Calling ALL Colorist...

[Eki Halkka]

To me this sounds mostly like a color space problem, more than a monitor problem per se. My hunch is that he is color correcting stuff to look good on his monitor, using the full 8 bit 0-255 scale from black to white. Then footage is projected in Rec. 709 or similar, using only the 16-235 broadcast scale portion of those values.

As a result, all the darks below value 16 are full black, everything below mid gray is darker than it should and at the same time, highlights above 235 blow out. Ugly. And using an expensive monitor wouldn't really have helped here at all, unless it was an actual broadcast monitor hooked on a video output that natively uses the 16-235 scale.

In this situation, the easiest solution to get to the right ballpark is simply to color correct as usual, then just before exporting the master, use a simple levels adjustment to lift black to 16 and bring down whites to 235. The result is a file that looks low contrast and desaturated on a computer monitor, but will broadcast and project properly enough (not perfect, but rather passable).

I reserve the right to make wrong guesses of course, the above may or may not be the case ;-)

 

[Adam Eden]

I have this
http://www.tek.com/products/video-test/wfm8000/ but the 8300 model.
A decent waveform/vector make life a lot easier.

Also GAMMUT is a real issue in the digital world and the double diamond display on the Tektronix is a godsend. Especially when performing a primary balance and setting white points.
I mainly work in the REC709 world as i primarily make TV commercials, TV programming and music videos.

But i always get my main monitor calibrated at least twice a year from a proper technician with a minolta scope. And i am currently getting my davinci sorted from the lads at FILMLIGHT. They are going to build me some luts for my gear so my DCPS are correct since they have a wider GAMMUT.

I have spent a lot of money on gear like, waveforms, audio loudness monitors, grade 1 reference monitors over the years. And really to call yourself a proper ONLINE facility, you need all of this gear.
If you want to become a colourist / online/ finisher/ etc. You need the proper gear otherwise what looks good on your gear, won't look good on most.

If you wish to have a go at being a colourist, by all means have a go, but make sure you can go somewhere with your master to be checked at a proper facility. I do this for a lot of people and I don't charge much for this service.

The most common mistake i see is people working in YUV colour space instead of RGB. This can have a drastic impact on how your end result looks. Editing systems such as AVID are native YUV codecs. and up until very recently (V6) the only RGB option was 4:4:4 uncompressed.

If you are staying in AVID then YUV is fine as HDCAM, DIGI beta and most other formats are YUV. Its when you get to DPX, HDCAM SR and other formats like JPEG2000, thats RGB. A lot of people work in Avid DNX 185x or similar and export vision to After FX or other software for FX work, etc and commonly export as YUV and not RGB. So when the vision lands in the 3rd party software, the vision goes milky as the video levels have been expanded. People then render that and import it into the AVID as YUV and the levels change again.

The biggest thing to remember is you always export from your editor (AVID ETC) as RGB and always import as RGB and you won't get any gamma shifts or weird stuff happening. A lot of the time when people export from REC 709 from the AVID they haven't checked this and will export as YUV and the pictures look terrible in the cinema as there are a lot of people using clipster to make a DCP ( And it does a really good job of that) and they don't check what goes into the box and they just hit a button and give you your encoded DCP.

I am always happy to share my knowledge as I have been in the industry for 20years now and I have recently had to relearn the DCP side of things up until recently I mastered to HDCAM SR for features and TV spots going to the cinema.

To be honest, I can't see the difference between my HDCAM SR (RGB 4:4:4) tapes being converted and upressed to 2k compared to sending a 2k DPX sequence from DaVInci into CLIPSTER.

 

[jake blackstone]

And i am currently getting my davinci sorted from the lads at FILMLIGHT. They are going to build me some luts for my gear so my DCPS are correct since they have a wider GAMMUT.

Are you saying, that you're using Truelight with Resolve? If yes, why?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

You seem to be getting hung up on numbers. The numbers are only important when you're exceeding their limits. What's important is the image, which is why a properly set up monitor is so critical. Some images might look great with a maximum luminance value of only about 50 units. Other images might look very flat under those conditions. It all depends on the content, the photography, the overall image contrast, and the mood you're trying to set.

