Monitor for editing and color grading

Doug_EX

Doug_EX

Well-known member
Hi,

I have 2 LG flatron w2243t monitors that are ok for web videos but anything more than that requires a better monitor of course.
I saw on bh photo a NEC PA242W-BK 24" that seem very good.

what do you guys think?
 
Doug_EX said:
I have 2 LG flatron w2243t monitors that are ok for web videos but anything more than that requires a better monitor of course.
I saw on bh photo a NEC PA242W-BK 24" that seem very good.

what do you guys think?
Click to expand...

If you're going to color grade on it, it has to support the color space you are targeting. Otherwise, you can't see what you're doing. So, if you're grading for HDTV, you'd need a monitor that can show you the REC.709 color space. QHD is REC.2020. DCPs use CIE XYZ. And of course if it's for the web you'd need sRGB, which most any computer monitor can supply.

The monitor you choose will also have to be calibrated. You'll want it to be right in the middle of the spec. for the color space you are using.
 
Thanks Bruce! Until now my work was almost 100% for web (except a few low budget ads for regional tv). But it may change a bit in the next few months. I am working on 2 documentaries that may go to TV (really not sure yet but it's a possibility). I calibrated my 2 LG monitors yesterday and realized that my blacks were really too high (before calibration). I have a video card that can output 10bit too (NVidia K4200).
 
Doug
Stay away from the Nec monitors.
Bought one from BH and return it right away....
It's not made for video editing but for photo editing.
I had a lot of problems with it on my iMac and FCP X.
Tried to use it with AJA T-Tap and after hours of "chatting "with a NEC representative I gave up.
The guy admitted that their monitors are aimed more to the photo editing.
I bought instead a HP Dreamcolor and never looked back.
Take care...
 
geani66 said:
Doug
Stay away from the Nec monitors.
Bought one from BH and return it right away....
It's not made for video editing but for photo editing.
I had a lot of problems with it on my iMac and FCP X.
Tried to use it with AJA T-Tap and after hours of "chatting "with a NEC representative I gave up.
The guy admitted that their monitors are aimed more to the photo editing.
I bought instead a HP Dreamcolor and never looked back.
Take care...
Click to expand...

Thanks!
which model exactly did you bought?
 
Doug_EX said:
Thanks Bruce! Until now my work was almost 100% for web (except a few low budget ads for regional tv). But it may change a bit in the next few months. I am working on 2 documentaries that may go to TV (really not sure yet but it's a possibility).
Click to expand...

What you perhaps want is called a production monitor, or broadcast monitor (among other names). Lots of companies make them, from Flanders Scientific to JVC, Panasonic, etc.

Broadcast monitors typically offer more tools than just support for the REC.709 colorspace. Tools that help with colorgrading. Like vector scopes, waveform monitors, RGB parades, various overlays, etc. Often some sound tools too. Some are calibrated by sending them back to the factory (usually very rapid turnaround).

I suggest that for colorgrading, you'll want a minimum of a 21" screen. Bigger perhaps. IOW, what you want is sufficient image area that you can see what you're doing. I say this because there are bunches of small production monitors out there for working with cameras at capture time. Useful as they are in the field, I would not want to try to colorgrade on a 7" monitor no matter how color accurate it is. Just sayin'.
 
I posted this in another thread but, 2016 is a Olympics year.

In the past I have purchased 2 Panasonic broadcast monitors which were only used during the Olympics, for a substantial savings along with full new unit warranty.

Just something to think about.

Dave
 
Bruce Watson said:
What you perhaps want is called a production monitor, or broadcast monitor (among other names). Lots of companies make them, from Flanders Scientific to JVC, Panasonic, etc.

Broadcast monitors typically offer more tools than just support for the REC.709 colorspace. Tools that help with colorgrading. Like vector scopes, waveform monitors, RGB parades, various overlays, etc. Often some sound tools too. Some are calibrated by sending them back to the factory (usually very rapid turnaround).

