Production monitor vs. computer monitor - any thoughts from post experts?

[morgan_moore]

There is a misunderstanding going on here. You don't use quality calibrated monitor with an assumption that the image will look that great on all consumer monitors out there. You do it so you can make adjustments to the footage based on what's actually there in the first place and only when you have your master you can sleep peacefully knowing that if someone is seeing crappy image it's because of THEIR crappy gear or THEIR crappy settings. Imagine the other way around: make your master on a crappy monitor and then you can never know if your end client sees things the way they see because of their crappy gear or YOURS.

Nope no misunderstanding. Nice monitors in nice darkened controlled rooms will allow you to see deep in to the blacks. Your punter watching on a device on the bus to work will miss all those darks and therefore miss bits of the story.

So for delivery aimed at consumers viewing on the web it is sensible basically to grade in a "smaller" space (aka critical info not to dark or light)

The ideal would be to grade on a really top end monitor and have some output luts to convert to a consumer gamma - but considering the cost of that I think the "crappy" approach is not dumb or mis conceived

there is an arrogance about "blaming the customer" if they don't have a good experience - we are here to serve our clients by delivering the best experience for thier customers. Well for commercial work anyway.

 

[Nirv]

Nirv;

i have alot of respect for you, so it's a rare day i find grounds for disagreement with you, but this is one....

i do alot of broadcast work, in my own suite, and in other suites, i've just revised my CV for the year, and my headcount for gradeing / finishing is 18 feature fiims & 16 TV movies in the last decade, so that's one every 90 days more or less for the last 10 years... and that's not even looking at the series and comericals, that list goes for pages and pages more...

not one of those was done with a crappy mon, or an uncallibrated mon, or even on a mon with dodgey callibration... actualy i've not seen a crappy boradcast mon in years, since the last BVM32D was put to rest...

lately i've been working with;
Sony 4k 30" BVM-OLED
Christe 2200
Dolby PR4200
Sony25" HD BVM-OLED
55" broadacast series Pana Plasma with an AJA LUTbox

not a crappy mon in sight anywhere really, and we have the callibration reports to prove it

When you are delivering to networks the price of a crap mon is far far far too high, and a iMac's retnia screen fall into the "crap" list unfortuantly

I have great respect for your knowledge and I'm sure you have your colour management nailed down and you work in a field that absolutely requires it. Do you really think BBC daytime and early evening pre watershed programmes or thousands of hours of bargain basement reality TV crap are finished in rooms like yours? Not on your nelly, most programmes are not even colour corrected and are legalised with brute force and ignorance.

I don't work in broadcast, we produce animated content for projection and a bit of corporate work that is almost all for internal consumption, internal marketing.

We've always taken colour management seriously and always bought the best desktop grade monitors from Eizo, to Dreamcolors and NEC but we are pragmatists and buyng a £16k broadcast display is of absolutely no value to me whatsoever when the mode of reception is an uncalibrated boardroom projector, a crappy desktop Dell or if we're really lucky an iPad screen. We have to be one or two steps above our clientele but we don't have to pile on ridiculous levels of overhead onto our business that would make us uncompetitive in our market. Would I like all your kit? Yes but do I need it? Absolutely not.

The iMac screen compares very favourably with screens costing the same price as the iMac as a whole, it's better than my most expensive Dreamcolor so maybe crap to you but absolutely banging value for me.

*Edit*

I saw this review of the latest 5K iMac and couldn't resist updating this post. Seems the author of this review, a broadcast editor, was equally impressed by the quality of the iMac screen an even dispensed using the broadcast monitor in the OB truck.

http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/art...broadcast-job-real-editing-and-real-deadlines

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

Nope no misunderstanding. Nice monitors in nice darkened controlled rooms will allow you to see deep in to the blacks. Your punter watching on a device on the bus to work will miss all those darks and therefore miss bits of the story.

So for delivery aimed at consumers viewing on the web it is sensible basically to grade in a "smaller" space (aka critical info not to dark or light)

The ideal would be to grade on a really top end monitor and have some output luts to convert to a consumer gamma - but considering the cost of that I think the "crappy" approach is not dumb or mis conceived

there is an arrogance about "blaming the customer" if they don't have a good experience - we are here to serve our clients by delivering the best experience for thier customers. Well for commercial work anyway.

Good luck not pulling your hair out because your footage looks way off on some viewing devices...

 

[Nirv]

Good luck not pulling your hair out because your footage looks way off on some viewing devices...

Work will always look off on some viewing device. My local multi-screen has a number of screen that a pure garbage since they've gone over to digital projection. Walk into any highstreet electrical dealer and look at the variation between screens.

In music production it's a common practice to have a set of hifi speakers and maybe a ghettoblaster to test your mix against as it's no point pumping your mix with sub bass that only your studio monitors can reproduce and have it sound **** on typical teenager's hifi in the same vein it's not such a bad idea to have a typical PC Monitor, consumer TV or iPad to check against.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

Work will always look off on some viewing device. My local multi-screen has a number of screen that a pure garbage since they've gone over to digital projection. Walk into any highstreet electrical dealer and look at the variation between screens.

In music production it's a common practice to have a set of hifi speakers and maybe a ghettoblaster to test your mix against as it's no point pumping your mix with sub bass that only your studio monitors can reproduce and have it sound s*%t on typical teenager's hifi in the same vein it's not such a bad idea to have a typical PC Monitor, consumer TV or iPad to check against.

This is not what i'm saying.

What i'm suggesting is:
1. Start with properly calibrated equipment so you see/hear all that there is in the material - in essence, let your creativity flow as you don't have to second guess "am i looking/hearing what is actually there in the material"
2. Test against crap monitors/speakers and pull back from your creative mix/color

I've done the other way around (use crappy monitoring as your final will be seen/heard on crappy monitors) and it's counterproductive, time wasting, creativity destroying, frustrating and more expensive due to lost time.