Editing And Color Calibration ?

[HMSanchez87]

I've been trying to figure this out for the past few days and this is the first time I've encounter this problem. I use a Mac-Book Pro to edit my films, and I use Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 as my editing program of choice. Now my problem has to do with color calibration. I know you can't honestly trust the default color calibration on a mac or on any HD TV. What I've done for the past year is, I would calibrate my LG HD Tv to color bars to the best of my abilities. My TV has a expert mode that allows me to calibrate its pretty decent, nothing professional but decent.

Now on this recent project, I finished color grading and I decided to watch it on different TV's to make sure it looks over all good on other screens and this is where the problem starts. Some screens look good and some look ok, and others look terrible. My question is, is this a common issue that even professionals can't get away from? Even if you edit by industry standards, will there always been a up to date screen that makes you project look terrible.

My other question is, when editing on a computer or laptop, do you change your color profile to get the best possible idea of what your color grading is, or do you just edit on the default color profile? This question is aimed more at the people who offend edit and color grade on laptops with out a calibrated monitor to use.

 

[knightly]

You're used to viewing it on a screen that's been calibrated. As soon as you put it on another screen, it will look different. The people who own those screens are used to seeing the color casts the same way and their brains will correct for it. A good test would be to take a professionally produced DVD big budget movie and play it on the screen you're testing as well to see how yours compares to that.

 

[Jooble]

This is my job so ill chime in on this

Your calibrating your monitor to a standard preferably not by eye but with a probe (spyder/i1 display pro). The question you should ask is what is my project being delivered to? Internet or TV, TV follows the REC709 standard Internet is SRGB basically just a difference in the gamma 2.4 REC709 2.2 for SRGB (off the top of my head for srgb).

After calibrating and assuming you have a decent monitor, you can apply a profile that shifts the results of your calibration into one of these standards. So you can know that what your doing is a baseline standard.

From there you deliver and if it looks crap on another tv its not your fault and its prob just a crap tv

 

[HMSanchez87]

You're used to viewing it on a screen that's been calibrated. As soon as you put it on another screen, it will look different. The people who own those screens are used to seeing the color casts the same way and their brains will correct for it. A good test would be to take a professionally produced DVD big budget movie and play it on the screen you're testing as well to see how yours compares to that.

This honestly make sense, it's just a pet peeve for me. I guess I'm sort of a perfectionist and I want the best quality for everything (Tv, Computer, Theater).

This is my job so ill chime in on this

Your calibrating your monitor to a standard preferably not by eye but with a probe (spyder/i1 display pro). The question you should ask is what is my project being delivered to? Internet or TV, TV follows the REC709 standard Internet is SRGB basically just a difference in the gamma 2.4 REC709 2.2 for SRGB (off the top of my head for srgb).

After calibrating and assuming you have a decent monitor, you can apply a profile that shifts the results of your calibration into one of these standards. So you can know that what your doing is a baseline standard.

From there you deliver and if it looks crap on another tv its not your fault and its prob just a crap tv

I calibrate my monitor with color bars by eye, I'm sure it's not perfectly calibrated but pretty close. Now based on your rely, should I color-grade for each form of delivery. Basically what I'm saying, should I color-grade/correct for a Theater screen, export and then color-grade/correct again for web, and export.

Or should I just color-grade/correct by a industry standard (Color-bars) and send it off to everything (Web, Theater, Television) and just accept it wont look great on everything.

 

[knightly]

This honestly make sense, it's just a pet peeve for me. I guess I'm sort of a perfectionist and I want the best quality for everything (Tv, Computer, Theater).

So did George Lucas, so he came up with the THX spec and hardware and gave out certifications demanding that all of the theaters playing his work meet exacting minimum standards of audio delivery. If you can't force the industry to bend to your will to get your big space blockbuster to sound correct / look correct on the big screen, then you may as well assume that if you don't control the venue, you should just make it look good and assume that every other place it plays will look like crap -- but so will everything else on that screen if you're doing your job correctly.

Again, if you can't control the output venue, there's no way to account for it at all.

 

[Jooble]

Yea in the perfectionist industry there are grades for Projection, DVD, 3d etc etc. But the diffrence between tv and internet is pretty small you can get away with it. Better yet when exporting specify what colour space you want and it should do a better job than just uploading for example REC709 to youtube. But like I said its a small difference between the two you can prob get away with it.

 

[HMSanchez87]

So did George Lucas, so he came up with the THX spec and hardware and gave out certifications demanding that all of the theaters playing his work meet exacting minimum standards of audio delivery. If you can't force the industry to bend to your will to get your big space blockbuster to sound correct / look correct on the big screen, then you may as well assume that if you don't control the venue, you should just make it look good and assume that every other place it plays will look like crap -- but so will everything else on that screen if you're doing your job correctly.

