Which Editing monitor

[Philippe Dionne]

Hi,

I just bough a new computer (pc) and I want to edit on it. I will be using Premiere Pro. As far as I read, two monitors is a must.

I wold like to know which are the caracteristics to look on a monitor. I'm looking at 16:9 "flat screen" monitors of 21'' to 19''.

Thanks

[Peter Ferling]

With PPro 1.5.1 and earlier I used two 21" CRTs.

Upgrading to PPro 2, I've purchased a 22" Gateway widescreen LCD for edit windows and kept one of my 21 pro CRT monitors for color and preview (output as overlay via a dual head quadro card). The LCD allows for a longer timeline space and I can take advantage of contrast color of the CRT for preview.

I've seen the gateway 24", and there's enough real estate on that size to make up for two 21" CRT's. I just can't do away completely with CRT. I still do legacy video and photoshop work and the CRT's are more accurate.

I also purchased a Huey monitor color correction tool and have both calibrated nearly identical (that is the LCD is close to the CRT). I can see the advantage in keeping the CRT. Having both will allow me to judge edits based on final output.

At the studio I still have two 21" CRT's, but opted for an HD-SDI Sony LMD LCD. The phosphors on that one are very close to production CRTs. The CRT's are powered by Nvidia quadro dual head. Even with three monitors, I can the advantage of having my edit windows on one big mutha. It's more tidy.

So much of it will depend on what else you do, and the format/method your final piece will be viewed on.

[Peter Ferling]

I forgot to add the fact about the gateways, these can double as HDTV's with both digital (DVI with HDCP) and analog component/composite inputs. The gateways have an extensive built in menu system, with touch sensitive buttons along the right bevel edge. You can easily switch inputs to view media from other sources -including Picture-in-picture, (dvd players, HDTV/cable, etc). This is a great use of desktop real estate.

I've edited some of my vacation video, switched and watched dvd playback of final piece via component inputs. I no longer need my 32" television set for this, and have given it to my son to use with his Xbox. It's getting more roomy in my office now.

The 22" is useful for 720p/1080i format, and the 24" has higher rez to handle 1080p. With 1:1 pixel scaling I highly recommend them, but stop just shy of any real CC work.

[Philippe Dionne]

Thanks a lot

If I'm right, I should have a wide LCD monitor with a normal time response and normal contrast ratio to edit and view my windows. The second monitor should have a greater time response and contrast ratio to allow me previewing everything.

- Is it important for the "previewing" monitor to be a CRT or it can be a LCD ?
- What's considered as a good response time and good contrast ratio ?
- I'll shot 1080 24p or 30p HD then downconvert to DV, if I want to preview some 1080 footage, will the preview monitor need to have at least a resolution of 1080xXYZ ?

Thanks, ASAP I'll have these I'll start capturing some footage with the V1U !

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Peter Ferling

I forgot to add the fact about the gateways, these can double as HDTV's with both digital (DVI with HDCP) and analog component/composite inputs.

I've had one of these for a few months now, and it's not bad as a computer monitor. However after lots of tinkering, I'm not happy with the component video input. It's fine to judge focus, but I simply cannot get it into the right ballpark in terms of brightness/contrast. When connected via component to my Z1, everything appears too dark. Same thing when connected to the component output from my DVD recorder. I also have a Sony 17" and Samsung 21" LCD, and they don't have this problem. When in component mode, you just can't seem to crank up the brightness far enough. To compensate you can increase the contrast, but that starts to blow out all the highlights very quickly.

One other annoyance. When viewing 1080i HD with the component inputs the screen correctly letterboxes the video to put it into the correct proportion (the screen is native 16:10, not 16:9). However when viewing anamorphic SD (480p) you don't have this option. It fills the entire screen, resulting in a distorted image where things are too tall and skinny. Again, my other two widescreen LCD's don't have this problem.

Using it with a DVI connection to my Mac, I can adjust the image pretty well by using Apple's calibration utility so it makes a decent computer monitor. I really wish the component inputs had more of an adjustment range, but I have spent a lot of time playing with all the menu options and have given up on getting it any better.

BTW, I hate the menu system with the buttons on the side. Just like those annoying ATM machines, it can be hard to figure out which menu item on the screen lines up with the physical buttons. I really wish they had provided a remote control for this kind of screen, which was standard on the other screens I have.

Since you're using it on a PC things *might* be better. I know that they provided a windows program for adjusting the monitor, but it doesn't run on the Mac. However I suspect this only lets you adjust parameters when using the DVI interface and not component.

[Bill Davis]

Personally, I dislike dual monitors.

I don't like having a visual gap between two adjacent screens.

I use a 30" Apple cinema display which is large enough to hold all the timeline, menus, etc I need for everything from video editing to still photo work.

That's for the computer stuff. For monitoring a video signal, I'd NEVER use any kind of LCD display. My reasons are in another recent thread. But simply put, I don't trust the color. Period.

So I have an edit setup with the big LCD for the computer. A professional CRT broadcast monitor for judging picture output. And I recently added a 32" Sony LCD HD TV montior for viewing material that's destined for widescreen viewing in client's location.

If I had to give up any of them, the broadcast monitor would go LAST. As it's the ONLY screen where I know that what I'm looking at is precisely what is being output from my system.

YMMV. Good luck.

[Peter Ferling]

Bill, I see I'm not the only one unable to let go of the CRTs. All these LCD's are great for pleasing wide views for editing. I tend to find LCD's a little too bright and harsh on the eyes. Even when calibrated. I do give exception to my Sony LMD, however it's the format engine box that comes with it that does the work, and it's not very cheap either.