Thanks!

 

[Adam Eden]

I am hiring Filmlights services using Truelight and the trulight probe.

My office is within 1 kilometre from E FILM and DELUXE in Sydney and I will be using their DCP services so my gear needs to line up and work with their gear. This is for 2k stuff only and not for REC709 stuff as my REC709 stuff is fine.

I am only looking at DCP at this stage, but since i do a lot of independent stuff, finishing on film is trendy again and my customers do not want to finish at my studio at REC709 to then go to a film print from E FILM/ DELUXE.

I am getting Filmlight to make proper display luts so I can use my Sony BVM and also i am buying a grading plasma (don't know which one yet) that is compatible with display luts for the P3 colour space

 

[jake blackstone]

I am hiring Filmlights services using Truelight and the trulight probe.

My office is within 1 kilometre from E FILM and DELUXE in Sydney and I will be using their DCP services so my gear needs to line up and work with their gear. This is for 2k stuff only and not for REC709 stuff as my REC709 stuff is fine.

I am only looking at DCP at this stage, but since i do a lot of independent stuff, finishing on film is trendy again and my customers do not want to finish at my studio at REC709 to then go to a film print from E FILM/ DELUXE.

I am getting Filmlight to make proper display luts so I can use my Sony BVM and also i am buying a grading plasma (don't know which one yet) that is compatible with display luts for the P3 colour space

Do you think using the Truelight is the most economical or the only practical way to achieve this goal? Are you planning to purchase the Truelight hardware along with the probe? From your answer, it seems, that you're planning to use plasma monitor for P3 and film finish. Is that right?

 

[Lou Cann]

You seem to be getting hung up on numbers. The numbers are only important when you're exceeding their limits. What's important is the image, which is why a properly set up monitor is so critical. QUOTE]

Ok, I understand that, however, I thought there was an old saying that goes...."when in doubt, listen to your scopes"
In other words, when I am doubting that my monitor is not calibrated correctly, I look at the Parade to see my luma levels.
And if my monitor is showing an image that is NOT blown out, and my Parade shows that it's REDLINING, I lower the levels so that it's in range.

Is this something you would advise or not??

 

[Scott Crawley]

That may be prudent, but as in your mirror example it depends upon the image. If it's not conveying important information it may be OK to blow out the mirror. You need to know when to defer to the production team.

Your head may be spinning now as you are getting hit from both sides, but for now stay focused on three things; understand your signal path, get your monitor properly profiled, and learn what you can about colorspace. You have to start with a basic foundation to work from. Without it nothing else matters. The more subjective bits will come after. That would be my recommendation.

Ok, I understand that, however, I thought there was an old saying that goes...."when in doubt, listen to your scopes"
In other words, when I am doubting that my monitor is not calibrated correctly, I look at the Parade to see my luma levels.
And if my monitor is showing an image that is NOT blown out, and my Parade shows that it's REDLINING, I lower the levels so that it's in range.

Is this something you would advise or not??

I don't know if this is a separate example, or if this is related to your original question, but the two seem to be at odds. Are you seeing an acceptable contrast and outputting a low con image, or is your signal clipped but looks OK?

 

[Adam Eden]

I am hiring Filmlights services align my monitors and make display luts using their Truelight system. I am not purchasing the Truelight system, I am simply paying them a yearly contract to align my gear.

I currently own a Sony 24 inch BVM which is dual link, and that monitor can be used for P3, but it is glass so when it dies i am stuffed. So the solution for me is the new Sony BVM OLED for my main monitor and probably the new panasonic professional 42 inch that also has HDSDI and 3g. I upgraded my waveform to the new Tektronix 8300 that also has 3g and can handle 2k. So i wish to film finish using both monitors in P3 space.

When you put things in proportion like a waveform for $30k, grade 1 broadcast monitor for $35K, and a plasma or whatever for $20K. Paying someone to manage your colour space for a few thousand a year is like having an insurance policy. There are a people that own the Truelight system that will come to your studio and set your gear up for a nominal fee. Steve Shaw also has a great system, but for me i need to have someone turn up to my studio and fix things. I don't have time to set things up myself anymore.

