MX02 Mini and Bravia LCD - shocking revelations: or am I seeing things?

I

ian_h

Active member
I've just got an MX02 mini to go with my new Mac Pro editing system, as I suspected that editing with Digital Cinema Desktop Preview was not giving me the full story. I expected to be informed, but frankly I'm a bit shocked. This footage was shot on my GH13 lpowell 40mbps hack, and I'm pretty sure this particular shot was with a 28mm/2.8 Zeiss lens, so glass was not the problem.

The Bravia doesn't do 25p (which I mostly shoot at), so I'm looking at it through 50i out on the mini, but I've also conformed the same clip to 23.98 in Cinema Tools and checked it at 23.98p on the mini/Bravia and the story is no different.

The Bravia/MX02 combinations appears to be taking the deficiencies of the camera and rubbing my face in them. Here's a still... I don't know if you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. In FCP on the computer monitoring it looks ok. I can see a bit of blocking, noise and aliasing, but not such a bad result. On the Bravia/MX02, however, it looks TERRIBLE. Really not up to scratch.

Harbour.jpg

This is a detailed scene, given, and I have shot a lot of stuff that looks gorgeous, but is the monitoring doing its job and showing me what I need to know, or am I doing something terribly wrong here?

I'd really like some feedback on this monitoring system from anyone who knows it well.
 
I'm trying to get answers to this over at the Matrox forum and digging up little. Are users here happy with the MX02/GH combination?

The MX02 on a Sony Bravia 32" panel is making my footage look terrible. Any little bit of blocking or aliasing is showing up as incredible nasty jagged edges and noise in the image. It's taking footage that I thought was quite decent and making me feel like I need a new camera. And I know it's not a glass problem.
 
For anyone who digs up this thread with similar problems... it turned out after loads of hair-pulling that the problem was the Sony Bravia (32EX400 model, I think). It was a joke - so much digital noise and aliasing and mess that I was becoming totally paranoid about my footage. Returned it, auditioned all the options (we don't have the biggest range down here), which included Samsung, Telefunken, Toshiba etc. and walked away with an LG 32LD460. This thing is a revelation compared to the Sony - has some rudimentary inbuilt calibration tools, 1:1 pixel (though it doesn't work with 720p - none of them seem to) and a picture that's just leagues better than the cheap Sony. There's no point in buying an expensive LCD TV - rather get a proper FSI monitor, but for now this will serve it's purpose.

So, hopefully when Matrox sort out their issues (and apparently a solution is coming in 2 weeks) cause the blue-channel calibration is an outright lie and simply doesn't work... I will have a decent budget colour grading system.
 
You could have big problems ahead with LG TV as monitor :-) It has big bugs in this regard. Plus current year models are complete mess, so you can get IPS, or MVA from different sources.
But 10 point calibration is pretty good.
 
Say more...? What does IPS and MVA mean?

Did a fairly intense comparison testing footage in the stores on all the different models, and this LG (32LD460) was noticeably better than the rest in terms of noise and aliasing. Unfortunately I have no pro reference monitor to compare to at this point (may rent one for the day to do some calibration) but it looks pretty decent to my eyes so far.
 
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