I have to be careful in not geting overly excited about wide-screen LCDs in terms of professional use. I'm a PC guy surrounded by graphic designers on dual G5's with cinema displays. One of them put his 22" Lacie on the shelf. The only reason is that he likes the wide aspect for double page layouts, and he "knows" how far off the LCD is in terms of color and adjusts accordingly.

I've said before that it's not always a good a or bad tool that matters, but the right tool for the job.

[Philippe Dionne]

When talking about a good broadcast CRT monitor, what do you have in mind ?

[Bill Davis]

A broadcast monitor typically has these some or all of these features.

- Accessible front panel controls for input switching, brightness, contrast, chroma, and possibly phase, and aperature.

- You'll typically also have a "blue gun" control - which shuts off the red and green signals and allows you to make brightness and contrast adjustments using SMPTE color bars.

- Also common is "underscan", which shrinks the picture by a small amount to allow you to evaluate your picture edge to edge.

- Some also have technical controls such as a horizontal/vertical delay switch, that allows you to see the vertical interval and the leading and trailing edges of the entire rasters scan lines.

- Newer models also may sport a 16x9 control to correct the aspect ratio when they're fed anamorphic widescreen signals.

- The best of them have picture consistency features like specially formulated color producing phosphores that are tweeked to re-create colors properly (Sony calles these "Q" phosphores)

After being properly set up, these monitors are your best guaranted that what you're seeing on the screen is EXACTLY what your signal looks like.

Not all decent pro video monitors have ALL these features, but all true pro picture evaluation monitors will have something MISSING...

The circuits in common household televisions designed to make them appear "richer", "brighter", more colorful, or more "vivid" in your living room. Which is fine when you're watching TV. But a serious problem when you're trying to decide if what you shot is properly exposed, properly lit, or just what you want everyone ELSE to see when they play back the tape later.

Hope this helps.

[Paul Vlachos]

This may sound stupid, but I want to make sure before I go and buy one.

My normal setup consists of my Mac Tower running Final Cut -> Firewire -> what used to be a DSR-11, now the HVR-M15U -> S-Video cable to a Sony CRT Broadcast monitor. This enabled me to monitor my work, do color correction, etc. Never a problem with this, except for the documented FCP corrupt preferences glitch occasionally, which would cause it to lose the video, but is easily fixable.

So I was thinking of replacing the trusty Sony monitor with the Panny BT-LH1700W because I want 16:9 and HD. I don't love LCD's, but I cannot afford a broadcast CRT. That's NOT my question here, though, and I"ll reasearch that more on my own from the numerous threads here.

I want to make sure that, if I maintain this setup and connect through the component out of the Sony deck to the Panasonic monitor, it will still work. I don't see why it would not in HDV, but I am asking you who are more experienced for your advice.

Thank you, everybody.

[Glenn Chan]

Paul:

Your HDV deck can't passthrough a HDV signal to HD component out. I believe you'll need one of those hardware cards from Aja, Blackmagic, Bluefish (Digital Voodoo?), Pinnacle?, Aurora with component out.

2- IMO, some of the HD monitors available aren't that great. Anything that doesn't do native pixels (i.e. a lot of the 'broadcast-grade' HD monitors) will fundamentally have problems with resolution and scaling artifacts.

- The best of them have picture consistency features like specially formulated color producing phosphores that are tweeked to re-create colors properly (Sony calles these "Q" phosphores)

The phosphors should conform to the standard primary chromaticities:
SD NTSC: SMPTE C
SD PAL, and Japanese SD NTSC: EBU
HD (PAL and NTSC countries): Rec. 709

Sony CRT monitors (all discontinued except for BVM line) typically have either SMPTE C, EBU, or "P22" phosphors (where P22 doesn't strictly follow the broadcast standards). I don't believe Sony (or any other manufacturer) makes CRTs with Rec. 709 phosphors. It may not be that big a deal though, since we are fairly tolerant of inaccurate color (the real world isn't very color accurate anyways due to things like metamerism).

3- Philippe:
For editing SD, a good setup would be:
*dual monitors (computer monitors)- LCDs are good here. Dell LCDs are good when they are on sale (check hot deals sites for your country; what people say in the forums can be helpful).
*A CRT broadcast monitor. Unfortunately these may be getting harder to purchase. JVC, Ikegami, Panasonic, Sony (PVM series discontinued) make these.

For editing HD, things get a lot more expensive.
-For a broadcast monitor, your best bets may be a Sony or Ikegami CRT, or an ecinemasys LCD. $8k~$44k+ price range here.
-If you're on a budget, use the apple cinema desktop (can't remember the exact name) feature in FCP to use an LCD instead of a broadcast monitor. You'll need an LCD with at least 1920X1080 pixels. The colors wont be accurate and you might get poor de-interlacing, but you can check focus and see image defects.

[Paul Vlachos]

Thanks to all for your help.

It's my blessing/curse to live a fifteen minute walk from B&H, and I was up there a few times today.

What I did was buy a BlackMagic Decklink HD Extreme card. This lets me monitor my HDV in real time and to downconvert it on the fly to my Sony Broadcast SD CRT monitor. It's a temporary solution, but it seems to work fine for judging color. My main editing is on the computer monitor, but it's nice to have the CRT for color work, even if it is in SD.

I kept looking at the Panasonic 17" LCD HD monitor, but I just prefer a CRT for some things.

Anyway, the BlackMagic card saved me a lot of grief.