monitor vs TV

[Hugh Dorigo]

After downloading my footage from my DVX100, I couldnt be happier with the quality of the picture in term of color, contrast and overall warm look on my apple cinema display. When the same footage is played to the TV screen it had a harsh or hard, almost shinny look to the skin tones. The difference is unbelievalbe. Can this be corrected with color correction/filters before final output?

[Glenn Chan]

1- Which editing program are you using? Final Cut?

2- You might want to try calibrating your TV first.

One way:
Go into the menu for your TV.
Set the color temperature lower. Ideally all the color temperatures in your room are consistent. After that, ideally it would all be 6500k.


Look for settings for brightness, contrast/picture, saturation/color, and hue/phase.
Put them all into their middle position.
Do the same for aperture or sharpness.
Unfortunately your TV may have different names for those things.

Then look for an "auto color" function... disable that, because it will push colors towards what the TV thinks is skin tone.

Then put a color bars pattern onto the TV and calibrate the PLUGE bars according to the instructions at http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

This is the "stupid" way of calibrating your TV. It will likely get pretty close to the following, better method outlined at that same link.

Your TV may be messed up anyways in terms of color reproduction... calibrating to color bars does not fix that.

3- Computer monitors aren't very accurate at showing what your image looks like either.


Maybe try another television. If you are working professionally, you may want to consider getting a NTSC monitor ($400-$3000+ depending on the quality you want). They are designed to give accurate reproduction of your image and do not have cheats like your TV.

[Hugh Dorigo]

thanks for the reply. Im getting a sony monitor this week. The question remains though: What is the point of caputuring 24p footage that really does have a film look to it, when it is robbed of this when played on a TV. Im I missing something? My cinema display looks like an interview from the History channnel, and the same footage on the TV playback is closer to a cousins wedding filmed by uncle joe. Ok, a bit of an exageration.... How do you get the film look captured from the camera to come through on the TV. Much thanks!

[Alessandro Machi]

I think there are two separate issues here.

You like 24 P, but when you see it on regular TV, somehow the motion feels different. And two, somehow the color looks different?

Does your regular TV monitor product nice images other than your interviews?
Perhaps your TV monitor has too many "auto" settings which are changing the picture from the way you are seeing it on the computer.