Panasonic BT LH1700W 17' Monitor

[Jeffrey Hamlin]

Hey All...

We have a Panasonic BT LH1700W 17' Monitor and have set it up so that the waveform is displayed along with the video signal. My question is this...the WF does not come with any sort of numeric scale. It is just displayed as a series of horizontal lines. Presumably this represent levels of IRE...but a numeric scale would really help the students grasp the concept a whole lot more.

Also, I assume it has been set up to read the luminance of the video signal??

On both points...there is nothing in the user manual or on the Panasonic site that addresses WF Setup and or display. Does anyone with this monitor have more they could add to this?

Thanks in advance.

JEFF

 

[David Didato]

I have the same monitor, its pretty simple really. The bottom solid line is 0 IRE, middle is 50, top is 100%, with dotted lines at 10% increments. The dotted lines above and below represent "out of broadcast range" >100 or <0.

 

[Birns and Sawyer]

Also you should note that the IRE values on the HDSDI output don't necessarily match the IRE values recorded in the RAW. I know there are sometimes when the IRE on the monitor will tell you that a part of your image is at about 35 IRE but in the RAW file it's actually more like 17IRE.

Just be careful and make sure you test out using the monitor waveform before you make critical exposure choices with it.

 

[Jeffrey Hamlin]

Thanks guys. You would think that Panasonic would have put a little bit more thought into the WF. I will definitely test it out to make sure we are getting an accurate measurment.

Thanks for the help.

JEFF

 

[Matthew Rogers]

Thanks guys. You would think that Panasonic would have put a little bit more thought into the WF. I will definitely test it out to make sure we are getting an accurate measurment.

The issue is not with Panasonic, but with the RED. The problem is that normally you don't monitor the camera in just RAW mode, but either REC709 or REDSPACE. When you do that, it's adjusting the image on the fly, but you are still recording RAW. So the waveform is not monitoring the RAW, but the adjusted image. The HD-SDI is also a quick debayer of the image which isn't perfectly accurate.

Matthew

 

[Jeffrey Hamlin]

Good point Matt. However, I use the monitor with the Panasonic HVX 200 and 500 as well. In all cases, the internal WF of the monitor does not include any sort of numeric scale. So I do believe it is a Pany problem or at least not their best engineering.

 

[MJ KERBER]

You may find that the waveform on the Pany monitors does not match up perfectly to a dedicated waveform monitor. It's a nice reference to have included with a monitor, but I wouldn't treat it as a definitive measurement. Agreed that you should test it out for yourself.

-Michael Jacob Kerber
D.P. / L.A.

 

[Alexander Nikishin]

RED One's false color mode is still the best tool around IMO, "Predator mode" don't lie. =)

 

[BradWright]

Hey All...
Also, I assume it has been set up to read the luminance of the video signal??

On both points...there is nothing in the user manual or on the Panasonic site that addresses WF Setup and or display. Does anyone with this monitor have more they could add to this?

Thanks in advance.

JEFF

The waveform readings you get from the Red will depend on the ISO and color space settings, etc. This is important because the actual RAW recorded file will vary in video levels depending on the setting you use to convert the file. If you apply additional color correction in Red Cine then the waveform won't match what you read on the set.

I tested the Red with the Waveform monitor that I wrote in Veescope Live (http://www.veescope.com). I don't know how accurate the Panasonic waveform is, but using my software it appears that the reading will match the converted video levels.