Settings for Laptop as Monitor

[Rogue Crew]

My Mac has pretty extensive monitor color settings; native gamma, target gamma, white point, etc., and while I was going through these today, it occured to me that I should be able to set these to emulate what you might get with a field monitor. That way, if I ever get around to getting a laptop, I could use it as a poor man's field monitor and at least the color would be right.

If I knew what the settings should be on a "proper" field monitor, would it work for framing, focus and color?

[Scottdvx100]

It would work with framing and focus but true color is unlikely with a LCD on a laptop. It's all a question of degrees but my laptop and desktop LCD can't match my production crt monitor color/contrast wise.

[Barry_Green]

If you're getting a laptop, consider DVRack software and a PC-based laptop. DVRack is worth buying a laptop for alone, and with their field monitor software you CAN get an LCD to correctly match a CRT. It doesn't have a Mac version, nor is one planned, but... it's worth it...

[Rogue Crew]

Yeah Barry, I've been following the threads on DVRack - it's an extremely intersting product. Whoda thunk a software solution?

I've been a Mac owner since 1984, but I'd consider using a PC laptop as well, especially if I thought I could use it for data capture from the DVX and still be able to load the capture to FCP on my desktop Mac. That's the thing I'm not so sure of.

[TC]

I downloaded the trial of DVRack, and to be honest was not that impressed. Maybe I'll download it to my desktop and try it again, maybe I missed something.

Howexer, I especially didn't like the GUI, it looks like one of those cheap pieces of software that tries to look really high end.

[Scottdvx100]

Can you truly get a match between a laptop and a real production monitor with DVRack? (all colors and brightness levels) On the Mac I can get a reasonable close image and with experience you could probably adjust for it just like we do for crt to film.

[Rogue Crew]

I'm hoping that Apple will pick up on the need for something like DVRack and produce it before I'm in the ground. Their other DV Software products seem to be OK. ;D

[Segarza]

Hi!
I tried DVRack on a PIII and it was very very slow, have any of you tried it on a PIV? How does it perform?

[Barry_Green]

I've been playing with it extensively on a P4 2.66ghz system. It performs perfectly. A PIII is likely way out-of-spec, it requires at least a 1.5ghz processor.

As for monitor matching: the thing DV Rack does is change the video, not the monitor. You don't change the monitor at all, you change how the graphics processes the signal coming in and adapts it to fit your existing monitor. I've matched my Panasonic SMPTE-C pro monitor to my 19" CRT computer screen nearly perfectly, and it did a great job on my cheapie $100 LCD 14" monitor as well. As for how well it'll work on a laptop monitor, that probably depends on the type and quality of the laptop's monitor, but the key factor is the WAY DVRack modifies the signal... so theoretically, it should be possible to get a pretty good match on almost any type of monitor.

I'm between laptops now, sent the old PIII-450Mhz away with my kid to college, and buying a new laptop right now specifically for DVRack use. Just trying to sort through all the absurd variations: Centrino, Pentium-M, 1.7ghz = 3.2ghz, all that... I can't make heads or tails of the laptop market! ;)

As for whether the software's impressive or not... the GUI does take some getting used to, it seems somewhat gimmicky to me as well, that it's more concerned with looking like a rack of gear than it is with providing the utmost in functionality. But, eh, so what... you're getting a highly accurate production monitor, a waveform monitor, a vectorscope, an audio monitor, and a digital disk recorder, for $495? Absolutely phenomenal. Compare it to the cost of getting conventional gear: a 9" JVC monitor would be about $700, a waveform/vectorscope's about $1300, and a digital disk recorder with pre-roll and playback is about $1500. DVRack is a steal. The most interesting thing to me about it is that it all fits in a 1" thick laptop computer. Space on my cart is at a premium, and hauling around a 60-lb 14" monitor is not really practical for field use. Having the DVRack software, the DDR, the monitor, the waveform/vectorscope, the audio quality monitor... all in the space and size of a small laptop... it's priceless. Especially if the laptop's already there to run the prompter, and I can run the DVRack DDR in the background (still experimenting with that).

If they hit it so far out of the park in their first version, I can't wait to see what happens with DVRack 2.0!

[cyclone]

It appears that my laptop always displays images a bit dark (about a half of a stop). Is that typical, or does it vary from computer to computer?

[ransom]

Been playing with Windows Movie Maker recently on my laptop as a disk recorder only. Seems to work ok and the files are saved in standard AVI format. This would be the only thing I would use this for though. Best part is it comes with Win XP free.

[Barry_Green]

All computer monitors display footage darker than televisions do. Computer monitors have a different gamma than televisions, and Mac monitors have different gamma than PC monitors, IIRC.