Boyd? Glen? Why in hell didn't I think of that? May I say that you two guys are my new heroes? I am calling Rick Bravo right now and telling him that he's no longer my hero. You two knocked him out of the box.

For shame, Rick Bravo! Not answering my call for help! Harummph!

One more question: Does Vegas 5 have true SMPTE color bars? That's what I use. Also, how do I double check the color bars/pluge pattern on my scopes?

Hmm maybe it isn't worth it to check color bars on scopes. Vegas 5 does have proper SMPTE color bars. To setup the scopes properly:
Click on the "Scope Settings" button (in the video scopes window) and check both "7.5IRE Setup" and "Studio RGB (16 to 235)" for North American NTSC DV; japan is different). Read the manual if you're unclear on what settings to use.

Once you have the video scopes setup properly, the pluge bars should read "3.5", "7.5", and "11.5". Vegas doesn't give precise values like that on the scopes but you get the point.

If you have faith that the bars are right (like I do), then just do it. Checking on scopes just adds complication and you may not even be sure they are right.

This information does not apply to Vegas 4 and before.

2- Hopefully this doesn't confuse you more:
When you calibrate the monitor to your PD170 you may want to watch out for the 7.5IRE setup issue. DV digital values range from 0-255, and the blackest black is supposed to be 16 (not 0). 16 (digital) is supposed to translate to 7.5IRE (analog) during the digital--> analog conversion. Some equipment puts 16 (digital) at 0IRE which is improper. Your PD170 may do this, or it may have a setting to switch between 0 and 7.5IRE.

If you are calibrating before you shoot then this isn't an issue at all (you can say your blackest blacks are at 0IRE, 7.5IRE, or anything else you'd like). If you would like to avoid giving problems to the people who will use the equipment next, then leave a note or something saying they should re-calibrate the monitor.

Thanks Wayne, it's a brand new monitor from B&H. The last option is okay, although that would kill the point of having NTSC monitor.

Monitor switches & calibration question
 

Hi all,

Looks like there aren't too many people using the JVC TM-90PSN monitor! (see http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41281).

I was given mine second hand with no user guide.

I guess that many of the switches are common to other monitors. I wonder if anyone could explain what the following switches are for and when they should be used:

SKEW (on / off)
DISC SW (auto / 50Hz)
75ohm SWITCHED OUT/OPEN BRIDGE OUT

Regarding calibration, I can display PAL colour bars on the monitor through my XM2, but what do I calibrate against? Is it just done by eye? I understand there are various calibration devices and scopes available but in the absence of these, is there an alternative method?

Any advice welcomed with open arms. Thanks.

Ian . . .

I believe this is what happens:
If you want to daisy-chain monitors, then by taking 75 ohm resistance out you will be able to daisy-chain without weaker signal strength.

Not too sure what the two other functions are.

2- Monitor calibration:

The following two links have some information on this, although they apply more to NTSC/North America:
http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

http://www.synthetic-ap.com/tips/calibrate.pdf (PDF)
http://www.synthetic-ap.com/tips/index.html

I find that even if you calibrate your monitor to color bars, the colors can still be whacked. Monitors shift colors as they age, and room lighting conditions can affect your eye's white balance and there can be glare on the screen (block light with your hands to test that).

*some monitors have a feature in their menu which lets you feed color bars to it and it will auto-calibrate itself. I don't know if this works with PAL.

1.Feed through setting has been covered by Glen. Daisy chaining monitors is not allways adviseable because most feed through filters introduce some image quality reduction.
2.Skew: a geometry setting to make the active image borders parallel to the display bezel (after keystone correction)
3.Are you shure it's "DISC SW"and not "DISP SW". The latter means switching the 50/60 Hz auto detection on or off.

Thanks, gents, for your responses.

Andre, definitely DISC.

Glenn, yes, I followed the instructions there. My monitor doesn't have an autocalibrate facility (it's fairly basic) but I have done what I think it is a reasonable job. I guess I need to find someone with some scopes to really do a good job though.

