Getting a monitor or a TV for grading

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David Evans

Well-known member
Hi guys,

For the 1500-2000 USD, what would you recommend as the most accurate display to CG? A computer monitor or one of those LG Oled TVs? I've read those Oleds are being used a lot in studios as reference monitors. Can they be calibrated without a LUT box to be accurate enough for CG?

Thanks!
 
I understand. But any chance of getting something like a Eizo very accurate with lightspace or equivalent? Or is the Flanders really in another leage?

Thanks again!
 
Will you be driving this new color correction monitor with a product like say a Blackmagic Design UltraStudio or similar product which outputs the correct signal for accurate color display on this new monitor, or using a standard computer video monitor card?

something to consider in your budget
 
David Evans said:
For the 1500-2000 USD, what would you recommend as the most accurate display to CG? A computer monitor or one of those LG Oled TVs?
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Like most things, it depends. What are you trying to do? How important is accuracy and repeatability to what you are doing? And how important is it that you work in WYSIWYG?

For starters, if depends on what you are delivering. If it's for YouTube/Vimeo type stuff, you need a monitor that can show you the sRGB working space. Just about any computer monitor will do that, but not that many take calibration very well. And yes, if you want accuracy and repeatability, you need a good solid calibration that doesn't drift too much between calibrations.

If you want to deliver for broadcasting / Blu-ray, you need a monitor that can show you the Rec.709 working space. Very few computer monitors do that. But just about every HDTV does. And of course, low end TVs are difficult to calibrate, while some of the more advanced TVs make calibration less difficult. Then again, production monitors are designed for this purpose, so most people who are serious about color correction / color grading use production monitors (the various tools good production monitors provide are very useful -- vector scopes, waveform monitors, RGB parades, etc.)

At your price range I'm pretty sure you aren't trying to deliver as a DCP so I'm not going there.

Of course, you can color correct / grade using just about any monitor if you're willing to itterate with a known good monitor somewhere. I've done it, graded on a computer monitor, burned a DVD, trotted it down to a known good reference calibrated plasma HDTV, played it, taken notes, started the cycle over. You do that a few times you'll know why it's not a productive workflow. But... you *can* do it that way.

So the questions at the top remain: what are you trying to do, how good does it have to be, and how easy does it have to be to do it?
 
Bruce Watson said:
If you want to deliver for broadcasting / Blu-ray, you need a monitor that can show you the Rec.709 working space. Very few computer monitors do that.
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Perhaps I misunderstand what you are trying to say but for all intents and purposes there is no difference between sRGB and Rec.709.

If you grade a video for broadcast/blu-ray I would suggest to upload the same to YouTube (although the opinions differ on a gamma of 2.4 or 2.2).
 
Hello everybody, I have a similar monitor thread active but it has not had many responses, so I would like to discuss this topic a bit hoping it helps the original poster as well.

I am looking for a new monitor in the same price range. I do see a difference between my current broadcast monitor and what I see in my Edius preview window on a computer monitor. The most obvious difference is the reds. Broadcast YUV reds trend towards orange where the same image on the computer monitor will have more of a magenta leaning. I also boost my web footage a bit if it is originally made for DVD/Blu-ray.

So in this modern age where more goes to the internet than optical disc/televisions - what level of monitor is needed?

What is recommended if I want the accuracy of a "broadcast monitor" but and mot going to broadcast or fewer and fewer to televisions? Thanks!
 
Cary Knoop said:
Perhaps I misunderstand what you are trying to say but for all intents and purposes there is no difference between sRGB and Rec.709.

If you grade a video for broadcast/blu-ray I would suggest to upload the same to YouTube (although the opinions differ on a gamma of 2.4 or 2.2).
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And this is what I was saying.
 
David W. Jones said:
In your price range something like the low cost OSEE LCM170-E or larger LCM230-E offer great bang for the buck.
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Those look good. How do they compare with the Eizos? Also, since i got the decklink mini monitor, I also wanted a 10bit display but most 10bit displays, from what I read, are not "true" 10bit. I know Flanders have true 10bit panels. Are the Osee true 10bit?
 