Again, if you can't control the output venue, there's no way to account for it at all.

Ha, HA, yes he did lol. Wish I could do the same but I'm just going to have to accept that what ever I do, won't always look good.

Yea in the perfectionist industry there are grades for Projection, DVD, 3d etc etc. But the diffrence between tv and internet is pretty small you can get away with it. Better yet when exporting specify what colour space you want and it should do a better job than just uploading for example REC709 to youtube. But like I said its a small difference between the two you can prob get away with it.

So then I have other question , if I honestly don't want to make several different color-grades and corrections for every possible thing, what would be the best standard to work with. Should I continue to edit using calibrated screen using color bars. Does anyone ever use "Color Profiles" from there laptop to get a better idea on how everything is going to look. Since I'm using a MacBook Pro, I can use SMPTE-C, HD 709-A, or several RGB profiles. So what are your thoughts on using color profiles to color-grade or correct?

 

[Jooble]

Well depends how fussed you are about it tbh most people go on making films and stuff and have no idea what colour space means (in an ideal world nor should they lol that why standards are build into most of this stuff behind the scenes). But you sound like you care and if your a professional who edits, its well worth getting to grips with this as down the line when you get to red etc things get way more funky with Log gamma and P3 colour space!

Most professional broadcast places will use REC709 as a baseline display profile as most of what goes out is for TV and film (film you emulate on a REC709 monitor). Colour bars and eye calibration is very subjective and wont be accurate to ensure you have a correct dispay all i can say is... probe + decent ips LCD monitor or higher = results.

No short cuts im afraid but at the end of the day colour bars are way better than cranking the brightness on your monitor to 100% and say "its melting my face, what a good monitor" lol

Oh and yes colour profiles are the way to go, its what I did a home for when I needed a decent monitor set up, the software to do it comes with the probes.

and hate to say it but macs can be a bit of a pain in the ass when it comes to colour profiles, dont bother with the build in ones. Just go colour bars or splash the cash and get some monitor and probe goodies up to you.

 

[HMSanchez87]

I got another question then, towards more of my particular problem. The color-grading for this film is fairly simple, I'm lowering the brightness of the film, cause the tone should be dark and the scene takes place at night. Now when I get the brightness to where I want to, and it looks great on my monitor, it looks super dark on my computer. So the question is this the same problem with the color correction. The film will be dark on somethings and others bright.

My next question is, when lowering how bright the scene is, should I use Levels, Fast Color Correction Levels, or should I use the Brightness/ Contrast to control the brightness of the scene? I notice each one gives a slightly different result.

 

[knightly]

use your scopes... all of the filters/plugins make adjustments to the mathematical values of the pixels in each color channel of each frame... scopes are the ONLY way to know what's happening to the actual pixels.

 

[jax_rox]

My 2c: Hire a colourist
This will eliminate all your issues, and will also allow you to do things you could never have done by yourself.

There's so much going on on all types of screens that it's never going to look perfect on all screens. I used to work in audio production, and we'd have our near field A reference monitors (speakers) with flat frequency so that we could hear exactly what our mix sounded like. Then we had cheap home stereo speakers we used as B monitors so we could compare A and B - because whilst reference monitors might make a mix sound awesome, and should be used to mix, with all the crap that home stereo does to boost frequencies etc it might sound terrible on those speakers - and most people are listening on those types of speakers. That's why the NS10's became so popular - because they were an 'in-between' speaker - they were flat enough for mixing, but they also had the home theatre 'hyping' so that if a mix sounded good on them, it would sound good on anything.

Think of your standard HDTV - generlaly they have 4-5 different 'modes' - ie cinema, standard, etc. Each one has a sluightly different colour and contrast.
The best you can do is colour correct with your scopes so you can see what's actually going on and then hope it translates well.
Out of curiosity, how are you calibrating your TV?

I'd suggest using a proper calibrated reference monitor as your colouring monitor, and then have your TV hooked up just in a normal configuration (ie, 'un-calibrated') as a viewing monitor so you can look at the differences.

 

[HMSanchez87]

My 2c: Hire a colourist
This will eliminate all your issues, and will also allow you to do things you could never have done by yourself.

There's so much going on on all types of screens that it's never going to look perfect on all screens. I used to work in audio production, and we'd have our near field A reference monitors (speakers) with flat frequency so that we could hear exactly what our mix sounded like. Then we had cheap home stereo speakers we used as B monitors so we could compare A and B - because whilst reference monitors might make a mix sound awesome, and should be used to mix, with all the crap that home stereo does to boost frequencies etc it might sound terrible on those speakers - and most people are listening on those types of speakers. That's why the NS10's became so popular - because they were an 'in-between' speaker - they were flat enough for mixing, but they also had the home theatre 'hyping' so that if a mix sounded good on them, it would sound good on anything.

