Good evening,

I run dual lcd monitors on my number one system. I had thought I could also run a third tv for color correcting. alass the invidia card can only run two at once.

I have found when I edit on the lcds the dvd then looks to bright on a television.

I have a second computer with a 23inch flat wide screen monitor.

What would be the best way to add on a color correcting monitor to the second system.

also what reasonable monitors are worth considering for this job??


Thank you!

Hi Dale. I've got a similar setup and want to have a third screen hooked up to my computer too. As near as I can figure it, it might just be easiest to get a cheap PCI (or PCIe card, if you have a PCIe system) that has an S-Video out and use that. I'm thinking I will do that, as I have my old (but still very useful) Panasonic 13" rack-mount monitor that I use when I shoot. I really want to hook that to the computer when editing.

But, if anyone else has any better ideas (external video splitter, etc.), I'd be interested to hear it. ;)

Matt,

I have a graphics card that has dvi, vga and s-video plugs in it. As it turns out I can only run two of these at a time which doesn't help a two monitor set up!!

I am contemp[lating purchasing another invidia 6600 graphics card and only run one dv monitor and the color correcting monitor.

I am also wondering if a regular 19 inch color tv is good enough for color correcting or is an actural smaller color crt monitor required.

Hi Dale,

I too suffered from the problem you discussed. While adding a third, color accurate monitor (preferably CRT) is almost surely the best solution, I found that the following worked well enough for me.

I pulled a TV into my office that had the LCD monitor and played the same source (a DVD, a video you produced, whatever) on both the TV and the monitor. Then I tweaked the NVidia Color Correction driver settings on my monitor until what I saw most closely resembled what I saw on the TV. While it isn't perfect, it at least removes the problem of video productions being "too bright" or "too dark" or grossly off in color.

Good luck,
Bill

I'm curious as to why the solution wouldn't be to color calibrate the monitor just like we do for photo-editing?

I agree with Brendon. I think that it's worth the time and money to calibrate all your monitors. However, because the colorspace is different between LCDs and CRTs, I think that having (even an inexpensive) professional CRT monitor is really necessary. And by professional, I mean it has the ability to adjust Chroma and Luma and be able to turn the red and green guns off (although I've read where it's possible to mimic the blue-only by using a specific-colored gel).

Brendan, Mat,

Alright, please!! tell me how I can color calibrate my lcd monitors!!

I do not have a professional color monitor, guess that should be on my list of important equipment to have. Please advise me of one that wont break the bank if you can, perhaps from B&H or such. This is an area I feel particularly weak in knowledge.

I have a color tv, 20 inch, between my two computer systems. I am not sure how to best optimize the use of it at this point.

I truly would appreciate any helpful knowledge and advice in this area.

(although I've read where it's possible to mimic the blue-only by using a specific-colored gel).
I find that this doesn't work too well. The best method is to use a blue/violet gel (as sharp as cutoff as possible in the SPD graph) and to use a variation on the color bars pattern (where you have a box on the inside that flashes a color from another color bar; see the Avia calibration DVD or my Vegas CC DVD).

The problem is that the TV may be applying flesh tone correction or "red push" (intentionally oversaturating the reds)... so there's not necessarily a right calibration AFAIK.

2- The simplest, easiest solution is this:

Buy a CRT-based broadcast monitor. JVC, Sony PVM series (discontinued, but should still be old stock), Sony BVM series, Panasonic, Ikegami I believe make these monitors. An entry level JVC is about $600 + shipping.
Many LCD monitors aren't great, but some of the high-end ones >$10k may be just as good as CRTs.

Use a DV device like your camcorder to hook up the monitor. This wil give you an "extra" monitor, and let you spot things you can never see on a computer monitor.

Alright, please!! tell me how I can color calibrate my lcd monitors!!

A quick google (lcd color calibration) turned up many references. Here is a review of one I've heard good things about:
http://www.laaudiofile.com/spyder2pro.html

Good luck!

Alright, please!! tell me how I can color calibrate my lcd monitors!!

I use the Spyder2 Pro myself and it's great. Make sure you get the Pro version (extra $$$), and the standard Spyder2 only supports one monitor. The calibrator is a simple USB device that hangs on your monitor, and "reads" the pixels on your screen. You run a special piece of software included and in about 30 minutes or so (per monitor) you have a properly calibrated screen. The software creates a color profile that Windows/OS X will just load at startup from that point on.

Most video applications don't do anything with the ICC profile generated.

2- When the probe isn't matched to the monitor's phosphors (or light-emitting elements), you may get inaccurate results.

3- For TV work, a CRT broadcast monitor will help you spot things like over/underscan, interlace flicker, etc. I would recommend a broadcast monitor (or even just a CRT TV) for this reason.
Sometimes the NLE does wacky things with the video displayed on a computer monitor.

4- You can set the white points of all your monitors to match... this way your eye's "white balance" won't drift depending on what monitor you're looking at.

5- A good test for color accuracy is to setup two systems according to standards and see if that match. I suspect a LCD computer monitor calibrated with a Spyder won't fare too well compared to broadcast monitors compared to one another. But then again, I haven't really tried.