David Evans said:
Those look good. How do they compare with the Eizos? Also, since i got the decklink mini monitor, I also wanted a 10bit display but most 10bit displays, from what I read, are not "true" 10bit. I know Flanders have true 10bit panels. Are the Osee true 10bit?
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Not sure how they compare to the Eizo monitors, but yes they are true 10 bit panels.
They offer a number of built-in tools which I find very helpful, and if memory serves there is a group buy going on now on the bmc user site which will save you some coin if you are interested.

For what it's worth, once you learn your toolset like waveform monitor, Vectorscope, histogram and the like, you should be able to grade using any monitor really, as your tools will display accurate readings even if your monitor sucks. But I can also say that having a fully calibrated monitor displaying exactly what your tools are saying is a big plus in my book.

Dave
 
David Evans said:
Hi guys,

For the 1500-2000 USD, what would you recommend as the most accurate display to CG? A computer monitor or one of those LG Oled TVs? I've read those Oleds are being used a lot in studios as reference monitors. Can they be calibrated without a LUT box to be accurate enough for CG?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Are you looking to be a professional colorist and charge money for services, open up a colouring suite, or are you just colouring your own projects, etc.. ? I think part of the answer lies somewhere based on what your end game and plan is and what you're hoping to accomplish.

If you want to professionally grade video as a service to others I think you need to get a proper panel like an FSI. I was in the same boat recently and did a lot of research on this by starting to look at dreamcolor displays, NEC PA272, even OSEE monitors etc.. but after reading a lot more about it on liftgammagain forums and pros and cons about it for me personally it came down to either getting an Eizo ColorEdge CG247X or FSI AM210 or CM171.

The CG247x will go down to 0.05 nits for actually being able to see the details in the blacks. Like many people I balked and wanted to ignore this spec because I thought "well no one is going to be watching on the same quality of monitor anyways" but this is the wrong mentality if you are going to be grading other people's projects and especially if you are charging money for it. People will of course argue most displays won't show this level of detail but that is missing the point, your job as a colorist is to make sure you are not destroying any video levels which will happen easily in the blacks if you can't see them. You can't use scopes to manage the amount of detail you want to have in the blacks either - that is nonsense. Also consider that a lot of material now is shot in log or by rating camera's lower (overexposing footage) so you will 100% for sure be responsible for setting the black level and how much you see in it as you bring footage down in the grade.

Back to the CG247x however - the big issue I found out with the CG247x is the viewing angle. (watch this video review by Dave Dugdale) It's fine for ONE person but VERY BAD if you are going to sit with a client beside you and host a color/grading session. For this reason alone for me it made absolutely no sense to spend $2000 on a monitor that was only going to be good for one person. For me anyways, for you it might be different or maybe you can setup a 2nd monitor that is just for client reference (like large calibrated OLED) etc..

The other monitors I considered were the AM210 and the CM171. To advertise services and really start promoting my company services I didn't think it would sound good that I was only using an 8-bit monitor. I'm sure the monitor makes up for it in a hundred other ways, but the AM210 is not exactly cheap either so I had to rule it out in the end. That left me with making a final decision on the CM171 and in fact I pick it up this week. Used a CM171 can be bought for around $1600 - $2000 USD. New they are $2500.

Last night I just installed a Decklink mini monitor 4K PCI card in my machine so I will be able to send 10-bit video to the monitor. This card is cheap and I think a must have for a color grading setup. If you get one of these, don't get the HD version, I believe (and could be wrong) that the 4K version supports WAY more formats and obviously higher resolutions.

The last piece in all this is the calibration and sounds like you know about this already. Here's what I know, if you're colouring in Resolve you can actually set a 3D LUT for only your viewing output so you don't technically need an external LUT box, or a LUT capable monitor to store your color calibration. There will be some performance hit using Resolve to apply the LUT in realtime but I don't think it's huge.

