I have a color grading question, about calibrating my monitor.

[Ryan Elder]

I bought a spyder to calibrate the monitor, but after doing so, the last short film I color graded, still looks different on other people's screens. One one other person's screen, the blacks are too crushed, on another, they are not crushed enough. Could the spyder may not have worked, or will a movie's color not look the best on all screens, even if the grading was done on a calibrated screen?

[Donald McPherson]

"the blacks are too crushed, on another, they are not crushed enough"
Would this not mean that the spyder got it right. The spyder being in the middle.
How do the other colours come up?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

This is why calibration is necessary it allows you to properly edit on your monitor but it doesn’t change the fact other monitors will display color and tone differently than yours because they haven’t been calibrated. You could include a short video clip of a color chart that would give you a baseline of the monitor tonal range. Could be likely that it might not be able to display shadow details or has been intentional adjusted to have more contrast.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but it's hard to tell from a color chart, because the colors in the color chart are very different than the colors in the project, if that makes sense?

Perhaps the spyder did it's job, but how do you tell if the movie will look good for film festivals though?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I’m talking about a color chart that includes a gray scale.
http://accu-chart.com/treecontent/media/13/01.jpg
https://static.bhphoto.com/images/im...47_1014565.jpg

In my experience normal images will display well on most monitors because color and tone are evenly distributed. However heavily graded or images that are pushed too far into a narrow range, don’t look good when displayed on monitors that can’t display that range. For example if an image has a few shadow areas that are getting crushed by a monitor it's not noticeable but if you film a night scene and you grade almost all the image to be really dark that same monitor will crush everything and you’ll lose details every where and it will look terrible.

In addition I found that you can’t do a lot of color grading to 8bit video. It looks bad when pushed too far.

[Paul R Johnson]

I spent an interesting day at Pinewood Studios in the UK with Sony 4K cameras and while we were getting fabulous images viewed on the Sony monitor that costs nearly the same as my house, none of the domestic monitors could show what was happening in the shadows - so the person grading the output has to 'spoil' the images and move them away from perfect to something the distribution chain can handle satisfactorily - what a silly system.

[Josh Bass]

Oh boy. Here we go.

i suspect Ryan is not using a $3000+ setup in a proper environment that colorists insist is the only way to ensure that what youre doing is accurate. The spyders are seemingly universally deemed useless for calibration and the legit probes are way more expensive. Without doing everything according to these methods there is no reason to think what youre seeing will translate to any other screen, especially with more extreme settings.

I graded a music video earlier this year and only have an imac to work with. I kept the looks more conservative than I wanted to, used the scopes religiously and checked it on 4 or 5 screens/devices I had access to and kept tweaking til it ok on all of them. The colorists will STILL say that this approach is BS but it seemed to work well enough for me (not doing it for pay and not spending that money for a hobby).

Long story short without a proper (expensive) setup you have no real idea how your stuff will look anywhere but your own screen.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay then, well in order to color grade for theater, do you need a theater screen set up?

[Paul R Johnson]

That's not what they're saying - they're pointing out that your equipment isn't capable of doing what you expect it too.

Mu UK cameramen colleague are currently discussing 4K TVs, and what people watch at home, compared to what they are seeing in their studio viewfinders and the monitors the racks people are using to set their pictures. They've been sharing a common file and trying it on their home 4K TV's of all kinds and makes and come up with the realisation that none of them had anywhere near an accurately calibrated TV, and some were actually incapable of being tweaked to be remotely accurate. These people use really decent production cameras and the notion their expensive TV at home wasn't doing very well was unpleasant. Even worse the display mode picked in the shops is an artificial expanded one that gives the illusion of high quality, when it's really edge enhancements, enhanced saturation and added ambience, that give the shop material the 'wow' factor. It's a distortion of 4K quality into something fake.

I moved my video edit suite into my audio studio because I'm doing so much that needs audio and video, and I'm amazed at how different things look. My two video monitors look close, but not identical and I can live with that, but the audio monitors when working with a video window are really bland and unexciting - I have to make the video images very different to get the music monitors to look good, and frankly - I don't actually know if it's the audio computer's monitors, or the two I've always trusted on the edit machine. I do know it doesn't seem to matter to the customers. Weird!

