Calling ALL Colorist...

[Paul Toth]

I suppose the thing that bugs me the most is the people that automatically put the highest peak at 100 and the lowest at 7.5... the other is not understanding where skin tones fall into this on a scope. I've also seen 'professionals' adjust their monitor based the video they are working with... thereby rendering any color calibration ineffective... sigh...

 

[Marc Wielage]

I suppose the thing that bugs me the most is the people that automatically put the highest peak at 100 and the lowest at 7.5... the other is not understanding where skin tones fall into this on a scope. I've also seen 'professionals' adjust their monitor based the video they are working with... thereby rendering any color calibration ineffective... sigh...

7.5? We haven't used black setup in a decade, certainly not with HD.

I think there's nothing wrong with letting a white peak hit 100 (or maybe clipped a hair under that), and blacks at 0 (without being crushed), but the mid-range curve inbetween is really what sets the "character" of the image.

I've never in my life seen somebody screw around with monitor video levels based on the source. LUTs, yeah; monitor controls, no.

 

[Paul Toth]

7.5? We haven't used black setup in a decade, certainly not with HD.

I think there's nothing wrong with letting a white peak hit 100 (or maybe clipped a hair under that), and blacks at 0 (without being crushed), but the mid-range curve inbetween is really what sets the "character" of the image.

I've never in my life seen somebody screw around with monitor video levels based on the source. LUTs, yeah; monitor controls, no.

Yes, 0 in HD (old habits die hard!). And you're right about peaks. My point was that I see all too often people that yank the highest levels to the top and the lowest levels to the bottom regardless of what they should be.

In a broadcast facility where I once worked, the engineers had to disable any color adjustment controls (after they had setup the monitor) so that the 'users' wouldn't adjust the broadcast monitors to their footage.

 

[Marc Wielage]

In a broadcast facility where I once worked, the engineers had to disable any color adjustment controls (after they had setup the monitor) so that the 'users' wouldn't adjust the broadcast monitors to their footage.

Most (but not all) of the old CRT monitors would have small lights come on when the front knobs were out of detent. Unfortunately, everything nowadays is a "soft" control, so you have to actually check out the monitor with bars and other test signals prior to a session these days. But I don't know of anybody who would deliberately tweak a monitor for a specific client.

The trick nowadays is that some monitors (especially projectors) have various color spaces for which they're optimized: for example, P3 (for film-outs), XYZ (for D-Cinema and DCP), and Rec709 (for HD deliverables). All of these look different, and when you combine these with LUTs, things can get screwy very fast if you're not paying attention. LUTs also have a habit of getting updated, and you have to make sure that the LUT you use this week is identical to the one you used with the same project two weeks ago, or a month ago. That's assuming the monitor isn't drifting or changing.

 

[Daniel Frome]

Super old thread, don't know if anyone will see this but I have a relevant question:

I have the Asus PA246Q monitor mentioned earlier. It's a great monitor, calibrates very well for graphics work. Many people have mentioned calibration tools such as the xrite i1, but here's my problem: Aren't all of these calibration tools software-based, meaning that the monitor must be hooked up to the computer? What if you have an AJA card, and the monitor is hooked up to that? How would I go about calibrating to rec709 then? My understanding is that these calibration tools create OS-level profiles. This would mean that hooking the monitor up to a professional video IO device, such as my AJA T-Tap, would result in the loss of that calibration, no? I realize that my monitor isn't going perfectly match rec709, but I'd like to get it as close as possible while it's hooked up to my AJA T-Tap. Any answers are really appreciated!

 

[Steve Shaw]

Hi Daniel, you really need to use a calibration system that has a 'Display Independent Profiling' mode...

This is explained on the Light Illusion website - obviously based around LightSpace CMS.

Calibration is very critical, and as is explained on the website you need to avoid OS based ICC calibration for the 'moving image' industry.

Hope this helps.

Steve