Grading Monitors - any recommendations?

[Johnathan Guest]

I'm currently using a 2x Dell 24" monitors (a 2407 and a 2410) for normal displays then have a Sony 17" PVM-1741 for grading and a Panasonic 50" TH-P50VT30 for client review.

The Sony OLED is awesome. But I need to get the 25" variant so I have a monitor for when the 17" is on set.

[Tom.Wong]

Fsi just came out with a stellar 10 bit 17 inch panel as well. If budget is over 3k but not in the 5's i say go for that. At 5k oled all the way. If under 3k dreamcolor or eizo with converter box. I dont really like grading over dvi as a gui monitor. I like the piece of mind of getting a qualified pure broadcast signal out of an i/o card. Dell ultrasharps for the money make amazing gui monitors. Right now my dreamcolor is my gui, and oled as my critical color panel. Other than the black levels it keeps things looking pretty consistant from ur interface to ur output.

I wanna trade up fornthe eizo though cause as jeff said it has a great self calibrate tool built in. Busting out a separate probe all the time gets old fast....

[Fabian Weber]

What is your budget? What size of monitor are you looking for? How do you plan on feeding it / what type of signal?

Thanks for all your informations guys!
I'm looking for a 10bit HD-SDI (dual) - 20" to 27"! My budget is arround 5K.

I never worked with the Sony OLED's and had the same feeling like you... with the new firmwire update i'm not so sure any more!
Friends in Berlin work with the low-priced Dreamcolor and are happy.

The EIZO CG232W is also an option for me! I never worked with FSI...

[Norbert Jalitsch]

for a 5k ish panel, my money is always on the sony pvm-2541


once you go oled...

+1

i have seen that display and i am in love since then...
such a quality for such a low price !!!

it will not be easy to find an equivalent option for this device...

[Tom.Wong]

+1

i have seen that display and i am in love since then...
such a quality for such a low price !!!

it will not be easy to find an equivalent option for this device...

it gets you in trouble sometimes though, sadly it won't look that good again except on another oled. human eyes haven't seen such black levels in a display since the CRT days, and barely anybody remembers what a CRT looks like. so sometimes i get clients who think something is wrong with their footage looking at the footage that looked great to them on my panel but just became so underwhelming in comparison... If you don't wanna deal with those issues I say if you got 5k, go for FSI all the way. a billion and one features, EXCELLENT panel. performs very similar to the dreamcolor, black levels are a touch better, and you have full raster hdsdi input and outputs with all display color spaces built in, and exposure tools.

[Marc Wielage]

I'm looking for a new grading monitor - any recommendations?

I would visit the post facilities in your part of the world and see what they're using in London, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Ideally, I think a color-correction room should be purpose-built, designed specifically for optimum viewing by clients and the colorist. The ambient lighting has to be controlled, and I'd prefer to have lighting sources at 6500K when possible, with the room at dimly-lit (but not necessarily pitch-black) levels. I think for TV shows, a 50" Panasonic 30-series or 300-series plasma can do very well, provided it's been precisely calibrated to Rec709. These have quickly become the standard for network TV delivery all over LA. The viewing angle for LCD isn't as flexible as it is for plasma, but there are exceptions; the Dolby PRM-4200 is absolutely dynamite and looks very, very good. (For $35K, it should.)

For theatrical, there are tons of great DLP projectors out there. In this case, so much depends on the specific screen being used, the viewing angle, the seating positions, the room lighting, the size of the room, and so on... it's hard to get into generalities. Choice of monitor LUTs is also a huge subject, particularly for D-cinema and D.I. film-outs.

To me, the key is making the clients comfortable with what they see, and make the room as efficient as possible in terms of getting to the controls, giving everyone a good look at the monitor, and making sure that the picture will translate reasonably well to other kinds of monitors. Understanding and implementing monitor calibration is a large part of that.

[Fabian Weber]

I would visit the post facilities in your part of the world and see what they're using in London, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Ideally, I think a color-correction room should be purpose-built, designed specifically for optimum viewing by clients and the colorist. The ambient lighting has to be controlled, and I'd prefer to have lighting sources at 6500K when possible, with the room at dimly-lit (but not necessarily pitch-black) levels. I think for TV shows, a 50" Panasonic 30-series or 300-series plasma can do very well, provided it's been precisely calibrated to Rec709. These have quickly become the standard for network TV delivery all over LA. The viewing angle for LCD isn't as flexible as it is for plasma, but there are exceptions; the Dolby PRM-4200 is absolutely dynamite and looks very, very good. (For $35K, it should.)

For theatrical, there are tons of great DLP projectors out there. In this case, so much depends on the specific screen being used, the viewing angle, the seating positions, the room lighting, the size of the room, and so on... it's hard to get into generalities. Choice of monitor LUTs is also a huge subject, particularly for D-cinema and D.I. film-outs.

To me, the key is making the clients comfortable with what they see, and make the room as efficient as possible in terms of getting to the controls, giving everyone a good look at the monitor, and making sure that the picture will translate reasonably well to other kinds of monitors. Understanding and implementing monitor calibration is a large part of that.

Perfect - thanks a lot Marc!

[Mark Toia]

I'm looking for a new grading monitor - any recommendations?

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-mon...oduct-PVM2541/

These rock! but! the only problem with them is no other TV in the world has blacks like it... So what ever you grade on this you will not see the same on any other monitor you view it on.

The only monitor close to these are the new LED MAC screens.

[Marc Wielage]

The Sony BVM's (shown at NAB) are "allegedly" better than the PVM series. Again, not cheap -- I think they were $17K, last time I checked.

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/video/chann...tors_displays/

[Gunleik Groven]

After ditching a lot of OLED, Plasmas, LCDs and different panels when building 4 new grading suites, the TVLogic 325W ended up as our choice. Also because the price is such that it is replaceable.

I wasn't involved in the process, but we tried pretty much everything and ended up with this and a dolby panel. Price made that decission kind of rational...