Apple HD 30" Cinema Display ?

[kevinM]

I love it how everyone says you need to use a broadcast monitor for cc etc., Nobody is watching your footage on a broadcast monitor so dont sweat it. Make sure that you use the display calibrator assistant, take your time, and dial it in. Everything is lcd these days anyways. When was the last time you saw a high def CRT? Good Luck.

An LCD HDTV is still very different from an LCD computer monitor. So is an LCD based production monitor like the Panasonic 17 in. Computers display colors in the RGB color space and TVs dont. If you expect your footage to be viewed only on computer displays you're ok - somewhat. Dont forget, Macs and PCs display color in different gammas as well. It is not the LCD panel that makes the difference so much as the signal being fed to it. That is where the MXO box comes into play. It takes the YUV information from Final Cut for example and uses LUTs to convert the color information to RGB in order to display accurate color for broadcast.

Yes you can calibrate your LCD monitor to get you in the ballpark but it is still just a guess at best.

Yes, LCD based production monitors are becoming the norm, but they are not LCD computer displays. Again it is the signal and the processing of the signal, not the LCD itself.

I use the Gretag calibrator too, for print production work where they were meant to be used, but I dont expect them to make my Cinema Display into a reliable, standardized production monitor. I just doesn't work that way.

It all depends on how much it matters to you and what your end use is. I can't hand off my work to other professionals and say "there, thats close enough i think." and expect them to fix it if it's not.

 

[zone6]

Thanks Kevin - nice explanation!

 

[Flash Beaver]

Hey Travis - thanks for the info!

Are you saying I can calibrate my 30" HD Cinema Display with the Gretagmacbeth and have the ability to monitor color, sharpness, etc. like I would with a production / brodcast monitor?

Hi Zone6! So sorry for the late response, been shooting on river all day.

To answer your question, it is NOT going to be exactly like a production monitor and the input here you got today is some great stuff.

But here's our situation: for color my eye-one calibrated monitor at 6500k/2.2 gamma gets me where it needs to be , and I have tested the results on LCDs (both monitors and computer displays) and CRTs. It has always as near perfect as can be. A hardware calibrated 30" display can take you a long way. Is it the perfect solution? Is it better than a real production monitor? In both cases, technically, no.

I think kevinm has really said it well here about the differences, one part to point out though...

Kevin is absolute right on several points, your not going to just miraculously turn your cinema display into a production monitor. First however, eye-one is not just for print production. Eye-one is split into several major areas of operation based on the package you bought. Two of those areas are accurate calibration of color on projectors and monitors (LCD or CRT). What the eye-one does is create a very accurate calibrated profile between your OS color management, the video card being used on and the display it self.

In the end, you have a color accurate display based on the parameters you gave it. You now have an accurate and reliable reference point for getting the color part under control. Once again, 6500k and a gamma of 2.2 are the magic numbers here.

Zone, it works every single time here without failure, I have yet to lose sleep over my color when I send stuff out and I have more tight color than I ever had on my 13" sony crt program monitor.

Now on the consumer front, not every joe six pack has a LCD. Much of the masses (at least here) are still watching the boob tube. And a lot of manufactures didn't set their CRT TVs to 6500k like they should have. A lot of them were set to something like 9300k at the factory so they would be perceived as having a "brighter" picture on the sales floor.

To top it all off I visit a lot of people, and am just horrified how crazy my original looks on so many different screens both TV and computer. It'd would give a color guy a coronary!

And of course you do have to put it into perspective. What is your target? What exactly are you doing? What is your skill level with all of this? Where is your material being sent and what kind of workflow outside your own do you need to prepare for. Unfortunately nobody can answer this completely but you.

KevinM really covered ground well. I know "close" only counts in horshoes and hand grenades. But no matter how color anal you get, despite how many protocols you throw at it, when your stuff leaves out the door, regardless of where it goes you put your image into another's hands. What tolerance level for color variance you can accept is up to you as Kevin said.

From where I sit, I have been getting dead-on-bawls accurate color out the door since going this route in January of '06. If anything go get yourself an Eye-Display LT or Eye-One Display 2. The LT can be had for $150 and its just for displays.

Try it out, see if works for you. If you're not getting what you want, well your displays will be calibrated as they SHOULD BE and its time to pony up the money for a production monitor.

BTW - For checking native pixel sharpness, I have a Sony 17" LCD I got for $179.00 with a native 1280x1024 resolution. (Of course 720/24pn is 960x720 but 1280 is how I am looking at it) Its just been perfect for the job and is set in FCP for cinema preview by default. Of course you have that big 30" so maybe you could make a custom FCP window layout with a viewer set to 100 percent.

Well I've been spent a little too much time on the river so its time to go back to the beaver dam. hehehe

Do let me know how it works for you, and if you need any further help don't hesitate to drop me a line!

Have a super day!