Calibrating Cinema Display

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doccutter

Well-known member
OK, so today I took my powerbook to work, and connected a cinema display to the DVI out to consider the display's viability as a production monitor. It was truly a lovely experience, the HVX footage really shines on a large display like that. My question is, it there any way to calibrate a Cinema display? When I brought up bars in Final Cut Pro, I couldn't get anything out of the pluge, it was just a block of black. This doesn't really make sense to me, I tried NTSC and HD bars, and the gamut of an LCD is quite a bit greater than NTSC, so why can't I see any bars? Is there some software that will work with the calibration control panel so I can make sure my panel's whites and greys are white and grey? Thanks!
 
I think there are a lot of tools used in the publishing industry for precise monitor calibration... I'm not sure how well they translate, though... and I've never used one.
 
There's a bunch of calibration "pucks" out there that will help you calibrate your monitor. It's been a while since I purchased one, but check out the offerings from ColorVision and GretagMacbeth. I highly recommend the book "Color Management" by Bruce Fraser et al, although it's not specific to video.
 
Well, the problem is that we're calibrating to two completely different color gamuts. Print gamuts don't match NTSC, don't match Apple Gamma, don't match HDTV, so I worry that calibrating for Print would have no relationship to video calibration, particularly in the area of luminance or brightness correction...
 
When you use a color correction device you can choose the color temperature and gamma that you want the display set to. This info is then incorporated in the ICC profile that is developed for the display. If you want to match NTSC, then you select a gamma of 2.2 and a color temperature of 6500K.

The color gamut is function of the device (LCD, CRT), not the application (e.g. print). I remember that a software product that comes with one of the calibration products included a LUT that was supposed to match LCDs to CRTs. I assume that this remapped the wider LCD color gamut to the narrower CRT gamut, but I'm not positive. If you're concerned about matching a CRT gamut, I guess the best solution is to buy a CRT monitor. :)
 
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Snarton,

A nice thought, but I don't have the 6k handy for a sony CRT HD production monitor. What I'm concerned about is how the LCD will handle luminance. I'm accustomed to looking at my SD CRT and a waveform, and correcting until the video fits into the scale, and looks good. If I can't get an LCD to display a pluge, then I'm not sure how you can base your brightness decisions.
 
If I remember correctly, some of the Sony CRT HDTVs have a "professional monitor mode" that minimizes processing and lets you calibrate nicely. I've never tried it, but it may be a good - if not absolutely ideal - solution for well under $1000. Anyone used one of these?
 
Well, the problem remains: What is the most cost-effective means of getting HD output from Final Cut, especially out of a laptop. It seems like we're in the early days of computer video editing, where you need to sink 10's of K's of dollars into a system for display cards, HDSDI connections, and monitors. I'm trying to figure out if in the interim, one can come up with a fairly reasonable solution while remaining in the DVI realm.
 
A few thoughts:
1) If the pluge bars are all black, that means the brightness of the monitor is too low. Did you try raising it? You didn't mention this in the first post. The typical complaint from the Apple Cinema displays is that they're too bright and sometimes people turn the brightness control all the way down. I haven't used a Cinema Display, so I can't confirm that doing the proper calibration by setting the monitor controls and then building an ICC profile with a puck type device will work, but it's Apple, so you'd think they'd get it right.
2) The affordable solution that I'm planning on using for HD monitoring and color correction is to do general editing on an HD capable LCD so I can see all the pixels and then connect up to my calibrated Sony PVM SD CRT monitor for color correction (e.g. with S-video from a MBP). I haven't tried this in real life yet (waiting for Merom before I get the MBP), but it's my plan. I'd still have confidence in the color even if I've seen it only at SD resolution.
3) I don't really get where the industry is going with this. Panasonic, Sony etc. are all pushing their flat panel displays and Sony has even stopped making the PVM series CRT. When I see pictures of the high end color correction systems, they're using flat panels all over the place. Are the professional colorists happy with LCDs? I'm a bit confused on this issue.

--Jeremy
 
Here's an old article by Graeme Natress that argues in favor of monitoring on a calibrated cinema display, as opposed to a CRT:

http://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_decklink.html

Also see his comments about CRT vs. cinema displays in this thread:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=26462

Here's a review of several color calibration hardware/software options:

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration_tools.htm

I calibrated my own cinema display recently using the Color Eyes system. The results seem to be reasonable compared to my CRT rear projection HDTV and a small SD consumer Toshiba TV with component ins that I use to check color. (But I'd need to recalibrate both CRT's to give a more critical comparison.)
 
doccutter said:
Well, the problem remains: What is the most cost-effective means of getting HD output from Final Cut, especially out of a laptop. It seems like we're in the early days of computer video editing, where you need to sink 10's of K's of dollars into a system for display cards, HDSDI connections, and monitors. I'm trying to figure out if in the interim, one can come up with a fairly reasonable solution while remaining in the DVI realm.
Click to expand...


Well, don't forget you can use a DVI-HDMI cable with most HDTVs these days... including the Sony CRTs... and set FCP to use that as the preview monitor. That's what I do with a Panny Plasma TV... and while the cables are often (MONSTER!) outrageously overpriced, many (I'd recommend Blue Jeans Cable) make high-quality cables much cheaper (about $45 for 15', IIRC)...

Just a note - in the bast I had my Cinema Display connected to the G5 DVI port, and a second monitor connected to the ADI port with an ADI-DVI adapter... the ADI-DVI-HDMI chain DID NOT work. But putting the main display on adi via adi-dvi cable, and the plasma on dvi via dvi-hdmi cable works fine.

The issue of calibration still remains, depending on the monitor you hook up to...
 
That Graeme Natress article was an eye opener. I saw it a while back and forgot about it. Lately, I had been planning a laptop-only workflow but now maybe a Mac Pro is in my future for the sake of accurate monitoring.
 
snarton said:
If you want to match NTSC, then you select a gamma of 2.2 and a color temperature of 6500K.
Click to expand...
Hooray! Finally someone who knows the settings. :)

I'm only starting with making films. But I've been in the print industry for many years, where it's absolutely standard to use calibrated monitors only.

With video it so far seems to me, that many people know that you can use a device to exactly calibrate your monitor. But almost nobody knows the settings.

Are they the same for PAL?
 
I use a calibrated Cinema HD Display. It is actually motion rated as a production monitor. It works great. A puck can calibrate for what you need. It doesn't lock you into calibrating only for print.

What you'd do is forget the puck and just calibrate it in the system prefrences to the HD color bars.
 
BenB said:
I use a calibrated Cinema HD Display. It is actually motion rated as a production monitor. It works great. A puck can calibrate for what you need. It doesn't lock you into calibrating only for print.

What you'd do is forget the puck and just calibrate it in the system prefrences to the HD color bars.
Click to expand...

But what's the advantage? A puck can be much more precise.
 
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