how to tell what im doing without a calibrated monitor?

nycineaste

nycineaste

Well-known member
so i graded something on one computer, and on another pc it looks like crap, obviously I have to get a calibrated monitor one day if i hope to grade anything watchable on anything other than youtube one day.

what are other tools for this tho-

do you advanced folks use a waveform monitor to make sure you got your highs and lows?

I used an "auto levels" plugin since my nle has no waveform view, but of course this just made sure i had a full raneg of tones, which doenst fix the overall brghtness/darkness of the footage

guessing thats vital as i move forward

do yo u guys watch your stuff on different tvs and monitors to check it ? thats what wed do when making electronic music/mixing down

hope it deosnt sound like im asking for whole mastering/grading tutorial or anything

wondering whats next on my radar and what i should try in the meantime to get my footage watchable on more than one pc
 
Since the absence of a standard, there is no technical possible way to make sure your footy looks the same on all screens.

CRTs, computer monitors, TVs, home projectors and theater projectors, all of them use a different gamma curve and a different color space.

I do - at least a one grading for TV (709), for web (sRGB) and theater (P3).

Frank
 
Without a calibrated monitor and without scopes, you really can't. There's no magic button; you're flying blind.
 
I would add ..using the WFM is as important in CC/ Grade as it is while shooting ..and I would avoid "Auto Levels".

What NLE does not have a WFM?
 
Speaking as a total amateur in this field, I generally just try and modify in post as little as possible. I've noticed I only get into real trouble when I push something hard... bringing the whites waaay up may look great on my computer, but they'll look like crap on my TV. But if I just bring them up a bit, it may not look "great" on either, but it'll look "pretty good" on both.
 
nycineaste said:
the home/budget version of vegas that I clearly have to upgrade from.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately there is a 'minimum ante' required to move beyond certain levels... I've looked for a Open Source/GPL editing setup for 'years' and still nothing is out there that really can come anywhere 'close' to the expensive packages.

I tested out an early 'beta' of this lightworks, but since I don't have Windows based PC's... I've only just used it a couple of times to see if 'it worked at all'... there's a 'pro' subscription of $60 yearly, which I think includes additional codecs etc.

I don't know if it includes 'scopes' or not.

Otherwise most of the other 'free software' offerings are pretty limited to cutting kid's birthdays and sporting events, or family holiday vacations and subjecting relatives and friends to this sort of fare as revenge for having to buy girl scout cookies from said friends and relatives.
 
To color correct (and more so to color grade) you need to be able to see the image. To do that you need at least a monitor that can show you the target workingspace. And... it has to be calibrated so that it has a neutral grayscale from black to white, and the gamma and gamut are within spec. Then, once you've graded to that, your work will look reasonably good to anyone with a reasonable consumer (uncalibrated) monitor.

What this means is, if you are delivering only to YouTube and the like, you can probably get away with a calibrated computer monitor. If you are delivering to DVD / Blu-ray / broadcast TV, you need a calibrated production monitor (or at least a calibrated HDTV, and the means to get it a decent signal).

Once you have this, you need tools to tell you what your eye can't see. You need a waveform monitor to help you set black and white points, and set contrast. You need a vectorscope or RGB parade (hopefully, both) to help you with color casts, balance, and (with the vectorscope) making sure you stay within broadcast safe colors.

As your image quality requirements increase, you'll need a decent grading package like DaVinci Resolve or better.

How far you go depends on how much you need, or how much you can justify.

First place to start though is to get Van Hurkman's Color Correction Handbook. This will tell you how, and why, and may show you how to do more with less. Did for me anyway.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Unfortunately there is a 'minimum ante' required to move beyond certain levels... I've looked for a Open Source/GPL editing setup for 'years' and still nothing is out there that really can come anywhere 'close' to the expensive packages.
Yes Lightworks ha
I tested out an early 'beta' of this lightworks, but since I don't have Windows based PC's... I've only just used it a couple of times to see if 'it worked at all'... there's a 'pro' subscription of $60 yearly, which I think includes additional codecs etc.

I don't know if it includes 'scopes' or not.

Otherwise most of the other 'free software' offerings are pretty limited to cutting kid's birthdays and sporting events, or family holiday vacations and subjecting relatives and friends to this sort of fare as revenge for having to buy girl scout cookies from said friends and relatives.
Click to expand...

