Need Color Correction Advice

[JonathanLB]

I would say this belongs in a post-production forum, but it really doesn't as this forum has none that work for this, and DPs should know color correction I would think. We're going to have our DP come help Thursday...

The issue is that the picture looks great on the monitor, and by "the monitor" I mean it looks great on an Apple 20" monitor, looks great on a 17" Panasonic HD/SD professional reference monitor (the $2,500 variety), but it looks like crap on my 40" Samsung 1080p HDTV. It looks washed out, basically, it looks like a bit camcorder-y, and isn't rich and nicely colored like the version we are seeing. It makes no sense to me. How can it look professional and excellent on the reference monitor and look pretty weak on the screen? It has nothing to do with the resolution, that part looks fine, it's just the colors. If we push the color correction more we can probably almost for certain make it look good on the TV, but it will be overly dark on the computer, which doesn't really make sense to my mind. Which do we trust? We obviously want it to look good when played on a theater screen.

I don't think we've had these problems so much on the music videos we colored, they look good on the TV, but they still look better 1) On a theater screen (oddly enough), 2) On the full Quicktime file on the computer, or 3) Even a compressed Quicktime file.

The TV itself is about a year old, settings have been adjusted repeatedly, that doesn't help much, though the movie setting looks better than the normal or dynamic settings. It still makes no sense -- I watch 2-3 hours of TV or movies on this thing every day, it all looks excellent, so it can't be any settings that are messed up or I'd be complaining when I popped in my Blu-ray movies, or normal DVDs.

We are using Color 1.0 to grade, but this is not so much a software issue as a how-do-you-know-what-to-trust with the image and what do we color for? It seems like it would be silly to color it different for the computer than for the TV, I mean drastically different, to get the desired effect, and since we're editing on a computer it's not easy to do that anyway.

Anyone else had issues like this?

 

[mtd2007]

I ran into pretty much the same issues with my most recent project.

As a general rule (I think) even meticulously color corrected footage is going to vary on output as you switch between player and screen setups. It's maddening, especially when you are used to seeing professional content on TV and DVDs strike the middle ground more perfectly (a result of bigger budgets and bigger, more experienced crews working all facets of production) but I think it really comes down to finding the best middle ground that you can get after as many tests as you feel are necessary.

For what it's worth, once I got past the fact that there's really very little you can do apart from that, in cases when you are not in control of the output settings and equipment, I was able to sort of accept a "middleground" color correction scheme that was only slightly pushed away from my optimal monitor settings and towards a solution for the washing out and the loss of richness.

And like anything else, it comes down to the project itself. I went crazy, initially, trying to get my color looking perfect on all set-ups. Impossible. So I decided on the above for my SD-DVDs, and actually created a new file, with different color settings, for my theatrical projection (full-rez QT file played through a projector).

My opinion would be to ask yourself who is going to end up watching your project and how, and also, what degree of control you have. In a theatre, if you rent, you'll have control. You should be able to test, and play it however you want (depending on their equipment or whether or not you bring in a rental projector). For fests, it will vary, but they (hopefully) should be able to tell you optimal settings. My project actually looked the best as a high-profile venue in NYC. Their projector brought my color corrected images almost exactly into line with my reference monitor.

I also decided that a larger percentage of my personal audience for DVD distribution, at least for now, would probably be watching on older projection TVs with SD-DVDs. Which is why I grudgingly decided to accept the circumstances of the HDTV-SD DVD color quality for now. They can always tweak their settings, maybe someday I can throw them a Blu-ray disc, and, at the end of the day, the story and the acting and the sound and the editing will all still be the same even if you aren't satisfied with the color.

This is what I tell myself...

Anyway, that's all I really know. Someone else may have more/better advice for both of us.

You'll figure it out.

 

[mtd2007]

I also don't know how much (or any) of the situation might be due to the nature/format/color space of the source footage...and/or the lighting/exposure. I shot on the HVX and was dealing much of the time with hard shadows (noirish flick).

 

[Ryan Patrick O'Hara]

Not to quote my incredibly dorky tech professor from college (he didn't make this up but laughed every time he said it)

NTSC

Never The Same Color


It's the one HORRIBLE thing about cinematography. The television industry has not completely understood the importance of picture quality. They try hard, but fail to reach the standard set by professional monitors.