Think of your standard HDTV - generlaly they have 4-5 different 'modes' - ie cinema, standard, etc. Each one has a sluightly different colour and contrast.
The best you can do is colour correct with your scopes so you can see what's actually going on and then hope it translates well.
Out of curiosity, how are you calibrating your TV?

I'd suggest using a proper calibrated reference monitor as your colouring monitor, and then have your TV hooked up just in a normal configuration (ie, 'un-calibrated') as a viewing monitor so you can look at the differences.

That's a problem in it's self. I cant afford a colorist. I'm asking this as a independent filmmaker who made this films with little to no budgets, and uses what was either given to him during school or found other means of getting money. And to be honest, the only reason this problem came up, was when I burned the film on a DVD to send it off to a film festival. I decided to play it on my DVD player to make sure it burned property. When the film started to play, it was about 4 times brighter then it was on my editing screen.

I use my LG HDTV that I calibrated using color bars as my monitor. The TV has a expert mode, that allows me to calibrate the screen pretty good. Even has a Blue Only option that allows me to correctly adjusted Chroma/Color/Saturation and Phase/Tint/Hue. I'm sure it will be slightly off because I'm doing this by eye to the best of my abilities.

So what I'm asking is, how can I grade and color correct to the best of my abilities with what I have. Actually what I should say is... What would you do as a editor, who has worked in the field, do if all you had to work with, was a MacBook Pro, Adobe creative suit CS5, Sennheiser HD380 Pro Headset, and a LG HDTV?

 

[jax_rox]

I decided to play it on my DVD player to make sure it burned property. When the film started to play, it was about 4 times brighter then it was on my editing screen.

There are many things that could've caused this - one being the TV attached to the DVD player - is it the same one that's attached to your computer or a different one? Different? Try the same TV. Same? Try a different DVD player. You kinda need to go down the line until you figure out exactly what's causing the issue - whether it's your DVD player, TV, settings, burn settings, or simply the fact that that what you graded isn't translating properly.

So what I'm asking is, how can I grade and color correct to the best of my abilities with what I have. Actually what I should say is... What would you do as a editor, who has worked in the field, do if all you had to work with, was a MacBook Pro, Adobe creative suit CS5, Sennheiser HD380 Pro Headset, and a LG HDTV?

Have you looked at the difference in the TV compared to the laptop screen? I know back when I was using an iMac into a Panasonic HDTV, the Panasonic was about 50% darker than my iMac screen. And you could see it as you dragged a Quicktime Player from one screen to the next, you could see the shift. My suggestion would be to use a different TV, or different mode on your TV, if that option is available, when you're at the final stages of grading. So you've graded everything and it looks beautiful and then you check it on the 'normal' mode, or a 'normal' TV and see hwo it looks. If there's dramatic differences, check it on a third/second TV using a different device (ie a different DVD player) and see if the same differences still show up. It's simply a matter of running trial and error until you know how your monitor behaves - just as we used to in audio. We used to listen to our mixes on all sorts of different speaker systems to see how our mixes translated and you'd hear what you'd need to catch in your monitors - ie some monitors we had were really 'middy' so we knew that the mids were going to boom out a little on the reference monitors, but it would translate fine on normal speakers. You need to find out what the weaknesses in your monitor are (ie, maybe it's too dark, maybe it's too light, maybe it's too green, maybe your calibration is off) and use that to work around your grading - ie, if your monitor has a large green shift that you might not necessarily be able to see, you don't want to colour your images to fix it because then they'll look odd on other screens.

Also, what are you using to generate your colour bars?

 

[HMSanchez87]

There are many things that could've caused this - one being the TV attached to the DVD player - is it the same one that's attached to your computer or a different one? Different? Try the same TV. Same? Try a different DVD player. You kinda need to go down the line until you figure out exactly what's causing the issue - whether it's your DVD player, TV, settings, burn settings, or simply the fact that that what you graded isn't translating properly.




