anyone have screen calibrator recommendations ?

J Davis

J Davis

Veteran
I'm just shopping around for a new screen calibrator, you know those
'mouse like' things that hang on your screen, read colors and build a profile.

I have a budget for $150 to $250. Any recommendations?

my edit system is imac snow leopard (and ibook leopard for on set)
 
It is my understanding that most of those tools do not calibrate to video bars. I currently use the calibration tool with an MXO in an attempt to achieve color accuracy for video, but this gear is priced at $995 or so and Matrox' support of new OS releases is starting to lag a bit. If anyone knows of a tool in the price range J Davis mentions that does accurately calibrate to color bars, I would like to know about it as well.

Kevin
 
I don't claim to be the world's foremost authority on this, but I'll throw in my two cents.

As I understand it, those screen calibrator things are designed for print calibration, and not for video.

Your monitor uses RGB color space, starting with black, and adding red, green, and blue to form white. Additive color. Print uses CMYK, where you start with white paper, and add ink to make it darker. Subtractive color.

A TV or video projector is also using additive color, but video mostly seems to be in a different color space. YUV or something like it. It's more like LAB color in Photoshop. You have luminance (strong detailed black and white level information), and then chrominance channels (lower resolution color information). Despite also being additive color, there are some colors in the YUV-and-friends color spaces that can't be reproduced on your RGB computer monitor.

It seems that the best thing is to get a professional calibrated (to color bars) HDTV monitor and a Matrox or AJA device to send that monitor a proper TV signal. I'm not sure what the step down is (burn DVDs and see how they look on a few TVs?) but the screen calibrator appears to solve an entirely different problem altogether.
 
In this day and age with many indy film makers such as myself who are making
content for web or for projection at festivals … the broadcast spec seems almost like an unnecessary expense. Am I wrong in thinking this?

I'm considering using this one as it seems like it is not geared to print
http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=788

another option would be to go to mxo2 mini at $450 plus tax
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...O2_MINI_D_MXO2_Mini_for_Desktop.html#features
and then plug it into my hdmi tv. (sony bravia 720p) Is that how it works?
 
Just a word of caution mxo2 mini will not work with your 720p monitor. It needs a precise 1920-1080 monitor. Even then you still need a bit of luck for it to output, it s a very picky mean little box it is.
 
In your price range, the Xrite Color Eye or the Datavison Spyder are the only ones worth looking at. The Huey and the Color Munki are crap designed for home use.

The Color Eye and the Spyder will profile your monitor and allow you to try and match it to a target color space. How close you get is up to your monitor.
 
"a word of caution mxo2 mini will not work with your 720p monitor. It needs a precise 1920-1080 monitor. "

Untrue. The client monitor I have is a 22" 720p Samsung. Works just fine.
 
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