Michael Carter
Veteran
I use the Marshall V-LCD50. Peaking, 1 to 1, blue only, etc.
Field monitor: worth the money?
- Thread starter xavpil
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EDV
Well-known member
I've been using a Marshall V-LCD70XP for videography and it's certainly been worth it. The only downside for me is editing on a standard LCD screen. What looked great on the Marshall may look wrong in the LCD and any attempt to color correct may cause more harm than good. DaVinci Resolve systems cost nearly $40 000 for a reason. Color accuracy is no easy feat. With more and more people shooting RAW video these days, I saw the need to have a proper reference monitor. I don't edit RAW yet, but that's where the industry is heading and might as well adapt. I was looking at the Panasonic BT -LH1760, and also the BT-LH910 as two viable choices. Both seem to be excellent reference monitors and right now I am leaning more towards the smaller BT-LH910. Still love my Marshall V-LCD70XP, but I think it's too small to use for editing, and color accuracy may not be up to par with the Panasonics. Features are great though, I will keep using it.
That monitor is 100% no good for color correction---for that, from all my research, you're going to be looking at something in the $2500+ range, plus some kind of fancy card/box (to get the real video signal out of whatever program you're working with), and they usually recommend pretty large. . .I think at LEAST 24". Sorry, wish I were wrong, but everything I've read and everyone I've talked to has pointed me toward these conclusions.
Michael Carter
Veteran
Well, it depends -are you selling grading services, working on feature films, or do you have a small production shop where most of your stuff ends up on the web and spots or footage occasionally make it to broadcast?
I only see a couple projects a year hit cable, and maybe once a month I send off footage to the media. A professional monitor with blue-only that can be calibrated to color bars starts at $500-$1k. Will it be the same stuff they use at Skywalker ranch? No, but your stuff will be broadcast safe and look decent, with more accuracy than you'll get from your computer screen. If you're shooting for major national brands with national media buys (or, actually, their agencies) you'll probably use a pricier SDI monitor to get your footage close and send it off to a post house. If you edit for those agencies and the Revlons and Nikes, you'll probably have a $2k and up - way up - monitor and pricey Davinci setup. To say something is 100% no-good seems like you haven't thought this through.
The "fancy" cards start at $175.00 (Blackmagic). Go up to $450 or so for a Matrox box. Yes, they go up from there, but basically, at the level many US video businesses are at, you want something that sends an unaltered signal via HDMI to a calibrated screen without menus and dialogue boxes. Upwards from there it's SDI, but... see my point above. They're not using this stuff to grade the next James Bond flick, but most people asking on this forum will never, ever need gear at that level. But just about anyone can benefit from taking their blue-only capable on-camera monitor, a Blackmagic card, a $10 HDMI splitter and a 24" HDTV and seeing fairly calibrated colors and black/white levels, and a full-screen look at how it'll appear on BluRay or cable. Most of us already have everything but the output device (card, whatever) and the splitter.
Wish granted! Well, sorta. There's a wide range of needs out there. But just doing the above is a big step up, it's the cheapest thing you'll buy in ages and will last as long as your PC setup remains fairly static (My BM Card has been running for years now).
I have definitely thought this through, as well as asking professional colorist in town.
If you're right, hey, that's great. All my research has led me to believe several things:
-Anything that can be properly calibrated starts at around, maybe $1700. Which monitors are you referring to? Keeping in mind they'd need to be HD.
-computer monitors no good unless they can reproduce REC709 (unless doing work for the web/computers only of course), so see above
-just 'cause it can be calibrated (i.e., has blue only bars etc.) doesn't mean it can be calibrated CORRECTLY, as in, to display an even semi-accurate image. Some of those Sonys have blue only, etc., but just look wrong no matter what you do to them.
-it's only valid to use a regular HDTV for this stuff if it's one of several higher end Panasonic plasmas or something like that.
If you're right, hey, that's great. All my research has led me to believe several things:
-Anything that can be properly calibrated starts at around, maybe $1700. Which monitors are you referring to? Keeping in mind they'd need to be HD.
-computer monitors no good unless they can reproduce REC709 (unless doing work for the web/computers only of course), so see above
-just 'cause it can be calibrated (i.e., has blue only bars etc.) doesn't mean it can be calibrated CORRECTLY, as in, to display an even semi-accurate image. Some of those Sonys have blue only, etc., but just look wrong no matter what you do to them.
-it's only valid to use a regular HDTV for this stuff if it's one of several higher end Panasonic plasmas or something like that.
Michael Carter
Veteran
So, by your research, one shouldn't even consider color accuracy until they have $2k+ to spend? I don't buy it. Even having a pro quality (say, Marshall, SmallHD, etc) 7" "on camera" monitor calibrated to bars from your NLE - for me - was a big help and almost free. If you can get a monitor to display bars correctly in blue-only with pluge accurately displayed, you're in a very good color ballpark. Especially when considering that outside of digital theatrical projection, there really is no "standard" in reality. TV's come with all kinds of color out of the box and get all kinds of whacked out changes by the consumer.
If you have the means to see detail and sharpness in your edits - a big HDTV, even a big screen on your NLE and the capability to zoom and check things like compositing edges... and then add even a small screen that's showing acceptably accurate color... that was for me a nice game changer. Being able to watch edits on a consumer HDTV gives me a general idea of my stuff will look like on a consumer TV.