But re the plasma, I don't have the space for a 2k projector but the new model Pansonic plasma i saw at the Australian SMPTE show looked pretty good as designed for grading. I always have 2 monitors in my main grading suite, currently the Sony BVM and a 50inch Sony Bravia thats about 2 years old. The sony Bravia gets fed YUV ANALOGUE HD component via a HDSDI to component converter box. So when i am grading REC709 everything is fine as this monitor is regularly calibrated using a minolta probe.

The problem is that when I am grading 4:4:4 RGB, obviously this monitor doesn't work and i only have my SONY 24 inch BVM to use.

 

[jake blackstone]

I am hiring Filmlights services align my monitors and make display luts using their Truelight system. I am not purchasing the Truelight system, I am simply paying them a yearly contract to align my gear.

I currently own a Sony 24 inch BVM which is dual link, and that monitor can be used for P3, but it is glass so when it dies i am stuffed. So the solution for me is the new Sony BVM OLED for my main monitor and probably the new panasonic professional 42 inch that also has HDSDI and 3g. I upgraded my waveform to the new Tektronix 8300 that also has 3g and can handle 2k. So i wish to film finish using both monitors in P3 space.

When you put things in proportion like a waveform for $30k, grade 1 broadcast monitor for $35K, and a plasma or whatever for $20K. Paying someone to manage your colour space for a few thousand a year is like having an insurance policy. There are a people that own the Truelight system that will come to your studio and set your gear up for a nominal fee. Steve Shaw also has a great system, but for me i need to have someone turn up to my studio and fix things. I don't have time to set things up myself anymore.

But re the plasma, I don't have the space for a 2k projector but the new model Pansonic plasma i saw at the Australian SMPTE show looked pretty good as designed for grading. I always have 2 monitors in my main grading suite, currently the Sony BVM and a 50inch Sony Bravia thats about 2 years old. The sony Bravia gets fed YUV ANALOGUE HD component via a HDSDI to component converter box. So when i am grading REC709 everything is fine as this monitor is regularly calibrated using a minolta probe.

The problem is that when I am grading 4:4:4 RGB, obviously this monitor doesn't work and i only have my SONY 24 inch BVM to use.

FilmLight is a great company and Truelight is used extensively throughout the industry. Normally though, Truelight is designed to work with their other product- Baselight. That is not to say, that Truelight is not widely used, as a stand alone product and very successfully, I might add.
So, now that I have a bit more info, I have a couple more observations.
How often does your FilmLight contract stipulates, that they will perform the routine monitor calibration? Frankly, any CRT monitor alignment, with frequency anything less, than once a week is a waste of money. CRT monitors well known for a drift. A monitor with an OLD CRT needs to be calibrated every day, usually in the morning (with experience, it usually takes just a few minutes). So, once FilmLight manages to calibrate, profile and create display LUTs for both your CRT and plasma monitors, within a week or probably sooner, your very expensive alignment will drift, a LOT. So, there is no way around the need to do a routine alignment by someone in your facility on a regular basis. That is why I had asked about the hardware purchase. You will need a some kind of probe and a software to do that. I doubt very much FilmLight will be performing it for you that often.
Second, without Truelight hardware you will need another hardware in order to be able to display two independently profiled monitors with two separate display LUTs. Resolve can display only one display LUT at a time. How are you going to use both CRT and Plasma at the same time, as you're planning to do? You'll need another hardware LUT box, sitting between one of your monitors and Resolve's output.
You're obviously understand the importance of your monitors being properly aligned. Having your alignment stay current is of no less importance, just like keeping your insurance current

 

[Adam Eden]

my Sony monitor can load various luts, and so will the Plasma that I am looking at buying.

 

[jake blackstone]

my Sony monitor can load various luts, and so will the Plasma that I am looking at buying.

