Some decent LCD's for editing

jackal2513

Active member
ok, first of all Id like to start out by saying that I find it qute ironic yet almost unbelieveable that so many people on the "HVX200 noise" threads are using and or evaluating footage on a Dell 24". FWIW, even scope frames scanned in with a northlight & shot on a panavision look rubbish on the dell.

anyway, I have been researching a proper LCD to use for video editing and for grading black and white points and colour and thought I'd share my findings after I recieved a number of PM's asking me the same question. Information is very hard to come by but I have dug up a couple of pointers. First of all, if you want the best LCD's for grading and colour calibration with stills then the market leaders are the very expensive LaCie range (321, 319) and the Eizo Colorgraphic range but these are strictly for still use only and designed mainly for photographic and repro professionals. They work very poor with moving images (although you could always grade to a still and play your actual video on a 2nd monitor).

What you really need is a halfway house, something that is good for video as well but has reasonable colour calibration. The 2 lcd's that seem to be favoured the most are the NEC 1980fxi and the Eizo L778. They both have very good black levels (the eizo uses their C-Boost system to produce unprecedented black leves for an LCD) and both very good with video noise. They are both 19" so would partner a big Dell very well. I will be buying the Eizo when I can source one.
 
Please post your findings, as I am planning on upgrading my monitors sometime in the future. I still would prefer to color correct on a broadcast quality CRT with blue gun and color off features, but good LCD's are also pretty important.
 
yep, a nice widescreen HD Sony Grade 1 would be just great... but i dont have 40K burning a hole in my pocket right now !

but yes, i will post my findings asap with some pics maybe.
 
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Rush I was looking at a few options just this week and was pretty impressed with the new apple displays I saw. Image quality was great. Im thinking about getting an Imac with 21" display to take to location ... capture direct to it yadda yadda
 
Cool! Can you now load FCP on the iMac, or do you have to use a 3rd party software?
 
The imacs I was looking at were being sold specifically for photographers / video editors so they come with FCP in the package. What I want to do where possible is shoot straight to the imac where I can check framing colors etc as I go, I have found some small issues when I havent done this in the past. Recently I was on set with a guy shooting kids commercials and he was doing it. Seemed to work very well.

I am wondering how this would hold up with a HD cam? Anyone care to share an experience?
 
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Evin did that on a national commercial, where he streamed directly through a powerbook to a Raid array via FW800. He had very good fortune with it. He was able to check all the levels and colors via FCP before shooting each shot.
 
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