[Brian Drysdale]

People don't calibrate their displays/TV correctly, so they will vary all over the place, different makes will have different characteristics and most monitors are 8 bit display, rather than 10bit or 12 bit. There are expensive monitors for grading films, although in your case it may come down to buying the best that you can afford

Many high end DPs tend to turn off all the fancy setting that you find on TVs these days on their domestic televisions..

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

I bought a spyder to calibrate the monitor, . . . . even if the grading was done on a calibrated screen?

You cannot grade video adequately on a computer monitor. Period. Video grading needs to be done on a video monitor via HDMI or SDI output that has been setup to color bars. It doesn't even have to be a super expensive professional monitor. Many of today's consumer monitors are good enough for basic grading if you turn off all the automatic settings and set them up to color bars. A Spyder or other calibration tool is unnecessary. They key is that you need to view your video as a true video signal and not in a computer environment. If you can put your mouse's cursor over the top of the video -- you are still in a computer environment and you are doomed to failure.

This Blackmagic device is all you need to transform the program output from Resolve, Premiere, etc. into a true video signal.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...l?sts=pi&pim=Y

[Chris Hurd]

I really need to install a "best reply" identifier in order to earmark exceptionally useful responses in discussion threads, such as Doug's post above (plus others).

[Josh Bass]

I have to say, not to start a whole thing here, but I guess I'd be curious as to what type/price range of monitors you mean. Some folks say certain plasmas are ok for this purpose but still advocate calibrating some fancy sophisticated way (i.e. not just bars), others talk about certain Eizo monitors and others. None of these are especially cheap solutions (to me), still looking at around $1000 at least for the monitor (not to mention the cost of the Blackmagic box). I would love to be wrong but all my research has told me it is not so.

Besides which, you also need (again from what I understand) completely neutral grey/black/white walls in the area surrounding your grading monitor, as a slight tint to the wall color can desensitize you to certain colors, and make you overcompensate when grading. Likewise lighting is supposed to be a certain ambience level and color temp for the same reason.

Some might say that's just colorists protecting their jobs by spreading misinformation, but surely some of these other message board posts (spreading the above info) have to be from folks (like me) who've never tried to get paid as colorists and only want their own material to look good for their own satisfaction. Many blogs and articles etc. on the subject basically say the same thing in my first two paragraphs up there, as well.

[Jeff Donald]

This is not as difficult as everyone is making it seem. The definitions for various types of broadcasts, media use etc. are defined very specifically by governing bodies. In the old days (read analog) we had NTSC in the US. This standard was defined by the NAB, SMPTE and FCC was the standard for broadcast. Today we have various methods of distribution, but still defining bodies and guidelines at the very least.

You can use various types of monitors, displays etc. This issue will always be that you can't calibrate every monitor, computer screen and projection system in the world. But if you calibrate your own system, you have a better chance of getting it right on the majority of systems. The OP mentioned that he was worried about a contest etc. then one has to assume that they will be using calibrated systems for judging and presentation. Smaller film festivals etc. may be clueless, but certainly larger organizations will be doing it right.

I did a quick Google search and found this page that describes some simple/basic terms,

https://www.richardlackey.com/choosi...o-color-space/

Please read the article and if you want a more in-depth article, please read this white paper on the subject,

https://github.com/jeremyselan/cinem..._Color_VES.pdf

The above link will download a PDF.

If the material is using terms you don't understand, or concepts that are hard to wrap you head around, please post questions below. I'll be happy to answer any questions related to monitors, calibration and calibrators etc. Please read at least the website link above and ask away.

Who am I and how do I know this stuff?

Chris Hurd will vouch for my understanding of things related to video and photography. I used to be very active on DVInfo, but life and jobs etc. forced me to move on. I'm truly sorry I can't spend more time here, but I do subscribe to various Forums here and read an email this afternoon and thought I should chime in.

[Chris Hurd]

Always love it when you chime in, Jeff -- many thanks!