Having a terrible time with colors...

You know what I hate. I gave away a TV very similar to that -- only it was a 27" Sony -- when I 'upgraded' to a flat screen LCD. Man, wish I had that TV back now!

I'm not sure how I could connect to it, though. You mention through a DV camcorder or component. Since all HDMI connectors on camcorders are, as far as I know, output only, I don't think I could go from PC to camcorder via HDMI. I have a firewire card on the PC, which would output to the camcorder, but I don't know if I can configure Vegas to output the preview window via firewire. It gets very tricky here. And my video card doesn't have component outputs.

EDIT: Actually I do see that Vegas Pro 8.0c has a setting for "Preview Device" to go through firewire. So that would work.
 
No, a computer monitor definitely wouldn't work. Same problem as with the 720p TVs.

Once you connect to the camcorder, if the camcorder has S-Video output, you can connect to the TV through that.
 
David Jimerson said:
Once you connect to the camcorder, if the camcorder has S-Video output, you can connect to the TV through that.
Click to expand...

Hey! I'll finally get to use that S-video cable for something useful!

Let's see -- I've got a Canon HV30 and 2 Panasonic DVX100a's. I think I can get it hooked up. :-)

Thanks for the help, David. Hope it works!
 
Oh my…

i do have a licence of Vegas10 running on the same machine as Avid|DS and Nuke, all three use an Aja3Ke output to scopes and broadcast monitor, all three outputs look identical once the settings in each software are configured correctly, i would think Vegas11 has the same colour management tools as 10, but i do not use it, i only loaded it as i had a free licence included with my FS100's

a few thoughts;
- I would suggest looking at an inexpensive Aja I/O card like the Lhe series, or find out if BMD cards are supported and use a Decklink Mini
- 709 (HD) and 601 (SD) are pretty much identical in terms of colour, different in terms of resolution tho, evaluating deliverables for SD on a HD mon is common
- Older CRT's are very unstable as the capactors age, and eventually become unable to hold calibration for more than a few hours before drifting, as much as i loved working with my Sony BMD32, it can no longer do the job, the same can be said of 99% of the CRT still alive out there, but if you can find one of the last made you may get a short time of use from the investment
- LightSpace offers a free method of checking the accuracy of your display, the Spider is far away from accurate enough to do the job
 
Dermot said:
- 709 (HD) and 601 (SD) are pretty much identical in terms of colour, different in terms of resolution tho, evaluating deliverables for SD on a HD mon is common
Click to expand...

Of course you can, with expensive hardware -- even the "inexpensive" Aja LHe is a thousand bucks.
 
Even at $215, it seems like I could get by for the time being with the $20 TV from Craigslist. Not a permanent, nor an ideal, solution, but if it gets me through this wedding video, then it's worth it.

I don't understand why Vegas doesn't have the ability to preview out in SD with the colorspace associated with a DVD. Seems there should be a setting for that.
 
I'm wondering....is it the size of the screen itself? My preview is on a 19" screen, but the TV in the living room is 32". Could simply expanding the image to a 32" screen cause it to appear brighter (or darker), colors less saturated, etc? If I had a 32" LCD TV attached to my editing computer, would it make things easier?

Might still have to try moving my editing PC into the living room and using the 32" TV as my preview monitor.
 
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Okay, here's a little more information.

I put the Sony Color Bars clip on the timeline. With it displayed on my preview monitor (20" LCD TV), I used the TV's settings to adjust brightness, color, etc. according to what I've read it should look like. For one thing, the 3 bars underneath the vertical red bar should be, from left to right, black, then dark grey, then lighter grey. The black and dark grey bars should be almost, but not quite, indistinguishable from each other.

Okay, so I got it set that way. Then I rendered just the color bars clip from Vegas, using the NTSC DV Widescreen template. I took the rendered video and played it using VLC Player, playing it on the same preview monitor (LCD TV). Surprise! All 3 of the blocks under the red bar looked black -- no difference between them!

I discovered if I reduce the contract of the color bars on the timeline by -12, then the rendered video clip gives me the bars that look identical to how they should look -- black, dark grey, grey.

So either the contrast is increased upon rendering, or for some reason the VLC Player is introducing contrast. I looked at all of the settings in the player, and everything looks to be at the default.

Next step - burn a DVD of the color bars both with and without the -12 contrast setting. See which one -- if either -- displays correctly on my living room TV. This is a challenge!
 
Experiment completed.

When the DVD is played on the big TV, the clip of the colors bars straight as they are, with no contrast adjustment, shows VERY contrasty -- all three of those blocks (black, dark grey and grey) show pitch black.