I suggest that for colorgrading, you'll want a minimum of a 21" screen. Bigger perhaps. IOW, what you want is sufficient image area that you can see what you're doing. I say this because there are bunches of small production monitors out there for working with cameras at capture time. Useful as they are in the field, I would not want to try to colorgrade on a 7" monitor no matter how color accurate it is. Just sayin'.
Click to expand...
They are not cheap. I cannot justify buying a 3000$ dollars monitor for the work I do. I don't do high end stuff and I don't really need scopes integrated in the monitor because I use the scopes from my software (premiere and speedgrade). Eizo seem to make great monitors too, the CG line seems nice. For sure I will buy at least a 21" monitor. I will be keeping one of my 22" replacing the second with a better monitor...so I want them to match in size.
 
So is there a monitor out there that can do multiple color spaces for different distribution media, or would you actually need a color accurate computer monitor for web stuff, another monitor for TV/broadcast, another for projected stuff, etc. etc.?
 
I picked up an HP Dreamcolor Z24X: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1044900-REG/hp_hp_dreamcolor_z24x_professional.html It's basically a 10 bit monitor (8+2 FRC) but I doubt you can tell the difference. I use it with a Blackmagic Declink mini monitor. The monitor has been dumped on a lot because there were some early QC issues (screen uniformity, backlight problems) but I think they were mostly in early models. I picked up mine really cheap on Amazon, so I was willing to take a chance and so far so good...
 
Bruce Watson said:
What you perhaps want is called a production monitor, or broadcast monitor (among other names). Lots of companies make them, from Flanders Scientific to JVC, Panasonic, etc.

Broadcast monitors typically offer more tools than just support for the REC.709 colorspace. Tools that help with colorgrading. Like vector scopes, waveform monitors, RGB parades, various overlays, etc. Often some sound tools too. Some are calibrated by sending them back to the factory (usually very rapid turnaround).

I suggest that for colorgrading, you'll want a minimum of a 21" screen. Bigger perhaps. IOW, what you want is sufficient image area that you can see what you're doing. I say this because there are bunches of small production monitors out there for working with cameras at capture time. Useful as they are in the field, I would not want to try to colorgrade on a 7" monitor no matter how color accurate it is. Just sayin'.
Click to expand...


Just my .02... I know FSI(Flanders's) monitors seem to have this incredible reputation, but I have yet to see one of their LCD monitors(and I have several friends with them) that impress me image wise. They are supposedly accurate and calibrated, but if they're showing what my camera's REALLY look like, then my cameras need to go back to Panasonic, Canon and Sony ASAP for service, because I don't shoot log, but every time I see an image on an FSI monitor, it's flat and boring. And I'm not the only person with that opinion.

If you can afford it, get a Sony PVM series OLED. GORGEOUS picture and accurate right out of the box. I had mine calibrated and there was very little difference before and after. I received a report with it showing before and after when it came back from calibration and you would have almost thought Sony calibrated it before it left the factory because it was so close.
 
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All cheaper monitors won't give you nice deep black levels (below 0.05 nits).

You'll want a decent computer display if 3000 is out of your budget and 21" minimum size.

I was in the same situation end of last year and decided for the Eizo CG247.

It's a nice computer display with it's own probe for calibration. It's precalibrated for Rec709 and DCI-P3 already, covers a wide gamut and has a nice piece of software.
So you can buy the Eizo and start right now. But you should at least buy something like a BMD Mini Monitor to provide a clean video signal. Don't use your computers HDMI!
You won't have the most accurate calibration, because the probe and the software aren't the best of the world, but you don't need to dig deep into calibration and color theory.

I have the Eizo and think it's okay. I also bought the BMD HDLink Pro to provide a 10bit signal via its DisplayPort, because the MiniMonitor and the Eizo won't give 10bit over their HDMI connection.
But calibrated 8bit are a good start! If you calibrate with the Eizo ColorNavigator Software, you are close as money can get you below 2000 bucks incl. the Min Monitor.

Recently I also bought external probes and better software and can calibrate my Eizo very close to DCI Class 1 specs, only the black laevels are still to high (0.1-0.15 nits).