If you're grading Game of Thrones, yeah, that's another story. But for every HBO series or gorgeous Revlon spot there's, what, a thousand or so corporate videos shot? Five thousand? If you're at the level where you're shooting raw and need the clients to see LUT-treated footage on set, yeah, buy a $1700 pro screen, you'll be glad you did. But how many of those guys are calibrating with bars (which is still somewhat subjective and dependent upon ambient lighting to some extent) every shoot day, and how many are hiring a calibration service or learning to do it in house and buying the additional gear to do it right?
Your research vs. my day-to-day experience, in a nutshell: I would most enthusiastically tell anyone with a small business and an investment in even a small on-camera monitor of professional quality (I can't speak for all the lilliputs out there) to spend a couple hundred on a Blackmagic or similar solution and feed their edit window to said monitor and also a 22-36" HDTV, and see if they feel it was worth it. Seriously, some of the best $$ I've spent in the last few years, and the cheapest.
(There's plenty of big production shops in my town with grading suites and facility-wide color management - I'd certainly be curious to hear about that evolution and how they'd do it on the lower end.)
If you have the means to see detail and sharpness in your edits - a big HDTV, even a big screen on your NLE and the capability to zoom and check things like compositing edges... and then add even a small screen that's showing acceptably accurate color... that was for me a nice game changer. Being able to watch edits on a consumer HDTV gives me a general idea of my stuff will look like on a consumer TV.
If you're grading Game of Thrones, yeah, that's another story. But for every HBO series or gorgeous Revlon spot there's, what, a thousand or so corporate videos shot? Five thousand? If you're at the level where you're shooting raw and need the clients to see LUT-treated footage on set, yeah, buy a $1700 pro screen, you'll be glad you did. But how many of those guys are calibrating with bars (which is still somewhat subjective and dependent upon ambient lighting to some extent) every shoot day, and how many are hiring a calibration service or learning to do it in house and buying the additional gear to do it right?
Your research vs. my day-to-day experience, in a nutshell: I would most enthusiastically tell anyone with a small business and an investment in even a small on-camera monitor of professional quality (I can't speak for all the lilliputs out there) to spend a couple hundred on a Blackmagic or similar solution and feed their edit window to said monitor and also a 22-36" HDTV, and see if they feel it was worth it. Seriously, some of the best $$ I've spent in the last few years, and the cheapest.
(There's plenty of big production shops in my town with grading suites and facility-wide color management - I'd certainly be curious to hear about that evolution and how they'd do it on the lower end.)
I'm not saying you can't get even remotely accurate, but it's the kind of "accurate" where you shouldn't be surprised if your very carefully selected shade of teal that you've graded this or that element to ends up much greener on some screens or bluer on others. Don't be surprised if your aggressive contrast looks wonky in one direction or the other on different displays, skin tones off, etc. Ballpark? Yes, but a very large ballpark. I went through all this myself a while back, googling and googling and asking questions etc. etc. and came back to these conclusions again and again. If you want to know if your white balance is miles off, sure. For a grade/color correction you'd trust on different displays or hand off to a client and say "this is what this will look lik everywhere, or close to it," I don't think so. If your persona experience has been different, that's great, but I'd be reluctant to go that route based on what I've read.
It seems like unlike cameras, audio, almost anything else, there is no "poor man's" color correction setup, nothing where you could say "yeah, that's not the greatest thing ever, but it's okay, a good starting point." From what I've learned, you're either really up there in terms of accuracy, or wildly inaccurate.
The cheapest, seemingly legit setup I found was about 400-$800. It was a matrox card with component out to pretty old Sony HD CRT monitor, the PVM 14L (I think that's the model). This a 14" CRT monitor, but can be properly calibrated, fed a signal etc. That's the way I would personally go if I were looking into the entry/bottom level of this. Some folks have said "oh I would never want to grade on a monitor that small", but again, it's the most affordable "legit" setup I've come across so far.
It seems like unlike cameras, audio, almost anything else, there is no "poor man's" color correction setup, nothing where you could say "yeah, that's not the greatest thing ever, but it's okay, a good starting point." From what I've learned, you're either really up there in terms of accuracy, or wildly inaccurate.
The cheapest, seemingly legit setup I found was about 400-$800. It was a matrox card with component out to pretty old Sony HD CRT monitor, the PVM 14L (I think that's the model). This a 14" CRT monitor, but can be properly calibrated, fed a signal etc. That's the way I would personally go if I were looking into the entry/bottom level of this. Some folks have said "oh I would never want to grade on a monitor that small", but again, it's the most affordable "legit" setup I've come across so far.
theuniverseinanutshell
Member
You need to qualify what you're saying here. An 'accurately' graded material means only that it will look as intended on another display that is also calibrated to the same colour space; on screens that aren't
you still shouldn't be surprised if your teal spans green to blue in your neigbour's and your friend's tv.
Right, sorry, yes. You should be grading on a display using the same color space as your intended distibutiom method-- a quality computer monitor for web/computer-only viewing, another type of display for dvd or tv/broadcast, etc. etc. otherwise, yes, see above.
or at the very least, grade once and check it on a trustworthy monitor for each color space (if youre making something and the ultimate viewing platform is unknown).
or at the very least, grade once and check it on a trustworthy monitor for each color space (if youre making something and the ultimate viewing platform is unknown).