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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 :)

Small TV to test color correction & grading

R

Ryan Lightbourn

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I'm just wondering if anyone has some ideas for a small 19-20" TV to test my grades against. I usually stream from Vimeo to my living room TV, and it can be telling whether or not my contrast and/or color are pushed too far one way or another. I want something for my desk to compare with the NEC I'm grading on to spare the extra hassle.

Any ideas are appreciated...I'm looking for a TV vs. a monitor, so something that will be more comparable to the screens people will be viewing the films on (monitors tend to be a little more washed out and closer to my NEC)
 
EDIT: here's a little more background on what I'm trying to achieve:

My living room TV is an LG soccer mom high contrast, high refresh rate, all that Best Buy jazz TV. My edits tend to look fine on the NEC PA272w, but very slight contrast & color errors show up pretty hard on that thing. Over the next few years I'll be grading many films for VOD services, many of which will be displayed on these newer living room screens.

My wife's kitchen TV which she watches her Kardashians on, a 19" Samsung which is a little older, looks closer to my NEC because it's less contrasty & less saturated.

So I'm basically looking for a new, smaller TV with the kind of contrast ratios / brightness levels that people will be streaming Netflix over in their living rooms.

Am I better off buying a monitor (since it's cheaper), and matching the settings manually to my living room TV? Viewsonic look like they may go heavy on contrast & saturation with their monitors.
 
Hey Ryan,

I'd have a look at this thread: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?117085-Color-Correction-Tech-Worth-it

Quite a lot of good chatter there about this matter.

Suffice to say, there are various things to take into account, including colour management in your chosen application, signal path to the monitor, colour management and calibration of the monitor itself.

Fundamentally though, a living room TV is simply not a good gold standard for broadcast grading (my own living room set crushes blacks shockingly, even after I removed all the crappy factory presets). Only a monitor which displays the full Rec709 colour space really shows you what you're doing to your footage.

This is what I got for my home suite: http://www.flandersscientific.com/index/cm171.php

Checked out your site by the way, beautiful stuff!
 
Ryan Lightbourn said:
Am I better off buying a monitor (since it's cheaper), and matching the settings manually to my living room TV? Viewsonic look like they may go heavy on contrast & saturation with their monitors.
Click to expand...
The opposite: calibrate your living room TV to a known standard like Rec709. You're going to wind up chasing your tail, because if you go out and buy 10 different monitors from 10 different consumer manufacturers, you're going to see 10 different looks. Especially on the internet.

Just make it look reasonable in Rec709, and it should wind up OK in sRGB space.
 
Ryan Lightbourn said:
Am I better off buying a monitor (since it's cheaper), and matching the settings manually to my living room TV? Viewsonic look like they may go heavy on contrast & saturation with their monitors.
Click to expand...

Every non-calibrated display drifts off in some direction, either in gamma, color or saturation, or a combination, additionally offset in cheaper displays and through additional TV settings individually chosen by the user.

Standards serve as a middle ground. I suggest following Marc's advice.
 
Thanks for all of the tips!

I'm not a professional colorist by any means, but when I get a little more serious Will's link looks like the perfect purchase for my needs.

I was only really looking for something under $300 to match the contrast my living room TV has. I'll look at the edit on that, something looks crushed to an extreme (considering most blacks look crushed to a certain extent on it either way), then I go back to my desk and realize that I may have pushed a little too far on the NEC monitor as well. I bought a small, overly-contrasty HP monitor which does the trick for now.
 
Ryan Lightbourn said:
Thanks for all of the tips!

I'm not a professional colorist by any means, but when I get a little more serious Will's link looks like the perfect purchase for my needs.

I was only really looking for something under $300 to match the contrast my living room TV has. I'll look at the edit on that, something looks crushed to an extreme (considering most blacks look crushed to a certain extent on it either way), then I go back to my desk and realize that I may have pushed a little too far on the NEC monitor as well. I bought a small, overly-contrasty HP monitor which does the trick for now.
Click to expand...

Cheers Ryan.

I would definitely do what Marc says though too, and calibrate to a known standard (Rec709 being the obvious one).
 
Ryan Lightbourn said:
I'll look at the edit on that, something looks crushed to an extreme (considering most blacks look crushed to a certain extent on it either way), then I go back to my desk and realize that I may have pushed a little too far on the NEC monitor as well. I bought a small, overly-contrasty HP monitor which does the trick for now.
Click to expand...
What if all the monitors are lying to you? What if the image is neither pushed too far nor far enough? Contrast is a major issue, sometimes even with professional monitors. Read this short essay on the problem of monitor contrast:

http://www.chromapure.com/colorscience-contrast.asp

Spectracal has a short piece on why you should calibrate your monitors in the first place (including cheap consumer monitors), and what happens if you wind up using a display skewed in the wrong direction:

http://studio.spectracal.com/why-calibrate-video

It's a sobering piece, and I think it gets to the facts in a very easily-understood way.
 
Timo Teravainen said:
Don't get the Spyder.. the X-rite i1 Display Pro is ok, and if you can, get the OEM version. It will work with Calman AND Light Space, which is the superior calibration software. You can order one from Light Illusion. http://www.lightillusion.com/i1_display_pro.html
Click to expand...

Yep! But a spectroradiometre is also important for Light Space. Ryan I'd again point you to the thread I linked to before, where Marc gave a good breakdown.

Problem here of course is that the hardware and software for calibration then become more money than you've spent on the monitor....
 
Will Steer said:
Problem here of course is that the hardware and software for calibration then become more money than you've spent on the monitor....
Click to expand...
This is very true. Or... you could hire a service in your area to calibrate the monitor, and not necessarily have to spend the money for the gear. Imaging Science has authorized dealers around North America in hundreds of cities:

https://www.imagingscience.com

Steve Shaw's LightSpace forum has many members, and I'd bet one of them could provide calibration services for a reasonable fee:

http://www.lightillusion.com/forums/
 
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