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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Post your 2k Monitor Specs here.

till there are very few choices in 2k monitors that are suitable for cc and affordable for a small post house. 1080p is more viable but a good one for cc is going to cost at least $5k and I would say closer to $8k for a good dual link hd-sdi. Take a look at tv logic.
 
A true grading monitor is $35-50k, but for general editing a $4-8k monitor is sufficient. None are 2k, 1080 is the standard...but look at:
ecinema
Sony
CineTal
JVC
TV Logic
 
problem with these lower end lcds is they have trouble with giving you true blacks not to mention they are 8 bit. The ones that start to approach CRT are very expensive. Maybe someone will make a grading monitor that falls into the RED pricing scheme but so far there is nothing on the horizon.
 
how about CRTs then

how about CRTs then

Hi - as most newer monitors with 2k (or I guess HD if necessary) resolution and 4:4:4 color cost quite a pretty penny can one recommend a good used crt. I bought a pair of 22" lacie monitors used for 2D photoshop/illustrator work for $500 a couple of years ago. Real estate is not much of an issue so size does not matter for me. Any suggestions ?

thank you in advance - it is a real pleasure to be able to depend on such an informed and open community of professionals - I hope someday I can contribute in kind - around the end of july I will be getting my own camera, the wait as many of you can remember is excruciating

cheers
 
Cragislist for Monitors

Cragislist for Monitors

lonesillver said:
Hi - as most newer monitors with 2k (or I guess HD if necessary) resolution and 4:4:4 color cost quite a pretty penny can one recommend a good used crt. I bought a pair of 22" lacie monitors used for 2D photoshop/illustrator work for $500 a couple of years ago. Real estate is not much of an issue so size does not matter for me. Any suggestions ?

thank you in advance - it is a real pleasure to be able to depend on such an informed and open community of professionals - I hope someday I can contribute in kind - around the end of july I will be getting my own camera, the wait as many of you can remember is excruciating

cheers
Click to expand...

I have a LaCie electron22blueIII I got from CraigsList.org for about $75, it does 2048x1536, if you had a video board that does 2048x1556 it would probably do that as well. I like it because I change video modes for proxy frame playback full screen, and can adjust the aspect ratio for each video mode to use all the pixels.

I prefer CRT to LCT for grading since when you move your head around in LCD monitors the color changes, quite a bit on some like +/- 5 printer lights!

Many profesional places list stuff on CraigsList.org so you can pick up good equipment from time to time...
 
digitalfx said:
the ecinema DX looked very nice...closest I've seen to a CRT. They are handmade though so the wait is long to get one.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing the price tag is over $25K for the DPX series wch are being touted as CRT replacements? For a company that specializes in finishing, a high grade monitor is part of the business plan. For everyone else, those numbers will seem scary.

The challenge is that many smaller shops are going to want to do their own finishing, so unless there are real numbers in the budget, it's probably going to be a compromised solution. I feel my current setup is a compromise. I use the LCD via HD-SDI and HDLink as my detail and focus checker and my CRT Broadcast monitor for color. Not exactly an ideal scenario. But I honestly don't believe you are going to find an LCD solution for under $10K that even comes close to approaching the black levels of a CRT. TV Logic uses ND panels to place over your screen to get the black levels closer and overall their monitors look pretty good, but nothing I've seen in this price range has looked as good as a CRT.

So, what is the solution for small post houses to actually see all of their 10-bit 4:4:4 1080P glory after scaling down their 4K RED footage? This is a big issue as how can you know what you're really looking at if you have a lot of compromises in the chain. How can you assess the true pixel for pixel detail and color of your footage if you are playing back on an 8 bit display? Oh, and one other thing - how do you maintain precise control over your gamma moving between various applications without running into quicktime quirks along the way (hoping Glue Tools helps here).

There are a number of problems that small shops face in maintaining image accuracy from point of capture through the finishing process. That's why the finishing houses are in business because they have the tools to do the work correctly. It can be a very large investment, one that I think will be very difficult for smaller studios to make until prices drop for these tools. I'm a small shop, so I sympathize with the other small shop owners on this one. But these challenges do exist, and they require money.

By the way, I'd love to be wrong on this. If there are solutions that I've just overlooked, please let me know because I will get in line for sure.
 
Room lights and tape over the buttons

Room lights and tape over the buttons

stevesherrick said:
There are a number of problems that small shops face in maintaining image accuracy from point of capture through the finishing process.
Click to expand...

For grading and general consistency, I would recomend painting all the windows in rooms used black, and locking the dimmer controls on the room lights. Also the room lights should be gel-ed to Xenon color K.

It is also important to lock the monitor controlls, and tape over them to keep people from changing the settings once you get a image that predicts the outcome. I was having some video edited a while back and the editor noticed the hue was off, rather than adjusting the video signal, he adjusted HIS monitor! He also kept fiddling with the audio monitor level, so I could never tell how loud anything was on the finished track!