Thanks again for the help.

Ian . . .

Calibration Question Sony PVM 1440
 

Hi All,

I use a Canon XL2 and have just bought a Sony PVM 1440 Monitor, now the question is do i calibrate the monitor to the camera or to my NLE system or both? (i use premiere pro and after effects)

I am using a Geforce 6500 graphics card with the ability to change the colour profile do i leave this as standard or choose say STMP-C or Adobe 1998 or what?

The other way i thought is to attach the XL2 to the monitor and calibrate the monitor with the XL2 colour bars, then fine tune it with my eye to make sure all colour look correct to what i see with the naked eye? I have tried using the instructions on videouniversity but i cant get my monitor to display three grey bars down the bottom right.

Please help

PS all my equipment is PAL!!!

What editing system are you using?

Generally speaking, only use the color bars generated from your NLE. Don't import pictures, the levels can be wrong.

hook up your XL2 via FIREWIRE (not S-video off the video card) and attach the monitor to the XL2.

Then use the instructions from video university.

2- If the XL2 has "7.5% setup" like the XL1 does, you should probably disable it (it should be disabled/off by default). It may be adding digital setup- I would only turn it on if you know what it does.

Help Please Locate Monitor/TV Calibrating Hardware
 

I read a post from someone who used a piece of hardware to calibrate TVs to use as monitors. I visited the website but can't find it again.

The company makes a triangular looking device that sits on the monitor/TV (there are a couple of models) for calibrating the monitor. The devices cost in the area of $200.

I think I saw it in this forum, but can't find it now. Can someome please point me to it? Thank you! I think it might have been one of the main moderators who made the post. I want to find it soon, because there was a sale that ends the end of July.

Calibug maybe?

No, not the Calibug.

This is a device that sits on the face of the screen. It is possiblity about 10 to 12 inches in diameter.

On of the models is used to calibrate home theater system TVs.

Was it possibly the Spyder2 from Colorvision?

Hey Jack, maybe you were thinking of this thread?

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=64809

Calibrating a cheap-o monitor???
 

Do you know of any way I can effectively calibrate the contrast & brightness levels of a monitor that doesn't have a blue gun? I've got a cheap Panasonic 13" S-video monitor and I really have no idea if the contrast & brightness are accurate at all.

Hi Bill,

Just use one of the Video Tweaking DVD's, like Avia or Video Essentials.

Harold

Do you have a camera, such as a Canon Xl1s, XL2, or XL H1?

If so, use the Color Bars function to feed the monitor.

Then, using the procedures for monitor setup available on the internet to set the brightness, contrast, and hue.

If you do not have Color Bars available, do you have an editor, such as Vegas? If you do, setup Color Bars in your editor and route the signal to your monitor.

Please lets know what you have and we will try to assist.

Great idea!

I have Final Cut Pro and a JVC HD100, as well as Sony PD170s. So I can easily generate color bars to the monitor. Then what do I do?

setting up color bars.
http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

a decent guide, but it takes practice.

Here is one procedure:

http://www.simvideo.com/downloads/Mo...libration2.pdf

I will continue to search in an attempt to find a better procedure.

Here is a second procedure:

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~wvg/color%20bar.htm

I would recommend that you don't:
A- Use calibration DVDs. DVD players and/or your DV device may output non-standard levels, so there's a mismatch between your DVD player (what you're calibrating to) and your DV device (what you should calibrate to).
B- The blue gel trick. Blue gels let in light from the green elements of the monitor.

What to do:
A- On consumer TVs, the eyeball method may work better than the next method.
B- Set color temperature closer to D65.

Mostly follow the video university instructions.

The blue gel part:
Use a gel with a sharp cutoff in the SPD graph. If you get a swatchbook from Lee/GAM/Rosco (these are usually free) they will have nice graphs... look for a steep slope.
Use a blue or violet gel.