Size: despite what everyone seems to think, no, you actually don't want a 42" OLED 24" from your eyes to grade on. A good size is 17-24 inches depending how close to the monitor you will sit. You don't want to have to turn your head, or move your eyes all over a screen to see what's going on. There's a sweet spot there for everyone that allows them to see the image as a whole and give a real good sense of where the grade and color is at.


Good luck with whatever you decide,
 
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Thanks Dennis. I've been doing the same research myself and got to the same conclusions as you did. A couple of things still ilude me though. A lot of great colorists from liftgammagain own an Eizo monitor and grade for whatever format and client they want. And some of them are really great colorists so I'm thinking who am I to say an Eizo is not good enough for me and that I need a FSI? The only 10bit FSI i could afford is the 17 CMI and that's probably too small to grade for theatrical release. So I'm leaning towards a well lightspace calibrated Eizo. Or even a Osee. First priority is to get it calibrated to near perfection. Then getting a monitor with great black level and that would probably just happen with oleds... not sure which to buy...
 
Hi David,

Let me clarify a bit, because I realize my previous post perhaps sounds like "there is no other option" you must get an FSI - but that's not entirely true and sorry to any readers if my post came off that way. I certainly don't want to come off as hardcore as some of those lift gamma gain guys. I just did what was right for me at this stage of my coloring career (and business) and chose an FSI.

The Eizo's are definitely good enough for colouring and grading, the lower the blacks can go the better of course. The CG247x (HD) or CG248 (4K) are really great monitors but to be honest there are a lot of really GOOD monitors on the market that could be used for colouring and grading work. There was one panel by Dell that the engineer from Dell was talking about on the liftgammagain forums and I can't remember the model but it was a really great panel and around the $500-600 range. I'll see if I can find that thread again and share the info. OLEDs are also a really great option as well but you'll have to figure out the calibration and likely it won't be a 10-bit panel if that matters to you.

If you read this post of mine http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...-match&p=1986702576&viewfull=1#post1986702576 you'll see that I have actually been using consumer monitors and the DataColor Spyder calibration system for the past 4 years for professional coloring work and got by on it. A lot of my material has screened theatrically, put on disc for distribution, and streamed on various platforms. But this route comes with a lot of other stresses and problems you have to deal with like constantly uploading your output on YouTube or Vimeo and burning DVD or BluRay discs and then watching it on 6 different random displays to get a baseline established, go back and fix, repeat, go watch again. etc.. This is fine if you have the time to do so and go about it this way. Also two calibrations in a row can be different from one another, and so you still have doubts about your calibration ,etc.

I thought about OSEE as well but it seems like there can be a varying degrees of uniformity issues from screen to screen ,etc. so it can be a bit random what you end up with and down to the luck of the draw. Like I said all the research I did made my head spin! There seems to be too many boxes to tick as for what makes for a "professional monitor" along with the backend hardware setup so that one small weak link seems to throw everything off too much that you're almost no further along then you were before. :crybaby: But everyone is different for where they are in their work and budget and have that to consider.

I also thought 17" might be a bit small but I'm really liking it and it seems perfect for me. I wonder if the notion to use a larger monitor for theatre projection work isn't a misnomer? There is definitely an illusion at work when you grade on a small monitor and it goes up on a theatre screen, but the same is true if you grade on a massive screen and then the work ends up on Youtube and viewed on a tablet or smart phone? I notice with a good quality monitor its quite representative of what the image looks like very small or large, but really over time you will learn to work with your scopes and your specific equipment and how it translates to the larger or smaller screens. You can also do your own tests by grading a few clips at different levels, etc.. then booking a session with a local theatre and have them project it for you to get the feedback you need.
 
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Dennis, you mention using the Spyder for calibration but it is my understanding that these interact with the system's video card while the video stream is coming from a separate card like a Blackmagic Intensity. Seems like the calibration would not apply unless your model has an external monitor option?
 
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