Matching LCD monitors

[John Hartney]

Hi,

Although I still believe CRT's are best for video editing, I recently bought two Dell 20.1" 2005fpw lcd monitors. These are 16:10, and I'm doing more work in 16:9, so I went with the lcd's.

Anyway, side by side, the second monitor has a slight purpleish tinge. I've played with the color without much success. Anyone know of a program or method that may help setup the monitors to match?

I've put up bars and gone through the usual ntsc setup without success in matching exactly.

For conversation, the Dell monitors are sharp and bright. I paid $505 apiece for them shipped directly from Dell. The screens are made by LG.

Side note, there's a glut of lcd screens right now and prices are very low, it's a good time to buy if you've been considering an lcd purchase.

Thanks!


John

[Glenn Chan]

There are color calibration devices like the Colorvision Spider that'll calibrate your monitor. I'm not sure if it works for video (don't think so).

If you have a Nvidia graphics card, you can go into the advanced options and mess around with things there (it has a version of the curves filter in Photoshop).

You could try messing around with the following grayscale chart:
http://www.kozco.com/calibrat/gray.html
Figure out the invidividual point settings for each chip, and then figure out the whole thing.

I wouldn't suggest tweaking the settings for your graphics card too much though... you'll never get the two monitors exactly the same.

2- You also need a TV or NTSC monitor hooked up to your system if your target format is television. It'll show things like interlacing, chroma crawl (if you use composite/RCA connection), overscan, etc.

[John Hartney]

The card driving them is a Matrox G450 32meg...

I also have an Ikegami Broadcast monitor, a tektronix waveform monitor, and a Sony trinitron in line for referance...

Still can't get the lcds to match perfectly...

[George Castro]

John,
Are these monitors still at that price? I just bought the same lcd 2 weeks ago for $680 from a 3rd party vendor. How'd you get them from dell for such a low price? I'd like to add a second one to my system

Thanks,
George

[John Hartney]

Dell had a 25% off lcd sale, then there was a $35.00 off coupon on the net that brought them down to $604 each, free shipping... I bought two, they were promptly delivered just before Christmas and they sat in my office until January... Then, while editing on my usual 21" viewsonic pro CRT's I started thinking, I don't want to switch to lcds.... so I called Dell to get an RMA and send them back... well, the service rep said, "hold on" .... silence for a few seconds... then came back and said, If we took off another $100 per monitor will you keep them.... I bit.. So the end price was $504 delivered....

I don't think Dell is even selling them anymore. They're not listed on their site and rumor has it they're coming out with a new 24" monitor....

I just finished a project on the Dual 2005fpw's and I have to say, I like working with them... the editing booth sure doesn't heat up as much!

Good Luck.

[George Castro]

wow.

That's a great deal man. hehe. I shoulda done something like that.

You can still order them if you do a 2005fpw search on the dell site, they'll have it available. I did here about the new 24" but that'd probably cost me a good penny.

Thanks for the info though, i'm gonna hold out another month and see if the price goes down a bit. We shall see.

George

[John Hartney]

I didn't call Dell as a scam... I really didn't want to change to lcd... but the extra $200 off made me think... this is the future, and one of my crts had developed a random buzz that drives me crazy....... and these Dell monitors have overcome many of my earlier objections to the displays, mainly, slow refresh rate... now 12ms.. and the ability to view the screen from more than a 90 degree angle.

[Carl Walters]

John,

I also have bought a couple of LCD monitors and have the same problem matching the colours of the screens. I recently purchased a Spyder to calibrate them, although it improved things they still don't match exactly. Guess it's one of the downsides to LCD.

[Steven White]

Hm. I find myself in this boat now as well, with 2 17" LCDs from different manufacturers (one's a Cornea 1702 DVI, and the other is a Samsung 710N). I have an nvidia FX5200 graphics card which does allow colour tweaking, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting the whites the same (the Cornea is a lot yellower/warmer than the Samsung - which is quite blue)

Has anyone ever heard of test patterns specifically for monitor matching (i.e., patterns that span two monitors?). If not I'm going to make a few. Any suggestions on how?

-Steve

[Peter Jefferson]

hmm.. this is strange..
im running a readeon 9000 PRo (ATiPro) 128 mb , quad pipe, 128bit card with VGA and DVI...

Now tha matrox is dual dvi @ 256bit however only pumpin out 32mb which is sufficient for editing, but im really surprised your gettin gthis problem.

Im using 2 19' mitsubishis and do not have this problem. My DVI is connected as VGA using an adapter.

Have you tried swapping the ports?? reversing the panels?? Is it doing the same thing on the second head?

if it is, you may be able to go into the settings to calibrate that head only, however to be honest with you, i think a Parhelia would be a better bet if ur running super high res video over dual heads

[Glenn Chan]

Steven:
Chances are the two monitors are running at a different color temperature.
Dig inside the menus and try to find settings that refer to color temperature, 5600K/9300K/6500K/3200K/xxxxK, warm/cool, etc.

Display the same brightness white on both monitors and try to match the white balance/color temp first. Hopefully one of the monitors has a RGB control for setting "user white balance" or it just says RGB and lets you adjust the brightness of Red, green, blue. Eyeballing it is the best way as your eye is very sensitive to slight differences in color temperature.

The monitors may not match exactly, but don't sweat it. Chances are they will never match... just try to get them a lot closer.

If you have TV or NTSC monitor hooked up to your system, also try to match color temperature to the monitor. Matching all three monitors is probably the #1 thing you can do (and achievable if 2 or more of your monitors have RGB controls).

After you matched white balance, you can try going in the video card settings/drivers and futzing with the curves to match color balance for the greys and overall saturation and contrast.

LINK: http://www.kozco.com/calibrat/gray.html

That site may help a little.

To match saturation: In paint, pull up the color picker by double clicking one of the color boxes. The picture you pull up is kind of decent as it puts out full saturation colors. Put that on both screens and you can eyeball saturation. Open paint on both screens?

Contrast: If you put up a gradient from black to white you can try to eyeball them closer, and use the custom curves in the Nvidia software.
Programs like Photoshop can generate a gradient (turn dithering off).

[Steven White]

Awesome reply Glen, thanks.

I'll give it a shot and see how it goes - only one of my monitors (the Samsung) has an RGB balance. The Cornea does in analog mode, but in DVI mode it seems to think it's uber-correct, and doesn't need no stinking colour adjustments. I don't want to switch it to analog, because the sharpness of the 1:1 pixel mapping is sooooo nice.

-Steve