Calibration Quandry

M

Mannie Bothans

I didn't want to continue to hijack the other thread, so I thought I would seek clarification here.

jax_rox said:
I'd calibrate with a Matrox, AJA IO or Blackmagic device.

An AJA IO HD would be better for audio.

Something like an MXO2 mini, or a BMD Intensity would work, but I'd rather balanced XLR or TRS outputs from an AJA IO HD than the unbalanced RCAs on the MXO2 and Intensity.

Any of the AJA IO range wll give you calibration, and AFAIK, both the BMD Intesnity, and the UltraStudio will give you that as well - that's if you're looking for breakout boxes; some of the internal computer cards will give you calibration, but obviously that's not going to work if you're on an iMac or laptop
Click to expand...

That OP was running a Mac, but I will have a Windows PC, so I don't know if I would benefit from everything the AJA IO HD has to offer. I have been, until very recently, thinking about the PNY Nvidia Quadro 4000 internal PCI Express Video Graphics Card.

Is this one of the internal computer cards that "will give you calibration"?

I am still not averse to going with something else if it will yield better results. I've read about folks using something like a Matrox MXO to calibrate the signal for a standard HDMI monitor. I looked into this, and it seems that in order to maximize the signal calibration a 1:1 Pixel Mapping monitor is required. So... I looked around to find a good, cheap IPS monitor with good color gamut. CNET liked the Dell UltraSharp U2412m-- but I can't find anything that says it would maximize the Matrox calibration with 1:1 pixel mapping. I have also found conflicting information about the (even cheaper) LG IPS225T-BN. Some sites say it has 1:1 pixel mapping and others explicitly state that it does not.

I have never used dual monitors before, but my current monitor works (though it has seen better days and now has a lot of burn-in, dead pixels, etc) and could be used as a second monitor... so long as my new one can be calibrated better.

My NLE will be Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium (with Premiere Pro CS6, After Effects, Photoshop Extd., Audition CS6, Flash Pro, Illustrator, Encore CS6, SpeedGrade, Prelude, Bridge, and Media Encoder) and now I am looking at getting a beefier computer.

If I get a set of speakers like the Blue Sky Exo2 speakers and pair those with a Focusrite Saffire PRO 14 audio interface, I will still need to decide on a video card or video interface and a monitor that can be calibrated well enough to suffice (for in-house color correcting on something that will be passable on the local festival circuit as well as when burned to DVDs and BluRays).
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Ah, that makes sense.

I am wondering if the AJA and BlackMagic calibration utilities assume a broadcast-quality monitor? I know it is all marketing, but the Matrox site seems to make a big deal about it being able to calibrate signals for cheaper monitors (but it requires a monitor that has the 1:1 pixel mapping to do so).

I really want to go with a cheaper HDMI monitor (the cheapest IPS I can find with good color gamut).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I'd suggest going for a 1:1 pixel mapping display anyway, it's definitely going to work better for you in the long run. And then you should be fine with any of the cards.

But it al depends on what you want, I used to run an iMac into a consumer plasma TV for quite a while, and it worked fine for my purposes - I was doing heavy editing and FX work, though I wasn't doing much colour grading at all (back when I was doing corporates ;))
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yeh, I could have googled that, but I was going over to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. [In other words, I was just whining that manufacturers don't advertise whether their products do 1:1 pixel mapping or not (and that I can't just do a New Egg search for 1:1 pixel mapping displays), etc.]

I'll find an economically priced IPS HDMI with 1:1 and good color gamut, I wil just have to dig for it.

For example, some of the information conflicts. This site says that "All recent LG HDTVs are supposed to support 1:1 pixel mapping without overscan. The swedish LG support department has verified this" but this site says the nice LG IPS225T-BN is not.

Also, I have now gleaned from this site that that the Dell IPS (that was highly rated by CNET) actually does not do 1:1 pixel mapping.

(I'll get back to googling when my chores are done.)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think your best bet is going to be ringing the manufacturers and asking specific products. I suppose it's not really publicised, because the majority of people don't know/care about it. If they publicised that they don't have 1:1 pixel mapping, then only very few people would be directly affected by it, but those that have no idea, see another buzz word and go 'there's no way I'm getting one that doesn't have 1:1 pixel mapping, who do they think I am'.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I found a few good ones...

but how can the Asus PA238Q have 100% sRGB Color Space Coverage when the NEC PA231W has 96.60% and the NEC P241W has 96.7% coverage of sRGB?

I have also found the HP ZR2440w, Dell UltraSharp U2410, BenQ EW2730, BenQ XL2420T, and Viewsonic VP2365-LED.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Ok, replying to one thing at a time -

You can typically translate Hungarian to English's using google translate

Calibration of this level is a sketchy investment for local festival work. You're usually talking about many thousands of dollars, and your viewership won't be able to tell the difference, as long as you got a conventional monitor in the ballpark. A lot of this high end industry equipment exists specifically for workflows where many people have to work on the same files, and absolute uniformity is needed for conformity across multiple colorists, etc.

If you're working on a studio film, everybody needs to be precision calibrated. For smaller jobs, 4000 bucks worth of extra lighting, or a drone, would take you much farther.

An Nvidia Quattro card is basically one of their standard cards with extra tech support, and a few high end professional features enabled on the chip. The 20k card is almost identical to the $1,200 card, except they flip a flag in the bios to enable the extra features. You can go online and find a bios hack that will save you the 19 grand. Personally I've had no issues just shooting with the RED and then establishing a neutral baseline in DaVinci.

You will get slightly better results if you pursue the full professional package, but the improvements to a small shoot are often so small as to be unnoticeable, and you're way into diminishing returns when you get to calibrated field monitors.

I'll let you judge for yourself though, since people see quality differently.

This is a shoot I did for a local festival, where I just used a 7 inch 720p field monitor on the RED, and a pair of vr glasses for the drone.

I did the editing and colorist work on an LG Oled, and just skewed down a bit for better compatibility with average sets, which of course don't have the same contrast ratios.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top