3D LUTs? What types are they? Does Truelight supports their creation?
But all that LUT business still doesn't explain the important calibration stuff

 

[Adam Eden]

Jake... Let it go. My monitors dont need calibrating every week, and yes my monitors support 3d luts and Film light are looking after everything.

I am happy.

My stuff looks great in the cinemas and on TV.

 

[jake blackstone]

Jake... Let it go. My monitors dont need calibrating every week, and yes my monitors support 3d luts and Film light are looking after everything.

I am happy.

My stuff looks great in the cinemas and on TV.

Just trying to help other CRT monitor users, who needs to understand the importance of frequent and regular monitor calibrations. But if you happy with your arrangement, great...

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Ok, Although I get that, I still am confused.
For Example, If there was an image of a room with a mirror in it and 90 % of the RGB values were 160, 161, 155 (8 bit)
But there was one little reflection on the mirror that had values 255,255,255. So the overall Parade would show a spike in that one area.

My reaction would be, to raise the luma values of 160, 161,155 to a higher value, say 220, 221, 205 Now that would mean the mirror reflection would have clipped , but the overall scene would be in legal values & overall a brighter image.

Is this acceptable to do that?

When I read a scope (Parade), I check to see just "What" areas are clipping. If the parade gets red lined because of a tiny area that doesn't effect the overall image, I ignore it. (as long as it's tiny or doesn't effect the look)

Again, do you guys do that too?

I think everyone is right in that you are getting to hung up on the numbers. Worse yet, I think its the wrong numbers.

You shouldn't be looking at 8 bit RGB values, its a pointless memory exercise that verges on archaic. As cameras advance you will be presented with widely variant numbers. Would you know what to do if presented with an RGB value of 63490, 18271, 1024 ?

Scopes are actually calibrated in % or IRE units. Stick to the those units.

Now, its been mentioned but you are perceiving RGB space incorrectly. The RGB scale is supposed to be 16-235 ... and whatever is at 235 in a composite trace is supposed to be maximum brightness ... while 16 is minimum brightness.

You are definitely right about trusting the scopes. Before you can trust them you have to learn to use them appropriately.

So ... playing with your numbers ... that irrelevant bit of brightness at 110 IRE (255,255,255 in 8 bit RGB) should be brought down to 100IRE (235,235,235 8b RGB). You can use curves to bring your mid tones (which is what values in the 160's are) up towards 215 or so. You'll then probably have to push your shadows back down to 7.5%IRE (16,16,16) for NTSC USA broadcast. This will result in the common "S curve" in your curves control.

Coming back to your example ... what you should be doing is manipulating the curves directly in Color or Resolve. A lot of colorists don't work this way, but when I see an image that needs the type of work you describe, that's where I turn first.

Note I said, an image that needs the type of work you describe. There are a lot of images that are dark ... and they are shot that way intentionally. The worst thing you can do is "fix" the contrast range by expanding it as you describe.

I remember a sequence of shots I took for a Citrix commercial set in the Enterprise Sickbay Set. As the commercial opened a crew man, in a red shirt of course, tumbled off of a biobed onto the floor into darkness, then we heard "cut" and "house lights" were brought up revealing crew and film gear to the camera. As the set was cleared, some actors playing production crew started discussing some obscure Star Trek trivia for continuity. (It was a self parody we shot as an in show promotional for Star Trek Phase 2)

So, imagine my surprise when the editor brightened the start of that take, very carefully key framing his correction to eliminate the lighting change! If anything, I felt there was too much light in the dark portions, and it needed to be crushed a little in post ... not brightened!

You've got to understand what the show is about, and why maybe it should be a dark scene or a low contrast scene, and that definitely has to have priority over any numbers.

 

[joshua csehak]

For most projects you should make sure all your black details are above 0 IRE and all your highlight detail is under 100 IRE on the parade scopes.

By definition, anything you put below 0IRE is "superblack" and has no detail - although your monitoring set up may show such detail. Anything above 100IRE is "superwhite" and therefore should have no detail.

To me this sounds mostly like a color space problem, more than a monitor problem per se. My hunch is that he is color correcting stuff to look good on his monitor, using the full 8 bit 0-255 scale from black to white. Then footage is projected in Rec. 709 or similar, using only the 16-235 broadcast scale portion of those values.