Then, you want an alternate color bars pattern... where on top of the normal color bars, you have flashing superimposed boxes of the opposing color. See the Avia calibration DVD or the DVD in my signature to see what this looks like, and make that pattern in your NLE (using your NLE's test pattern generator, not something else).
Then calibrate, tweaking hue and chroma/saturation to minimize flashing.

LCD HDTV calibration - how do I do it?
 

I'm using an LCD HDTV to monitor my stuff and I have no idea how to calibrate it. Being LCD, it just can't differentiate between the various black levels when I send it color bars. Does anyone have any idea how to calibrate it? Would I have to use one of those calibration DVDs?

calibrating Cinema Display with HD Link?
 

Hi,
I'm working with XDCam HD Footage on a G5/FCP system and am monitoring the material using the following path: The HD SDI signal from our KONA LH goes into our HD LINK. The HD Link's DVI output is connected to our Apple 23" Cinema display. Our Sony SD Broadcast Monitor is connected to the analog component outputs of the KONA LH and simultaneously shows the downconverted HD footage. So far, so good.
The footage looks ok on the SD monitor but seems too bright to me on the cinema display. The whites tend to glare and the material looks as if it was overexposed.
The HD link utility that comes along with the HD Link provides some means of manipulating the appearance of the picture but I can't see how to calibrate the cinema display the "traditional" way.

http://www.t3rbo.com/photo/img/b15c1...04/HD Link.jpg

Does anyone have a similar setup and can give me a quick "how to" calibrate the cinema display?

Thanks in advance,
Christian

calibrating colors
 

i cant effort a true color monitor, so i have to calibrate colors on my samsung(syncmaster940n) LCD-TFT monitor. Which tutorial and program for that i should use? Or is there anywhere already good for colorcorrection profile files which could be downloaded?

I would recommend an external CRT TV since (for SD work anyways) it will show you things that won't be visible on a LCD monitor like interlacing issues, overscan, etc. Even a cheap consumer CRT TV will be better than a very expensive computer monitor.

You can make a computer monitor perform a little better; however, it won't make you aware of what your video will look like (like an external monitor would). As well, you can't calibrate the monitor to get rid of inherent flaws.

2- You could check that:

There are no activeoverlay settings on the video card
That the video card's LUT (look-up table) is normal; Conversely, you can somewhat calibrate your monitor with this.

Color temperatures between your monitors and room lighting are all similar. The closer the better. A less important issue is to get them close to D65.

You can calibrate the interface to the monitor (with DVI this isn't an issue). Make sure that the monitor is reading white and black level correctly.

Setup your NLE to show the most accurate image. A lot of NLEs will, be default, show an inaccurate image.

And if you really must use a computer monitor, make sure you know about interlace flicker and overscan.

Calibrate a Sony PVM-1371QM
 

Hey,

recently I bought a Sony PVM-1371QM video monitor. I hooked it up to my iMac 24" via a VGA to Comp cable from Apple.

Can some tell me wich method is the best to calibrate the video monitor? (color, brightness etc.)

Thanks!

Does your monitor have a "blue only" switch. If so, put it into blue only mode, and display SMPTE color bars on it. In Blue Only mode, the effect on color bars is to create alternating bright and dark vertical columns. All the dark columns should be equally dark and all the bright columns should be equally bright. If the two outer bright columns don't match, then the chroma/saturation control on the monitor is turned until they do. For the inner bright columns, the hue/tint or phase control is turned until they match.

If you are using full split field color bars you will see two slender vertical bars in the middle of the horizontal black bar. If you don't see them, and the bar is a solid black, turn the brightness up till you see both of them. Then turn the brightness back down slowly, so the slightly darker one on the left just dissapears in the black, and the sligtly brighter vertical bar on the right is just visible.

Now your monitor is displaying hue, color, and brightness appropriately. However, it could be off in regards to color temperature. You can not adjust color temperature properly without test equipment.

Mark

BTW, Julian -

For the past decade, Hal Landon's "Video University" web site has had a really nice step-by-step tutorial for setting up a monitor with bars available for free. www.videouniversity.com

Just do a site search under "color bars"

You might want to check it out if you've never previously calibrated a monitor.