Thank you for the input.

I must confess I have zero knowledge about setting color on tvs or monitors, so the idea of spider pro sounds awefully good.
I have also thought about getting a graphics card that suports svhs and run a color tv as a second monitor. I think that is possible with a invidia 6200 or 6600 card.
then again i still need to make its color right.

I have been consigned to make a couple 30 minute shows for a tv station, so I need to make sure I get it right.

Your best solution may still be this:

Buy a dual-monitor video card, put two computer monitors on it.
For a third monitor, use your DV device to passthrough firewire-->analog, into a broadcast monitor (they start at ~$600).

You will get pretty good color.

With the computer monitor approach + "calibration", you face a number of issues. Some of this depends on the NLE you use, since some of them have weird video previews.

Some of the issues you face:

over/underscan not obvious
pixel aspect ratio
monitor limitations. LCDs tend to have raised blacks, which you can't calibrate away.
Don't see interlaced scanning (makes it hard to evaluate field order, 24p vs 30p vs 60i, interlace flicker).
The NLE video preview only showing one field or whatever.
Cost of adding third computer monitor.
Wacky colors, unless the host app can interpret ICC profiles (AFAIK only after effects can, and it's not a NLE).

With a cheap broadcast monitor, you don't get:
standard phosphor colors (look for SMPTE C phosphors if doing NTSC work).
more automated calibration via a color probe
don't always get full range of calibration controls

Glen,

Let me see if I get this right. I have dual monitors on my p4 at present.

I then can run through my xl or gl as a converter to send analog signals to the broadcast monitor?

the camera attaches to the computer via firewire and I send to the monitor through the S-video plug?

sorry if I seem so daft on this issue, but I have been trying various things and so far everything I have tried has failed, at least using a tv.

I am obviously missing something really basic.

Yes. See the following article for instructions...

http://www.vasst.com/resource.aspx?id=341f43a3-f228-4bd8-a67c-7d5f37e4297e

Glen,

Thank you ever so much for the link!!

I hooked up my old digital 8 sony and it works perfectly!!! I am a happy camper.

Now I can at least get better color from the TV until I can break down and get a broadcast monitor which is high on my list!!!!

I realize that a broadcast monitor is better than just a CRT TV for checking color and flicker during editing, but a good monitor isn't in the budget right now.

Is there a particular TV brand that anyone can recommend for this? something with more manual picture adjustments?

Most video applications don't do anything with the ICC profile generated.
Vegas does, and I am grateful for that. However, I find that the biggest difference between my calibrated computer monitor and a television set is the gamma. Either that or PowerDVD is not doing its job properly. Simply put, images appear much darker on my computer. This makes any color correction very difficult.

I've tried loading different ICC profiles in Vegas and it doesn't do anything (whereas Photoshop does manage color). Perhaps I am missing something?!

However, I find that the biggest difference between my calibrated computer monitor and a television set is the gamma. Either that or PowerDVD is not doing its job properly. Simply put, images appear much darker on my computer. This makes any color correction very difficult.
I don't see how powerDVD comes into the equation, since it isn't Vegas and AFAIK it doesn't do color management.

However, powerDVD is affected by things like your video overlay settings, the MPEG2 decoder, etc.

Many consumer televisions are designed to be very bright... so that might be it. Or not.

Is there a particular TV brand that anyone can recommend for this? something with more manual picture adjustments?
The problem with many of the consumer TVs is that they have certain image cheats/tweaks that are difficult to get rid of.

Flesh tone correction makes a slice of color closer to flesh tone. If flesh tone is being decoded incorrect, flesh tone correction will make things right. However, this also makes adjacent colors close to flesh tone.
Some sets do allow you to disable this, without having to enter the service menu.

The other issue is that the color temperature in consumer CRTs is very blue-ish; this makes the image appear brighter (and presumably sells more TVs). At the higher color temp, the reds will look de-saturated... so TVs compensate this by oversaturating the reds.

One other thing TVs do is to decode the colors inaccurately. I'm not sure if this is a function of flesh tone correction or something else. It may be done to make the colors look better (i.e. to compensate for the phosphors having wacky colors, or the high color temp.). Regardless, this makes calibration to color bars impossible.

But at the very minimum, you can look for a TV which does:
Flesh tone correction on/off called auto color in some cases
brightness, contrast, saturation/color, hue
sharpness
color temperature

Some TV's, not all. Some of the JVC ones are surprisingly good and allow all of the extra gimmicky functions to be turned off.

So maybe JVC doesn't stand for junk video corporation??

That's interesting.

LOL.

My JVC 32" CRT television set can display a 1080 high def picture (and yes, it is a true high def picture, not downconverted to standard def), has a fantastic progressive scan deinterlacer for progressive footage, and the ability to totally turn off all artificial enhancements etc. There are absolutely zero scan line gaps too, so unlike virtually every other CRT I have ever seen the picture covers the whole screen without scanlines being visible. When I have set it up to bars and used a blue gel to set the colour I have found it was set up perfectly from the beginning. All in all quite impressive really. I bought the set 2 years ago for 500UKP!

Not that I use it for video editing though. But its nice to have.