I think the technology is here with all these new LCD HD monitors, yet they are always miscolored, poor gamma and etc.

What really bothers me, is that people who will eventually watch my films... even nice TV's which can get really close to a good picture, do not know how to properly calibrate a television... so they just don't.

Sigh*

All I can say is get used to it, calibrate on professional monitor with set color bars, and send your film off into the world with the best hopes and prayers you can muster.

ps: Screenings of work at low budget film festivals make DP's want to pull the fire alarm.

 

[Michael B. McGee]

i think mtd2007 said it best, "know who's gonna watch it on what unit and color correct for that". color correct for that device and except it. or make everyone come over to your controlled studio environment that wants to view your project. that would be ideal. A DP controlled studio. "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to McGee Theatres. Please enjoy the film!"

 

[Chamber005]

Why wouldn't you just set your monitor to reflect the same parameters as the "average" HDTV? That way at least you know what you're seeing on the small(er) screen is pretty much what will be there on the big(ger) screen.

Bottom line, though, the more you blow something up (unless it's film or a REALLY high end digi cam), the more noise is going to come in. That's something we just have to live with (until the Scarlet comes along, maybe).

Luckily most of our digi films are never blown up to theatre-size. I heard this one guy telling a horror story about his EX1 footage being blown up in a theatre. Said he was embarressed through the whole film because it looked like a home movie.

I think these under 15K cameras, with enough post help, can inch their way across a good sized HDTV. But when you blow those suckers up to theatre size -- be prepared to see something far, far worse than you expected.

In the end, though, we must always shoot in regards to where we want the final project to be viewed. Next time drag your massive HDTV to the set and plug it in.

 

[sojioguns]

You need to ask yourself some questions. How do you project to the consumer HDTV? By DVD or via some dedicated hardware with your NLE. If it is via DVD, then your encoding settings are off.
My rule of thumb is:
USE YOUR SCOPES!!

 

[Blaine]

Why wouldn't you just set your monitor to reflect the same parameters as the "average" HDTV? That way at least you know what you're seeing on the small(er) screen is pretty much what will be there on the big(ger) screen.

Because...

NTSC

Never The Same Color

It's the one HORRIBLE thing about cinematography. The television industry has not completely understood the importance of picture quality. They try hard, but fail to reach the standard set by professional monitors.

And which "average" HDTV do you want to use as your standard. They are all different.

 

[SomewhereinLA]

Not to quote my incredibly dorky tech professor from college (he didn't make this up but laughed every time he said it)

NTSC

Never The Same Color

LOL, you got it wrong, it's Never Twice the Same Color...

To get back to the thread, the reason is probably because your monitors are not calibrated with color bars using the blue channel. What you need to do is to calibrate all your monitors the same. If you google "Color calibration " you'll find plenty of "how to " links.

cheers.

 

[pveal]

I think these under 15K cameras, with enough post help, can inch their way across a good sized HDTV. But when you blow those suckers up to theatre size -- be prepared to see something far, far worse than you expected.

Or not. I have had SD video projected 'theatre size' and I been suprised how lack of sh*t it looked, it wasn't an epiphany and i didn't expect it to look like 35mm. It all depends in how you shoot it to begin with, how you treat it in post and the quality of the projector.

 

[Ted Spencer]

I just checked an SD DVD I shot on an HVX200a (at 720/30p) and edited in FCP (then downrezzed in Compressor) on my Panasonic PT-AX100U 720p projector, at about 12' diagonal, from a viewing distance of about 16', and it looked great. It also looked great on several computer screens and a 50" Pioneer plasma. So I don't think something like an HVX will consign you to a crappy big-screen picture no matter what. The HVX footage on "Cloverfield" looked pretty darn good on the massive screen I saw it on as well.

I think proper monitor calibration is the key. The system we edited on (like my own) has a second 23" ACD monitor connected to a Matrox MXO, and was custom-calibrated using a Spyder2 system. The MXO was also mirrored to a 19" Samsung 720p LCD HDTV set, which I tweaked by eye based on the calibrated ACD. What I saw on the ACD very closely represents what I saw an all the other systems, after considering the "Never Twice Same Color" factor.

If your monitor setup is not properly calibrated, all bets are off...