Have you looked at the difference in the TV compared to the laptop screen? I know back when I was using an iMac into a Panasonic HDTV, the Panasonic was about 50% darker than my iMac screen. And you could see it as you dragged a Quicktime Player from one screen to the next, you could see the shift. My suggestion would be to use a different TV, or different mode on your TV, if that option is available, when you're at the final stages of grading. So you've graded everything and it looks beautiful and then you check it on the 'normal' mode, or a 'normal' TV and see hwo it looks. If there's dramatic differences, check it on a third/second TV using a different device (ie a different DVD player) and see if the same differences still show up. It's simply a matter of running trial and error until you know how your monitor behaves - just as we used to in audio. We used to listen to our mixes on all sorts of different speaker systems to see how our mixes translated and you'd hear what you'd need to catch in your monitors - ie some monitors we had were really 'middy' so we knew that the mids were going to boom out a little on the reference monitors, but it would translate fine on normal speakers. You need to find out what the weaknesses in your monitor are (ie, maybe it's too dark, maybe it's too light, maybe it's too green, maybe your calibration is off) and use that to work around your grading - ie, if your monitor has a large green shift that you might not necessarily be able to see, you don't want to colour your images to fix it because then they'll look odd on other screens.

Also, what are you using to generate your colour bars?

I tried it on 4 different DVD players, including a PS3, 360, Sony, and some generic one. The console DVD players where the worse, I did some researched and found some articles stating that both consoles suck in the DVD department. But the generic players where still brighter then I saw on my TV. I send Bars and 1k tone from Premiere pro directly to my HDTV. I do see the brightness shift from when I drag something from my laptop to my TV. What I did to counter that is, I changed my color profile on my laptop to Rec709HD and there almost the same in color once I do that.

But changing that also makes me wonder, are people who do not change there color profile on there MacBook or other laptops, are they going to see a much darker film? Cause that would bother me, but I have a feeling its something I'm going to have to accept.

I would also like to know, is calibrating with color bars the best I can do, to get the best imagine for grading for a theater screen?

 

[jax_rox]

But changing that also makes me wonder, are people who do not change there color profile on there MacBook or other laptops, are they going to see a much darker film? Cause that would bother me, but I have a feeling its something I'm going to have to accept.

I can tell you that most people don't know what calibrating their monitor is, let alone how to do it. I ended up just grading on my iMac because that seemed to be the display I could trust more to translate across devices.

Every device has different things going on, the best thing to do is to look at if there are any common anomalies across devices. Also try using different burning software, or perhaps side-loading from a USB.

I would also like to know, is calibrating with color bars the best I can do, to get the best imagine for grading for a theater screen?

Well no, you could be buying proper production monitors, or calibrating using an AJA, Matrox or Blackmagic card/device. Or colour grading on a Resolve or Baselight system. Or using a proper colourist. But, if you're on a budget..

 

[HMSanchez87]

I can tell you that most people don't know what calibrating their monitor is, let alone how to do it. I ended up just grading on my iMac because that seemed to be the display I could trust more to translate across devices.

Every device has different things going on, the best thing to do is to look at if there are any common anomalies across devices. Also try using different burning software, or perhaps side-loading from a USB.



Well no, you could be buying proper production monitors, or calibrating using an AJA, Matrox or Blackmagic card/device. Or colour grading on a Resolve or Baselight system. Or using a proper colourist. But, if you're on a budget..

Everything out of my reach lol. So then, whats the point of color bars.

 

[jax_rox]

Everything out of my reach lol. So then, whats the point of color bars.

Many purposes, mostly for calibration.

But, you can only really trust a calibrated reference monitor. You don't necessarily know what's going on in your LG monitor to give you the image you're seeing. Which is why if you don't have the budget, you're going to need to view your stuff on as many different displays as you can and see if you can pick up any common anomalies that present themselves, and then adjust for those when you're next grading.

Are there issues other than the brightness? Like colour issues for example? Are you calibrating your brightness right? Check your stuff in a 'normal' mode if you can - I'm not 100% sure on the inner working on TV, but a TVs cinema mode is usually a lot darker than the 'normal' or 'bright' mode. Whether it darkens for 'cinema', or brightens for 'normal', I don't know but it's obviously worth knowing - if it's going to be brightening then you need to keep that in mind too.

 

[HMSanchez87]

Many purposes, mostly for calibration.

But, you can only really trust a calibrated reference monitor. You don't necessarily know what's going on in your LG monitor to give you the image you're seeing. Which is why if you don't have the budget, you're going to need to view your stuff on as many different displays as you can and see if you can pick up any common anomalies that present themselves, and then adjust for those when you're next grading.

Are there issues other than the brightness? Like colour issues for example? Are you calibrating your brightness right? Check your stuff in a 'normal' mode if you can - I'm not 100% sure on the inner working on TV, but a TVs cinema mode is usually a lot darker than the 'normal' or 'bright' mode. Whether it darkens for 'cinema', or brightens for 'normal', I don't know but it's obviously worth knowing - if it's going to be brightening then you need to keep that in mind too.

Yeah the brightness is the only real issue. The colors change only so slightly on different settings on the TV or the color profiles on the laptop. The colors get warm on the default color but on color profiles such as Rec709 or SMPTE-C are a little more cold. On the TV it's most warm but nothing drastic.