Color correction suite set up questions - monitor or plasma or both? Pci card?

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

Hi,

I have done some amount of colour correction and I am quite familiar with resolve, but I want to step up my game.
I have mostly been delivering my stuff on the web, but seems like that will change. On the web, my calibrated apple cinema 30" have been ok.

My edit and colour correction suite as it is now:

Mac pro 2012
12 core 2,66
40 gigs of memory
ssd os disk and internal raid 0
flashed nvidia 680 4 gigs of videomemry
2 x 30 apple cinema display (one of them are burned out, but still works great as a workhorse for other stuff I am doing simultaneously).

I have about 5000 use to use on a monitor or plasma and a card to run them.
I have been checking out fsi and been looking at the 24 and 32 inch monitors. The 50 is overkill and to expensive for me at the moment.
I have a 32 inch plasma tv I can hang on my wall over the apple displays from before - could be used as a Client monitor?
Should I buy a real monitor and have it placed beside my to apple displays and have a plasma hanging over?

Any recommendations? Within my budget?

I mostly grade material from my red epic.

I am thankful for every tips.

Eirik

 

[Marc Wielage]

There are quite a few discussions on color-correction room setups on the LiftGammaGain Forum. I believe Alexis Van Hurkman also covers some of this in the introductory chapters of his book Color Correction Handbook.

The key is whether the monitor is going to be easy to calibrate, and what kind of viewing LUT will be involved. The viewing conditions of the room are also a factor, like how well you can control the lighting, if you want to have a 65D backlight behind the monitor, and so on.

FSI makes fantastic monitors and I'd recommend their 10-bit models. Some people go for the 2-monitor approach, but I'm not a fan of that myself. I prefer just having a single monitor in the room. I'm actually used to a broadcast Panasonic plasma for TV correction, and I think they can work provided you're aware of their limitations.

 

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

Thank you for your response. I will check out the lift gamma forum, and also the handbook.

Ok. I will look more into FSI, you are not the first one that recommends it to me. I have a plasma as I mentioned, I will hook it up as well and check out how it works for TV.

 

[Eric Bowen]

I definitely recommend FSI if you have the budget. Their firmware is excellent and they update firmware for issues when required. The built in receiver makes switching input options convenient when the workflow requires. The bolor space profiles and calibration are excellent.

 

[Mike Nagel]

Hi Eirik,

if you are looking for color accurate performance from your screens, then I would suggest Pro grade monitors as your primary grading screen.

These are displays made by Eizo, FSI, TVLogic, Penta etc (and it pretty much goes in that order of built-quality and price etc). Here are a few reasons that qualify these screens as "Pro" screens...

1) All of these screens have internal LUT memory, so you can calibrate the screen with a 3D LUT that is stored internally (so you don't need an external LUT box). I highly recommend Lightspace as the 3D LUT calibration solution, by far the best solution.

2) the hardware is superior, as in less LCD backlight contamination, better viewing angles, screen uniformity etc

3) some of these screens have Pro inputs such as SDI etc

4) most of these screens process internally @ 16-bit (when a LUT is active and processed) and output 10-bit or higher (you def want a screen with 10-bit or higher)

There are differences between the manufacturers I mentioned above (and differences between the models from each manufacturer), but all of these are better than the <= US$1K screens which don't have internal LUTs or just 1D LUT memory... if you get the very cheapest Eizo/FSI then you should check exactly what specifications it has. You def want a 10-bit capable screen.

If you want to save money on your primary screen, you could opt to buy a "good" screen (--> i.e. with good hardware) that does not have internal LUT capability, such as the HP DreamColor and then use a 3D calibration LUT within Resolve to output a specific color calibrated image from Resolve to your screen - again you can use Lightspace for this.

Another option for primary grading in Rec 709 is the eeColor LUT box. This box supports 65^3 LUTs (with 274,625 correction points), up to 10-bit output via HDMI and is by far the best and cheapest solution for color accurate, 1080p monitoring using HDMI. Very popular box in Home Theater.

There are folks who use the eeColor box in combination with the HP DreamColor, which is a 10-bit display that accepts 10-bit RGB via HDMI which the eeColor can deliver. That setup is a very affordable way to get an accurate primary gradings screen in 10-bit, 65^3 LUT calibrated, Rec 709/sRGB. The HP DC will not have the best viewing angles etc, but that is a very good budget setup.

As for your secondary client monitor in Rec 709, u can keep the Plasma and again I would calibrate with a 3D LUT using the eeColor 3D LUT box.

Naturally, the image will look different on the Plasma compared to your LCD grading screen (different display technologies) but if both screens are calibrated properly, the image will be stunning.

- M