To be honest, I spent more for the extra equipment (i1 Pro/ i1 Display Pro probes, Lightspace CMS software and the BMD HDLink Pro box) than for the monitor and I should have bought one of FSIs broadcast monitors from the beginning.
But I only need 100% accuracy because I'm grading serious stuff for TV and cinema lately and don't like surprises.

You can also start with the BMD Mini Monitor and the EIZO right now and you will be close enough for most jobs, too.
 
Thanks Erik!
Do you think connecting directly on my display port (10 bit on my Nvidia k4200) would be an improvement over HDMI?
 
Doug_EX said:
Thanks, but the Sony PVM monitors are way out of my budget.
Click to expand...

Hard to say, but the problem is that you'll receive a signal from your graphics card rather than a dedicated video signal.
There's a lot of MOJO involved in the graphic signal: OS, driver, ICCs.... Nobody knows what's going on.

The MiniMonitor is a 150$ item and does definitely help.
 
Bruce Watson said:
Then your best bet is probably a good HDTV that you can have calibrated. And of course some way to interface to it from your computer/NLE.
Click to expand...

My setup - dual computer monitors for editing, timelines, control palettes, etc;

BlackMagic card that outputs HDMI to a powered splitter;

That goes to an HDTV and to my 5" Marshall on-camera monitor on an arm.

The HDTV is a Samsung, with blue-only and color controls - but it's a consumer TV and I can't get it as dialed-in as the little Marshall.

So, nothing matches, and I'm only using blue-only and bars for calibration of the HDMI screens.

If I'm delivering for broadcast, I'm relying on the 5" for color and the 22" to get an idea of how it looks on a consumer TV - -meanwhile my editing monitor looks darker and less saturated. If I'm delivering for the web, I just try to find a decent median.

Should all this stuff match? In the early days of desktop publishing, we tuned monitors to match printing press output, where blacks can gain significantly. For fashion color work, I'd even have proofs pulled and use adjustment layers to match the proof, then more layers to color correct, and trash the proofing layers - complex but effective.

I kinda wish all my stuff matched - will something like a spyder give me more accurate REC colors on my computer screens, or are those designed for photos and press work?
 
If your monitor isn't accurately calibrated to REC709 with the rigth gamma, your off with every monitor.

The gamut (color space) of REC709 is the same as sRGB, but gamma is totally different.
I use a gamma of 2.2 in a darkened room with 6500K ambient light behind the monitor.
The black will look a little washed out compared to most computer displays, though...

Also, your white point is important. Most monitors, esp. with Apple go higher and higher these days.
You'll need 6500K, which might look warm at first.

Another thing is max. brightness and contrast. Good OLEDs have black levels of 0.05 nits, but most computer displays won't go lower than 0.2 when they are calibrated.
Max. brightness should be set to 100nits if your ambientis darkened.

So how do you get there?
1) You'll need some sort of instrument to measure brightness/color of your monitor. The cheapest but good colorimeter around is the XRite i1 Display Pro
2) a software that uses the colorimeter to characterize your monitor through measuring a number of patches. Lightspace and CALMan are well known, then there's Argyll/DispcalGui as freeware
3) the LUT has to be put in your signal path. this can either be the monitor (Flanders, Eizo CG-line....), a LUT-box (AJA LUT-box, eeColor box...), or your software (i.e. Resolve).
Many people let the OS handle the display color with ICC-profiles, but this will never be accurate enough for serious grading

The Eizo CG line is a nice monitor, because you get a very good computer display with built-in colorimeter and a nice piece of CMS software included. You can begin with just the monitor and start with a certain accuracy.
If you want to get better, you can buy or rent better probes (i.e. a spectrometer as a reference probe), or better software later.
I use Lightspace because it can produce very accurate LUTs ( I use 4000-8000 patches for characterization) and upload 3D-LUTs directly into the Eizo CG-line.
Here's more info:

http://www.lightillusion.com/tech_info.html
http://calman.spectracal.com/user-guides.html
http://dispcalgui.hoech.net/#download
 
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