As a result, all the darks below value 16 are full black, everything below mid gray is darker than it should and at the same time, highlights above 235 blow out. Ugly. And using an expensive monitor wouldn't really have helped here at all, unless it was an actual broadcast monitor hooked on a video output that natively uses the 16-235 scale.

In this situation, the easiest solution to get to the right ballpark is simply to color correct as usual, then just before exporting the master, use a simple levels adjustment to lift black to 16 and bring down whites to 235. The result is a file that looks low contrast and desaturated on a computer monitor, but will broadcast and project properly enough (not perfect, but rather passable).

Wouldn't that be the opposite problem, though? If he's crushing his blacks and blowing out his whites, and the scopes verify that, it should seem TOO contrasty in the broadcast world, right? But his problem is that it's dark and muddy.

My other post (dude, not cool -- and confusing -- that you started a new thread after the mods specifically moved yours):

I know money is an issue, but you might want to consider a cheap solution for monitoring the signal in YUV (or RGB) - something like the Blackmagic card (there are various options - but one is a few hundred dollars). This would send the image via a display buffer to an HDMI monitor - (Intensity cards range). If you get one you could even downconvert output to SD and probably pick up an old Sony BVM/PVM (CRT grading monitors from the old days - and then you'd start to see all of the points everyone has been bringing up.

+1. I got a used PVM from a local rental house for $90. With the Blackmagic Intensity Pro under $200, that's accurate color for <$300.

I'd like to see a screenshot of the scopes (specifically, the RGB parade) for those two frames you have the jpg of.

(Also, can't you just post a jpg here? Why the rar?)

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Wouldn't that be the opposite problem, though? If he's crushing his blacks and blowing out his whites, and the scopes verify that, it should seem TOO contrasty in the broadcast world, right? But his problem is that it's dark and muddy.

I wasn't addressing his original post, but rather the details he posted later describing his process. You are right, it should clip and crush ... but it might not.

Some systems will take your full scale image and just squeeze it into the smaller colorspace. It takes surprisingly little of this to truly screw up your image.

Depending on the grade, this can make things look muddy/low contrast and crushed at once.

Also it occurs to me, if you are grading in 709 and then have an automatic translation for 601 you can end up with a similar mess. So for example a BluRay played out to an SD projector with a dumb downscale might still be sending 709 colors and a 601 device will probably display the range correctly, but because there is a different gamma ...

Finally ... there could be an output error ... I think its unlikely that a lin2log node got dropped in at the end ... but who knows.

And that's what everyone is harping around ... we can't really know. Too many unknowns, both in the processes described, the delivery and display ... the setup (was the system being used using the right gamma for its display?)

In the end, perhaps all our well meaning efforts are for naught. Perhaps we are picking out too many unrelated details.

I mean, it would suck if our advice led to Lou delivering a masterful grade, but he's still outputting with a lin2log node at the end, cause we didn't mention it, and thus creating mud.

 

[PatrickFaith]

get a really good graphics card, get an NEC monitor, calibrate with spectraview, nail your grades..
done deal

I was looking at[h=1]"NEC MultiSync PA271W-BK-SV 27" Widescreen LCD Monitor with SpectraViewII Color Calibration Solution"[/h]for daily (and me learning) color correction. Then eventually sending everything to a "real" place for final/4k color correction. This make sense?

 

[Elsie N]

Using charts developed for video display on a computer monitor will not work. For one thing, the gamma is different ...

...

Very constructive post. Copied and pasted the entire post into my notes.

 

[Elsie N]

T...

In this situation, the easiest solution to get to the right ballpark is simply to color correct as usual, then just before exporting the master, use a simple levels adjustment to lift black to 16 and bring down whites to 235. The result is a file that looks low contrast and desaturated on a computer monitor, but will broadcast and project properly enough (not perfect, but rather passable).

I reserve the right to make wrong guesses of course, the above may or may not be the case ;-)

Looks like a quick and dirty solution if all else fails. Copied into my notes.