Setting up LCD monitor

D

Drew Harty

Member
Hello,

Is there a better way to set up an LCD monitor for editing with FCP than using Apple's standard monitor calibraton? And would a monitor like Eizo's Color Edge CE210W that offers individual control of R,G,B gamma offer some advantages over Apple's Cinema Displays? Is there any software that can translate ICC monitor profiles for use with FCP?

Thanks,

Drew Harty
 
Supercal:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12756

I've been using this for the last 4 or 5 years to set up my Mac monitors for Shake compositing, both CRT's and LCD's

Provides seperate RGB tracking with as many calibrating points as you want up and down the scale, aswell as colour balance and gamma settings. I run all my Mac monitors at gamma 2.2 rather than 1.8 for various reasons for doing post-production rather than DTP work. (which is where the 1.8 comes from)

Cracking software that works on perceptual, rather than probe calibration.

mike.c
 
I've got the spyder2pro, it works well for different types of calibration. It was manily designed for doing desktop calibration (creates a graphics card profile).

Remember that your video overlays settings are not connected to your desktops settings and to this end you can't calibrate your overlay with spyder2pro using automated mode.

What you have to do is take readings from your video overlay using a grayscale generating disc (Digital video essentials or the like) - and use the manual readouts to set colour balance on your overlay.

It's a bit of a pain.
 
I use an Eye One Photo to profile my LCD monitors for use with Photoshop and printing, but, if I understand you correctly, your saying FCP has no way to interpret or translate those RGB monitor profiles for use with video?

What do you mean by "take readings from your video overlay using a grayscale generating disc? I checked out Digital Video Essentials and came to a page selling software to calibrate NTSC monitors for home theater DVDs. Is this what you are refering too?

Thanks, Drew
 
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12756

I've been using this for the last 4 or 5 years to set up my Mac monitors for Shake compositing, both CRT's and LCD's

Provides seperate RGB tracking with as many calibrating points as you want up and down the scale, aswell as colour balance and gamma settings. I run all my Mac monitors at gamma 2.2 rather than 1.8 for various reasons for doing post-production rather than DTP work. (which is where the 1.8 comes from)

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the link. Once you creat the profiles visually, how do you use them in FCP? As far as I understand profiles just describe the response of a monitor, and it is the application program, like Photoshop, that then uses or translates the color information.

Drew
 
They just sit as Coloursync ICC profiles for your monitor, ie your viewing LUT.
This is many steps more advanced than the Apple calibration, but if you're wanting to 'bake' the profile into a FCP output, I'm don't know how you'd do this.

The application just runs away happily to itself under this calibration, and should happily show greyscales, colourbars etc as you'd expect.
 
Drew Harty said:
I use an Eye One Photo to profile my LCD monitors for use with Photoshop and printing, but, if I understand you correctly, your saying FCP has no way to interpret or translate those RGB monitor profiles for use with video?

What do you mean by "take readings from your video overlay using a grayscale generating disc? I checked out Digital Video Essentials and came to a page selling software to calibrate NTSC monitors for home theater DVDs. Is this what you are refering too?

Thanks, Drew
Click to expand...

Yes it can be done wit DVE. (though you are obviously using an mpeg derived DVD as opposed to a HD calibration disc)

I take manual readings in 10% steps across the greyscale intensity range and manually adjust the display device's offset RGB (brightness) and gain RGB (contrast), this allows me to get very close to D65.

As much as I know with the PC - the video overlay is not connected to the ICC profile, though if you switch from video overlay to VMR it is. You can change the graphics card's (desktop) RGB and the video overlay RGB and they are seperate. So we found manual ways of doing it.

There is much on the subject over at AVscience forum.

I've no experience of FCP, but have done this on many output devices.
 
Could one of our wise moderators help clear this up? Most of the postings are talking about calibrating a monitor so that it lines up with a certain gamma, white point. This can generate an ICC monitor profile which can be used by ColorSync-aware software, including the video card outputting the monitor image. These profiles are handy if you want to change the appearance of the screen to match changing room conditions (in real life this happens - never mind what the books tell you to do).

But all this has nothing to do, as I understand, with lining up a monitor with the NTSC or EBU targets to make them match broadcast standards. That is a separate procedure. With aims quite different from lining up a monitor for soft-proofing print output. For instance, a white pointof D65, for example, which some people set is standard for print, but is too warm for 9300 K that consumer monitors are at.

Am I right, or what's going on? And for video editing, especially grading, we want to be colour matching to a standard output - a lined up production monitor.

Maybe it boils down to this: are ICC profiles very relevant or useful to video work?
 
D65 is not the same as a colour temperature such as 6500k or 9300k.

D65 relates to CIE co-ordinates X=0.313 and Y=0.329

ICC profiles are not relevant to video work, only in that you may want your computer monitor to be calibrated anyway as the computer monitor's profile is independant from the overlay or video output.

There is some info here:

http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/isf/michaeltlv/isf_m-tlv_calibrationreport_michaeltlv_v3_page2.html

ICC (automated with spyder2pro) profile for desktop.

D65 (manual - X,Y chromacity plotting with spyder2pro) calibration for overlay or video output.

All i'm saying is you can fudge the spyder2pro for your own non ICC use to calibrate your monitor or your overlay output for video work so it lines up to a broadcast standard.
 
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