However, when the clip that had -12 contrast applied to it was played, all 3 blocks were distinctly different, which means too LITTLE contrast, from my understanding.

Going to try another experiment -- 3 clips, 3 different levels of reduced contrast, like maybe -10, -8 and -6. We'll see what we see. :-)

Why didn't I do this ages ago???
 
Okay, it looks like the color bars with -10 contrast look correct when played from the DVD onto the 32" LCD TV.

So now I set the color bars clip to -10 contrast in my timeline, viewed it in the preview window on my 20" LCD TV attached to my editing PC, and adjusted the contrast using the TV's remote until those 3 blocks looked like they're supposed to look.

Now theoretically if something looks good on my 20" LCD, then burned to a DVD and played on the 32" LCD, it should look very much the same. Theoretically.
 
As much as I'm a fan of calibrating and getting things perfect, at a certain point you also have to realize that you won't have that control over how the final DVD is going to be played back. Definitely try to get it as good as you can, but I don't think that your client is going to be watching this one on a calibrated studio monitor (or a $20 SD tube TV off Craigslist).
Buy or borrow a calibration kit and get your monitor right. Do your best to make a movie worth watching. Stop freaking out if every TV isn't matching perfectly because they never will.
I make BluRays and DVDs every day and I have a few TVs for QC. Some are better than others but in the end I know that most people are going to watch it on a poorly setup TV. When I go to people's houses I see $30 DVD players connected over a single composite plug to beautiful $3,000 HD monitors. I see HD sets with the Zoom activated. Players set to show Pan & Scan. Colors that are so far off. Smoothing enabled for movies. The horrors go on and on... Get your monitor and workflow accurate and that's all you can do.
 
David W. Richardson said:
I don't understand why Vegas doesn't have the ability to preview out in SD with the colorspace associated with a DVD. Seems there should be a setting for that.
Click to expand...

It certainly does, but that requires a I/O card working in the same colorspace as a DVD, and you can't afford the $300 or less for that piece of kit...

So you are working in sRGB, not 601/709, and on a uncallibrated screen to boot….

Yes there's reason why my Dolby PR4200 monitor costs $30K, and the I/O card costs $2K and the software cost $20K and the scopes cost $5K and the disk array cost $27K, and the machine to run it all on cost $16K...

I make my investment in gear pay for it's self, and given my client base they would not accept anything less

It's going to be hard to match what i have with a $20.00 monitor fed a VGA signal, but it's not impossible either….. i didi that back in 2002 with a Discreet Flame and a Sony 24" 16x9 CRT monitor, i had the Kodak "Display manager" software and matching probe tho

See if you can round up one of those and profile it with the free lightspace software and a C4 probe, at least you will know where you are starting from, right now you are really trying to nail jello to the wall
 
I realize that the video is not going to look the same on every screen it's played on. Everyone adjusts their TV to suit their own personal preferences, just like my TV is adjusted to suit MY personal preferences. That being said, if I play a commercially-made DVD movie on my TV, it looks good to ME. So my goal is to make a DVD of this wedding video that, when played on my TV, looks good to ME. And I'm finding it very hard to do that.

Dermot, the suggestion was for me to use a $20 CRT television, outputting signal via firewire, through a DV camcorder, and inputting to the TV via either S-video or component cables. It's already been pointed out that using a CRT computer monitor, connected via VGA, would still be problematic.

I respect your investment in your craft. But I have zero resources for that sort of thing, so this is probably my last editing job. It's just not worth the headaches. I have had SO much trouble getting a decent image (color, brightness, levels, contrast, etc.) on a DVD played on my home entertainment system, and I attribute the bulk of the problem to the fact that I'm using a 20" LCD TV (connected via HDMI) as my preview monitor. I've tried and tried to get my preview monitor to display something similar to what my TV is giving me, but I continue to have problems. Maybe it's the 20" LCD TV, as David Jimerson suggests. Maybe it's the video card. Maybe it's drivers. Maybe it's Windows 7. Maybe it's DVD Architect. Maybe it's Vegas. Maybe it's solar flares. I don't know.

I appreciate all the help. I really do.
 
Andrius Simutis said:
I don't think that your client is going to be watching this one on a calibrated studio monitor (or a $20 SD tube TV off Craigslist).
Click to expand...

I don't say to preview on the TV because I expect anyone to watch it on the TV; I say to preview on the TV because it'll give a more accurate preview as concerns what a DVD is capable of displaying. The shade of blue you see while you're editing on your computer monitor or HDTV preview might not be the shade of blue you see when it gets to DVD. If you preview to the TV, you'll have a better idea of what it's going to look like.
 
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