Monitor Calibration

[jeaston]

Forum Participants:

What is the best way to calibrate an external broadcast monitor (in support of an edit) if you have footage from different cameras and computer graphics? Should you simply calibrate to Toaster Edit bars or load bars from each camera source?

- John

[Paul Lara]

Go ahead and calibrate to VT [3] bars, as each incoming tape is proc-amp adjusted anyway.

Remember to let your monitor warm up for about 30 minutes before calibrating.

[Jim Capillo]

Forum Participants:

What is the best way to calibrate an external broadcast monitor (in support of an edit) if you have footage from different cameras and computer graphics? Should you simply calibrate to Toaster Edit bars or load bars from each camera source?

- John

Here is a nice, detailed explanation of how to do: http://www.simvideo.com/articles/monitor_cal.htm

[Tom Wood]

I've noticed a distinct difference in the colors of my material when it plays from the hard drives (in either VT3 or Mirage) or when it plays from an external DVD player. I have two inputs to my NTSC monitor, with VT3 to one and the external DVD player to the other. Does each input need to be calibrated? Also, when using VT3 color bars to calibrate, do you use the 75% or 100% version?

Thanks,

TW

[jeaston]

Tom:

I am no expert on DVD player functionality but I do know that some have color characteristics that are user changeable. This says to me that the default color setup might not be optimal. This is why I go straight out of the toaster to a monitor for color management.

I am wondering if the toaster itself does any color shifting. I say this because when I calibrate my monitor to a camera and tape footage the image looks different coming out of the toaster using the same monitor that was calibrated to the camera's bars.

- John
www.eastonsweb.com

[DonN]

Look.
Disconnect the warmed up monitor from every input, attach a bars generator - Calibar if you're lucky enough to have kept yours - or your camera's outputting bars, or barring that (?) your vt3 with the calibar bars stillframe in a DDR or VTEditor. A v-scope on the output can help get it video legal for hue, sat., contrast, brightness - out of the vt3.

Twiddle fiddle the real knobs, virtual sliders, whatever, on the monitor's color controls, all the while looking at the screen through a blue filter, (Wrattan 42, as I recall) , to match up the intensity of the bars in question.
Don't mess with the monitor any more. Its "perfect".
From here on, mess only with the sources to get it on color spec.
I trust the v-scope on program out to get it right.
Doing this by "eye" or "feel" is going to be bad choice almost all the time.
Except when it isn't, of course.
Don