Color Correction Monitor

2

2MORROW

Member
A while back I saw that someone posted a TV that was around $150 for color correction, but I can't find it through the search. Does anyone remember this? Thanks.
 
Is this TV close enough to a proper monitor? Is it a huge improvement over an LCD computer monitor? What is the best way to calibrate a monitor? Thanks again.
 
No consumer monitor is "close enough" overall. There are many differences, but if you can't afford a high end monitor, most any higher horizontal line count will do. Consumer monitors are chroma and luma pushed, never flat. Their power supplies are usually not stable like a pro monitor is, and they manage detail poorly.
FWIW, Glenn Chan's DVD on color correction shows how to calibrate both consumer and broadcast monitors, and includes some active test patterns to help calibrate the monitors. Not hard, but can take some time the first time around. Needs to be done fairly often on a broadcast monitor, and nearly every day on a consumer monitor. Let the monitor warm for at least 30 minutes before calibrating.
 
Also, no consumer-grade CRT monitor is going to show you the full frame (overscan), so they're not really useful for....well....monitoring :) But if all you want a monitor for is color correction, then one that can be properly calibrated should do the trick.

You can also check out Calibug (link). It's a tool to help you calibrate a monitor when connected to a computer.
 
The Calibug for SD and the newer HD Calibug are da bomb, IMO. I use them on the road all the time.
Vegas has good bars too, but Calibug gives you so much more.
 
The biggest thing to watch out for with consumer monitors is that underexposed images will look ok/good. This is because they are designed to be as bright as possible (at the expense of other things like accurate color, accurate geometry, perfect focus). One such design trade-off is color temperature... white on a consumer CRT TV will appear blue-er/more cyan than what the standard is (D65). LCDs and plasmas are typically close to D65. Room lighting will be sort of near D65 or warmer ("less blue").
For some TV viewers, underexposed footage won't look that great. This is difficult to see on many of the consumer monitors out there.

What you can do is to use the scopes as a reference. The following article has information on how to do this:
http://www.vasst.com/resource.aspx?id=a7a8c403-64dc-420d-97d0-90d2f8de9fc1
Usually you want to peg 100 on the scopes. For night scenes, you really want to be lighting the scene to convey darkness (get the mixed color temperatures and contrast ratios right). Lowering exposure may not be a good way to convey that it's night, since many consumer CRTs will make the exposure look normal.

Hope that helps.
 
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