on the net. HOWEVER, little did i know that all these sites i had been seeing where intended for NTSC monitors and often referring to using HUE as a technique where in PAL land the hue switch is not accessible nor necessary.

Well after trying to do it by playing with various functions i have to admit defeat, nearly all attempts are leading me to the same result, which is my video footage looking washed out with exaggerated banding and way way over exposed. What comforts me is i have been reading over on a few forums that other people with the same monitor after just buying are also getting a washed out over exposed image.

I know im going on abit but you can imagine how important this is to me, which leads me on to some more info that can possible help someone help me. I've been generating my pal smpte colour bars through sony vegas 8 and i notice that at the bottom far right corner where theres suppost to be 3 vertical lines of grey and black, it only displays the dark grey one on my JVC monitor. I read in the manual that this is due to my computer missing a codec which i dont understand at all. However I cant seem to find broadcast standard PAL bars on the web anywhere, not smpte ones anyway. Im getting quite worried now.

I understand also that colours will be displayed differently on my computer as opposed to my monitor but i've tried endless amounts of footage and even commercial dvds become way over exposed on my monitor.

Any help would be welcome. Thanks

I may be missing something, but wouldn't it be a lot easier to simply plug your camera straight into the monitor and fire up the colour bars on the camera?

This does, of course, require your camera to have colour bars available.

(What? No Canon XH A1/ G1?)

Then there's the other obvious question - doesn't the monitor come with any calibration system of it's own?

Manual?

Web site?

Support?

Seems a strange way to sell production monitors.


CS

Thanks chris, getting colour bars is my secondary problem really, yeh i can get them from my camera but my main concern is the actual calibration process as this is very new to me. Especally seeing that the type of bars my camera outputs (sony ex1) are very different to the bars i am seeing.

After extensive searching on the net it seems to be quite a common theme, there are no clear guidelines on how to calibrate a PAL monitor, only rough sketchy cross conversions from how its done on an ntsc.

ok so i have kind of fixed my problem. It turns out the reason i was getting an over exposed and washed out colour was due to me plugin my composite into video A instead of video B (dont know why this makes a difference but it does). I thought i should mention it as i have found so many people with the same problem i had, so i hope they find this.

OK folks in another thread I spoke about just buying a new V8000W LCD Ikan monitor.

Now that I have it I need to Calibrate it. I have seen the name spider tossed out there but I am looking for an inexpensive way and simple way to do this.

Also, I am wondering How can I calibrate a monitor if my camera level has not been confirmed? Do I assume the camera defaults with a good white balance are nominal for all colors?

Anyway, hopefully this can be a usefull discussion for all party's.

I used to think a monitor cal using a Spyder or Eye1 was necessary for good color rendition of video displays. The reality is that spectrophotometers are designed to cal screens for PRINTER colors and not NTSC colors. So, a hardware spectrophotometer is not the right way to cal your monitor.

The best way is to use an ARIB multi-format color bar, available in a number of places including the internet or directly from your camera. The correct process involves adjusting black bars called pluge according to these instructions:

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

Bill,
Thanks for the link.
I went through it and got hung up.....
I don't have the chroma control it calls for. All I have is saturation and tint to change the colors and none get me all B&W shades.

Moved from Canon XL2 to SDTV / HDTV Video Monitors.

By the way we must have a couple dozen threads on this topic -- will try to find them and merge them all together. Please search first before posting new threads. Thanks,

Moved from Canon XL2 to SDTV / HDTV Video Monitors.
By the way we must have a couple dozen threads on this topic -- will try to find them and merge them all together. Please search first before posting new threads. Thanks,

Chris, I actually did search for this item. But I will also be very honest when I did not find as quick as I wanted to I re-posted. But I will dig much deeper.

Thanks

Went back five years, found 24 similar threads, merged them together and "stuck" at top of forum index list. Remember when using the Search function to search the *entire* site. Hope this helps,

This question is specific to the Mac platform.

I was looking at buying the Matrox MXO next week as I have a large project to color correct and all of the footage (35 hours of tape) was captured with the current versions of FCP and QuickTime (6.0.4 and 7.5 respectively). Normally, this would be a "no-brainer" as my calibration requirements are only for PAL or HD (Rec. 709) and I believe that the MXO will calibrate both on an ACD (this large project requires Rec. 709 calibration). So a "working" MXO would really be perfect for me (with the iMac I recently purchased).

But I've just checked the MXO forums today and they still haven't fixed the MXO to work with a current Mac system of FCP/QT (after nearly two months!) and so it can't be calibrated. Unless you downgrade your system (maybe). But that wouldn't work with my footage anyway (captured with the latest FCP/QT).

So I'm wondering what other options are out there for calibrating an ACD (or a Dell UltraSharp)?

Or have most people just been using the MXO?

I know a little about cineSpace (using an Eye-one2 probe and generating a 3-D LUT to load into Color).

But are there any other calibration options people have used successfully?

Thanks.

Just to answer my own question, Matrox finally provided a fix last Friday (5th of September):

Matrox MXO User Forum :: View topic - Fix for MXO DVI Monitor Calibration with QuickTime 7.5 (http://forum.matrox.com/mxo/viewtopic.php?t=1006)

So I've now got the Matrox MXO and an Apple Cinema Display. Problem solved.

Just got an MXO myself and ran into this problem on Tuesday. As you note, there was a patch which was posted on their site, and it works.

But here's something odd. I calibrated my 23" Apple Cinema Display to my satisfaction and double checked it a few times. Looked very nice. Then while editing in FCP I had a look at the built-in color bars (on the effects tab). They seem to have a different black level than the Matrox clips. I am not in the same place as that system at the moment, but I'm pretty sure they were both set to 7.5 IRE. I used NTSC bars for standard definition in both cases.

Will have to look at this a little more carefully next week, but has anyone else noticed this?

I used to think a monitor cal using a Spyder or Eye1 was necessary for good color rendition of video displays. The reality is that spectrophotometers are designed to cal screens for PRINTER colors and not NTSC colors. So, a hardware spectrophotometer is not the right way to cal your monitor.

The best way is to use an ARIB multi-format color bar, available in a number of places including the internet or directly from your camera. The correct process involves adjusting black bars called pluge according to these instructions:

- Color Bars (http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm)
Does anyone disagree with Bill? i'm in the process of finding "true Color" on my monitor for editing and viewing purposes on a Dell LCD monitor.

thanks,
Mike

Does anyone disagree with Bill? i'm in the process of finding "true Color" on my monitor for editing and viewing purposes on a Dell LCD monitor.

thanks,
Mike

I had difficulty using that method on my Dell LCD monitor. I still use my JVC professional CRT monitor for editing and color correcting. I set my Dell for default color and Multimedia under color settings. Brightness: between 15-38, Contrast: 75-76 seems close on mine. Don't forget the video card adjustments need tweaking as well.

John

Hey John,it seems i have your same gear.My m6300 monitor colors seem washed ,i left the lc by default settings.In the other LCD (dell 2408) the colors are very different and i can't set em togrther.Now i don't want crosspost but i wanna ask you how come on the jvc tm-150 the images are so dark(first time i'm using it)?How should i calibrate it?

thx and sorry 4 bothering

Marcus,

I posted a response here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sdtv-hdtv-video-monitors/234117-jvc-monitor-tm-h150c.html#post1133813

Hope it helps.

John