Yes Lightworks has scopes. I'm learning the free version for now with DV footage with good results. Like it a lot. It has pretty sophisticated color grading options built right in. I have been playing with some casually shot sundown beach footage from a couple of years ago and am able to significantly improve the out of camera look from my Canon, including color saturation, midtone contrast and highlight and shadow recovery. I was actually surprised at what I could recover from the original footage. $60 a year for a major NLE program with this kind of power and sophistication is a serious bargain.
I use an Imaging Science Foundation certified calibrated LG 32" LCD TV as a reference display for color grading with good results. Grades seem to hold up reasonably well on my computer monitors and with different default factory settings on the LG though they do look a bit different than the calibrated expert setting. sRGB and REC709 are essentially the same color space, though they use different reference gammas. Footage corrected for REC709 will look a little flatter with less contrast on a sRGB standard monitor, but colors should look pretty much the same if the calibration is reasonable.
Cheap computer monitors are lousy reference displays for any kind of color grading. TV's are much better these days.
 
nycineaste said:
do you advanced folks use a waveform monitor to make sure you got your highs and lows?

I used an "auto levels" plugin since my nle has no waveform view, but of course this just made sure i had a full raneg of tones, which doenst fix the overall brghtness/darkness of the footage

guessing thats vital as i move forward

do yo u guys watch your stuff on different tvs and monitors to check it ? thats what wed do when making electronic music/mixing down

wondering whats next on my radar and what i should try in the meantime to get my footage watchable on more than one pc
Click to expand...

Not sure what you should try. When I first got up and running, I made room in my budget for a Monitor with internal LUt's and calibrating software built specific for the machine. I felt it was just something I had to have. I shot stills at the time and I can easily say until I got that Monitor, there was no way to be certain what I'd get when ordering a print.
I do use my waveform monitor. And to be truthful, It is way nice to have. But in my mind, nothing supplants being able to see your work.

And so it is akin to that example. You will never know what your footage "LOOKS" like without a proper monitor. Of course everyone knows you can color-grade to a given space and you will never control what other folks see based on their viewing station; TV, PC, etc. But you will know when you have delivered something to a client, or contest or worse; your boss! And you'll know that your stuff is dead on the money, give or take a few pennies.

A film festival I went to early this year had many Shorts including mine. On their theater screen my stuff looked just like I had envisioned it and as I had rendered it. Not sure about other folks' films, but there were definitely some turds there in the color-space and even the rendering-codec/wrappers.

I've chosen to forgo other things such as lenses and rig to afford the items I know are necessary to a beautiful outcome. Lenses. Believe it or not I didn't even have one Canon lens to go with my Canon Camera for over a year. I just used my Nikon Lenses and an adapter.

You need to save your pennies for two things as I see it. 1, a Professional editing software, and 2, a Good Monitor that calibrates well.

Cheers,
 
Here is what may likely be the bare minimum to get you in a decent ballpark:

An HDMI-out source for your editing machine, that works with your software. A black Magic card is about $175; a Matrox Mini box is about $400 or so. There are laptop and PCI solutions, some under $400.

A decent quality HDMI monitor with blue-only. A lot of the lilliputs have blue-only now - can't say how good they are. The cheap little Marshall DSLR monitor (V-LCD50) has dropped in price to something like $300-$400; you'll see them go on eBay for $250 or so. It's a nice looking little monitor, but small. I'm quite fond of the thing on set, nice image and great viewing angles (unlike the crap repurposed vehicle LCDs with a 1/4'20 hole stuck on 'em).

I use smaller Marshalls on-camera. Even the little 5" is better than nothing for editing/grading. I have a Matrox Mini which goes to a $12 HDMI splitter; that feeds the little Marshall and a 22" HDTV. I calibrate the Marshall with color bars/Blue only, and then use the TV controls to get it as close as possible. Big screen to see details and a decent overview of color, little screen for more accuracy. Until I can afford a larger grading monitor (LOTS of $$) this is way, way better than nothing... and it gives me a decent on-camera monitor as well. The whole setup was well under a grand.

I can get the TV pretty dang close - reds never match though. TV's always a little more orange on saturated reds. I imagine TVs are just all over the map. I don't use it for critical decisions, clients like it when it's an over-the-shoulder-edit day.

It's a far cry from Skywalker Ranch, but hey, a few hundred bucks for some confidence is worth it.
 
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