How do you avoid scaling on a flat scrreen.

R

ralfmouth

Well-known member
I just moved my PC from a CRT over to a flatscreen lcd tv and am really missing the CRT. The scaling is making for blotchy video with aliasing and moire all over the place. Its hard to judge video quality in post or compare different cameras anymore. I've tweaked Media Player Classic and graphic card settings to where i think the tv is no longer scaling.... Vimeo files and my DSLR files are looking MUCH better but i am not 100% sure they are being displayed natively 1:1 (btw does anbody know correct settings for this in MPC). I am wondering how to completely avoid this...my CRT monitor did no scaling, dithering, interplolation, local dimming, anti-aliasing ect. How do people deal with this problem? Thanks.
 
LCD screens usually look awful at anything but their native resolution. That's why I always buy 1920x1080 screens, since that's my main resolution target. My guess is that you have one of the bigger, higher-res monitors, right? If you're doing the scaling in software (i.e. your player scales 1920x1080 up to your monitor's resolution, and then you send that full resolution feed to the monitor), all those issues should be fixable with the appropriate software/options. Anything rescaled by a weird factor will always look softer than native resolution stuff, but rescaling-induced dithering, aliasing/moire, etc, should be avoidable with proper processing.
 
Samuel H said:
rescaling-induced dithering, aliasing/moire, etc, should be avoidable with proper processing.
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Can i ask what software you use Samuel H, and video card/ display / software settings.
I'm hooked up to my native 1080 samsung TV which is set to the "just scan" (no scaling) option.
The video card (GTx 570) is set to "adapter scaling" (there isn't any "no scan" option).
Media Player Classic is set to "no rendering" and "full screen" which looks much better - this made the big difference.
I haven't tried Avid studio yet on this tv but i'm hoping there will be an option to avoid scaling there too.
Do you remember a few years ago how bad LCD scaling looked. Its much better now but i still want no part of it.
Just wondering if there was something else i might have missed. I guess many people don't sweat it so much.
 
We use an output device like a Kona Card or Matrox MX02 to properly drive the monitor at the correct size, frame rate, and color space.
 
You can't beat something like the above solutions (Blackmagic cards start at under $200, too). and with a cheap HDMI splitter, you can feed a big affordable HDTV, and also a calibrated on-camera monitor when you're editing. I've had zero luck really getting a TV calibrated properly, but a Marshall or similar with blue-only will get you very close. I use a small Marshall to verify color (when it's not on a camera) and a bigger HDTV mounted to the wall for seeing things on a real TV unscaled.

Cool thing is, you can then take the TV with a stand mount on set, use it for a client monitor, etc. Smaller clients really get impressed by that.
 
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