Using TV as NTSC monitor?

lovetrumpsfear

lovetrumpsfear

Active member
Hi all,

I'm trying to make sure that what I see in my editing booth *cough* tiny corner desk *cough* approximates what clients will see when I give them a DVD. I edit on a MacBook Pro, and I have a DVI-to-video adapter, so I was wondering if it would be worth getting a small TV for my desk, to check colors/exposure/etc? I saw a nice little Toshiba flatscreen at Best Buy for a shade over a hundred, looked pretty good.

I realize that the best solution would be a real production monitor, but would this suffice for the time being? I ask because I don't really know much about "gamma curves" and such, which I'm dimly aware will affect picture quality in this context. I don't want to buy anything, if outputting from my computer in this way will defeat the purpose. (Forgive my ignorance, if I've skirted the real issue completely. So many things I don't know...)


Thanks so much!
Paul
 
If you are working in standard definition, you can use a small DV camcorder to run firewire to a cam,corder and run RCA cables to a small TV. I highly reccomend viewing your content on the source it's meant to play on if you can.

NTSC is funny with colors, since they get exagerated before being displayed on a consumer TV. You'll find that what you see on your PC monitor is not going to be close to what you see on an NTSC TV.

HD video is closer to the color gammut of your monitor, assuming you are running gamma 2.2 (macs run gamma 1.8 I believe).
 
Demistate said:
If you are working in standard definition, you can use a small DV camcorder to run firewire to a cam,corder and run RCA cables to a small TV. I highly reccomend viewing your content on the source it's meant to play on if you can.

NTSC is funny with colors, since they get exagerated before being displayed on a consumer TV. You'll find that what you see on your PC monitor is not going to be close to what you see on an NTSC TV.

HD video is closer to the color gammut of your monitor, assuming you are running gamma 2.2 (macs run gamma 1.8 I believe).
Click to expand...

Your right about the MAC gamma. If you are color grading / color correcting, then make sure you change your MAC Gamma settings in the display options (this is if you're using a MAC of course). With MAC's, it's a default of 1.8. So You'll need to change the settings to 2.2 (Television standard / PC).

Cheers,

Murray
 
lovetrumpsfear said:
I realize that the best solution would be a real production monitor, but would this suffice for the time being? I ask because I don't really know much about "gamma curves" and such, which I'm dimly aware will affect picture quality in this context. I don't want to buy anything, if outputting from my computer in this way will defeat the purpose. (Forgive my ignorance, if I've skirted the real issue completely. So many things I don't know...)
Paul
Click to expand...

simply setting the gamma to 1.8 or 2.2 won't help if your monitor is way out of calibration to begin with.

the huey pro solution that demistate suggested is the way to go, but you can get in the gamma ballpark by putting some gradiated test images on the monitor, and tweaking per these directions:
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

at the very most basic level, you should be able to see all of the different shades in the stairstep graphic at dpreview.com:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydslra900/

be aware that most laptop and lcd monitors are not as capable of showing the entire gamma range as the old crt monitors... this is an issue for both web and sd dvd media.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top