If you need to have a monitor you can adjust, have two monitors, one locked and one that can be adjusted. With the audio monitor, have a switch so you can go from a locked volume, to an adjustable control. That way you get used to the look and volume that are calibrated and can instantly tell if the source is off balance.

Since the brightness and color of the room lights affects the apparent look of the image, it is best to have the room lights locked and keep the door shut and windows blacked out.

If someone goofs with the buttons on the monitor and does not tell anyone, your client, and yourself, could get a surprise when the film print comes back from the lab. By Brother is always fiddling with menus in devices for no reason, it drives me nuts, just leave things alone! Putting a lock on the door to the grading room might not be going too far.
 
Agreed, wall color, lighting, etc are all important factors, as is making sure no one fiddles with things unless it is overseen by someone who is in charge of making adjustments. Even once you get this part of the equation down, you still have to have a monitoring solution that gives you an accurate image (I realize accurate can be subjective). This means that image integrity is maintained from the point of capture (or importing if using RED) through the editing stage (if this will be your final footage), and into the finishing stage (color correction/mastering). You'll need clean signal path from your card's output, so if you have patch bays, boosters, etc in your path, they need to be of high quality. And finally, when it reaches your display and you are making important creative decisions in terms of luminance and color you want to have confidence these changes reflect reality and not the reality of the way the monitor was incorrectly set up or the perhaps the reality based on the limitations of the monitor.

Those are the challenges I see for people wanting to finish at a high level using low end gear.
 
Experence

Experence

stevesherrick said:
Agreed, wall color, lighting, etc are all important factors, as is making sure no one fiddles with things unless it is overseen by someone who is in charge of making adjustments. Even once you get this part of the equation down, you still have to have a monitoring solution that gives you an accurate image (I realize accurate can be subjective). This means that image integrity is maintained from the point of capture (or importing if using RED) through the editing stage (if this will be your final footage), and into the finishing stage (color correction/mastering). You'll need clean signal path from your card's output, so if you have patch bays, boosters, etc in your path, they need to be of high quality. And finally, when it reaches your display and you are making important creative decisions in terms of luminance and color you want to have confidence these changes reflect reality and not the reality of the way the monitor was incorrectly set up or the perhaps the reality based on the limitations of the monitor.

Those are the challenges I see for people wanting to finish at a high level using low end gear.
Click to expand...

All true...

But reading your reply I see a bigger problem, lack of Experence with the "system". Working with film, nothing ever looks the same from one generation to the next, so you cannot judge the look of the 4th generation release print from the 2nd generation work print unless you have experence and can guess in your mind's eye what the end result might look like.

If people think they can look at a monitor and think that that is what a film print will look like from a lab they are not going to get what they want. One has to shoot, edit, grade, and do a full film out for a variety of lighting types before one can get a feel for how things will drift and look in the end.

It is best to do tests and carry through the whole chain of processes to the end(s) and tune the system and your eye before you can predict where the result will go. Although many companies may claim to have "fool proof" and "calibrated" solutions that cost $$$, just having someone who knows what they are doing and has experence seeing the outcome could be worth more than a lot of new equipment in the hands of someone who has not developed a feel for the process to its end point.
 
I'm not doing film outs. I'm talking about HD finishes which is what a lot of small post houses are dealing with.
 
Double compression artifacts

Double compression artifacts

stevesherrick said:
I'm not doing film outs. I'm talking about HD finishes which is what a lot of small post houses are dealing with.
Click to expand...

Then you will have to deal with "Double compression artifacts", actually tripple since the camera is compressed.

Cable companies seem to be re-compressing HD for broadcast, so your monitor of the final compression will not predict what the viewer will see, the image will look too sharp or clean since the re-compressed version will get mucked up in various ways, so experence with the full system would still be needed to guess what the end result will look like, and since it is going to any old TV set rather than a fixed thing like film, the variables in the final look are even greater. I would use more than one monitor and try to guess how much worse it will look when re-compressed later...
 
I hear what you're saying. But just as in sound mixing you have a high quality reference monitor and then a pair to simulate tv if not a tv itself. I'm not quite sure I'm following you in regards to the monitoring. Yes you learn the monitor and can predict some things but the higher quality you start with the easier it is to predict.
 
www.DANCAD3D.com said:
Then you will have to deal with "Double compression artifacts", actually tripple since the camera is compressed.

Cable companies seem to be re-compressing HD for broadcast, so your monitor of the final compression will not predict what the viewer will see, the image will look too sharp or clean since the re-compressed version will get mucked up in various ways, so experence with the full system would still be needed to guess what the end result will look like, and since it is going to any old TV set rather than a fixed thing like film, the variables in the final look are even greater. I would use more than one monitor and try to guess how much worse it will look when re-compressed later...
Click to expand...

For SD I have a big old Telefunken TV that I can switch to as a SD monitor to see what it might look like at the end of the chain. I really like it, and usually if I have it looking great on the broadcast monitor (a calibrated JVC CRT), it looks pretty good on the old TV too.

Anyone else do this?
 
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