Lcd monitor - is it possible to calibrate it?
 

Hi,
I just got a Gateway FPD 2185W LCD monitor for my 251 camera.
Is there any way to calibrate it?
I found many ways to calibrate it if I connect it to a computer, but if is connected to the camera only what do I have to do?
Out of the box looks OK color wise but the details in the underexposed parts of the image are completely lost.
Thank you very much for your help,
Eugen

Personally I hate LCD monitors, and really only use them when portability is required or if the production can't afford a HD-CRT rental. They are fine for indicating focus/sharpness, but not very trustworthy in most environments.

Unfortunately they are usually only limited to brightness and contrast adjustment when component in is used.
Send bars to the monitor and do your best to calibrate the each time you move to a new environment or the light levels change.

If you've never calibrated bars, please let me know and I'll attempt to explain it.

Hi Eugen,

I think you're seeing what I've also discovered with the Gateway 21" LCD. It's not a bad computer monitor, and a good value for the cost. But I have given up trying to bring it into any sort of calibration using the component video inputs while connected to my Z1. When you turn the brightness to the max the image is still too dark to show shadow details. So your only choice is to turn the contrast way up. When you do that the highlights start to blow out (you lose all detail in the bright parts of the image). I have the exact same problem with standard definition video when I connect it to my DVD recorder via component.

So it seems that this screen is always too dark when used with the analog inputs. What is a "251" camera? If I try to view standard definition video on the Gateway there's another problem which is even worse IMO. The screen is physically in the 16:10 aspect ratio, like many LCD's. When feeding it a high definition component video signal you have the option of letterboxing the image with a small black bar above and below so that it's in the correct 16:9 proportion. But with a standard definition image via component or s-video, you don't get this choice. So if you're trying to monitor 16:9 standard definition material the image is always stretched out of proportion on the 16:10 screen.

Too bad, because initially I thought this screen was very cool for its price. It can still be useful to judge focus, like Tim says. But I don't think it can be calibrated to make exposure judgements. It looks OK with a brightly lit low contrast scene, but anything dark with a lot of contrast just looks bad unfortunately.

BTW, if you want to learn how to use color bars this is a nice quick overview: http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

Would an LCD HDTV be any better ?

Well I guess that depends on the particular model. I don't think you could make any generalizations because there's a whole range of quality there.

But I have a Sony 17" widescreen LCD and a Samsung 22" widescreen LCD TV. Both of these are several years old now; the Sony is 768x1280 and the Samsung is 720x1280. They aren't fantastic, but neither of them have this sort of problem, I can adjust them to get a reasonable level of brightness and contrast.

Your mileage may vary...

True about making generalizations, but I've been reading about a lot of widescreen LCD 24" computer monitors that are having problems when fed with a signal other than a DVI-PC. Aspect ratios, poor coloring, contrast, resolutions, etc..

Makes me wonder if I should just get an LCD HDTV as my HD preview monitor. At least I can be confident it will show my HD camcorder footage correctly.

Tim, Boyd and Ron, thank you very much for your answers.
Tim, I think that I know how to calibrate bars. I use the procedure described in the DVRACK help menu. Unfortunately the LCD doesn't have the blue only button.
Boyd the 251 is the GY HD 251E JVC camera. Thank you very much for the link too.
Ron, I have a LCD HDTV and it is not any better.
In conclusion I am following Tim's advice and use this monitor on the field for indicating focus/sharpness.
Thanks a lot for your help,
Eugen

Calibrating a TV
 

So to tell if I've calibrated my TV correctly, I look at the PLUGE bars, the first of which should be indistinguishable from the second and the third of which should stand out from the other two. Is it really that simple? I'm using some test bars I exported from Vegas and put on a DVD.

Perhaps this will help? http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

calibrate varizoom vz-tft7u
 

I have this monitor but I hate it's colors. Does anybody know how I can accurately calibrate it's contrast and color?