Jay, i don't know scientific principles behind this so i don't know whether all i have to do it to put a few blue gels together (one seems to be not enough) and look through it.... Can it be any blue? Does it have to be some specific hue of blue???

Yes, I've used more than one blue filter because my monitor doesn't have the blue gun switch. Have you read this at GreatDV? Even though you're adjusting the chroma and color phase, you have to be able to see the bars as shades of white and gray. I just keep adding blue filters until all color is removed when I look them.

Jay

If you want to do it properly, spend $16 or so on Joe Kane's Video Essentials calibration DVD. It comes with the right blue filter for this purpose. Available in many home theater stores or from Amazon.

Alternatively you could spend $75 on a Wratten filter. but it won't be any better.

rosco #80 primary blue or
wratten 47B

Thanks for that advice. The product did not get very good ratings from AMazon though. I've tried various online tutorials for seting TVs and have never gotten one to work as it described on any of my sets (few of them brand new flat screen Panasonics). Even bought a rosco #80 or a
wratten 47B (forget which) and it didn't happen like they said online.
Will this product work better? How about the Avia system?
Thanks again!

Thanks for that advice. The product did not get very good ratings from AMazon though. I've tried various online tutorials for seting TVs and have never gotten one to work as it described on any of my sets (few of them brand new flat screen Panasonics). Even bought a rosco #80 or a
wratten 47B (forget which) and it didn't happen like they said online.
Will this product work better? How about the Avia system?
Thanks again!

I was just suggesting to the the Video Essentials as an inexpensive and widely available source for the correct blue filter.

The disc is OK, but you don't need that to set up your NLE monitor.

What problem are you having with the setup?

I'm having problems with pretty much every part. Balancing the rightmost white bar I have to turn the brightness all the way and even then I can't get it but slightly grey and noticable. Also, the top of that bar in the Vegas Pluge and Porches is a lot whiter/greyer/ more noticable than the middle and bottom.
I can never seem to get the colors to shine at the same intensity as they say, though it seems closer if I double up my Rosco 80 filter. I just tried it again and skin colors seem too purple/maenta colored.
Part of the problem is I'm using a Sony pd150 to take my firewire feed from Vegas and use the S-Video out from the camera. People have measured that Sony cameras add a 3.7 pedistal to sort of split the baby b/t the 7.5 pedistal that USA ntsc demands and Japanese ntsc shouldn't have. (As a sidenote, stuff like this is one of the reasons Sony pisses me off- if they just didn't do anything we could just add the pedisal in Vegas' broadcast colors). So I know my black balances are off.
Anyway, I've tried messing with the suggestions from a lot of sites and don't know how people get anything to work for them. I am looking forward to the day when I have enough extra money to buy an extra 23" lcd and a super graphics card so I can use use it through dvi as my 'external' monitor.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you won't get a computer monitor set up to NTSC standards. Two different animals.

Jay

yes, it's true that using a rosco 80 won't work precisely as advertised. Nevertheless, there is a definite "null" point as I rotate the chroma and hue dials on the monitor. I've always taken this null point to be the proper adjustment. It has seemed to give me good results, anyway. I note that a computer monitor always gives me an NTSC image that's way too hot.

I have used Video University as a guidline for years now. Somehow in 98-ish I found this page and have kept it bookmarked ever since. For home stuido calibration I use the roscoe gels. Works fine for me...and I can look at the link for double checking.

For a more extensive PAL option - any good?

http://www.hamlet.co.uk/support/Test_signals.htm

Grazie

File under to what Nth degree are you willing to go? I've done calibration manually and with some high end test equipment many times and even wrote a couple tutorials on it. Its also been the discussion of some heated threads in this forum.

The bottom line is how far are you willing to go to be "perfect" as far as setting up and calibrating?

This may blow a few people away. Offered to illustrate that sometimes its the unthought of things that can end up being you're undoing. To see graphically what I'm about to say go to the following link and scroll down till you still the black and green image taken from a hardware scope to show a wave pattern.

http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

Note that IRE is shown at the ideal value of 100. This is the brightest whites should ever get. If a pure white siginal is under 100 (cold) or over (hot) then trying to do black and white point settings and even adjusting for color purity and hue will be effected.

OK, you probably knew that. But did you take the following into consideration? Many (including me) have purchased one or more DVD's to do more elborate calibrations. Digital Video Essentials and Evia are both good. But surprise... if you use either DVD I'll bet anything you didn't take into consideration not just the miscalibration of the TV/monitor you're adjusting but how many of you gave the DVD player a second thought that you're using to play the calibration DVD on if it is set up correctly?

Well, guess what, a couple years ago I stumbled on to a site that put all the popular DVD players through a bunch of tests using hardware calibration and almost evey one of them had their internal outputs either a little colder or hotter then the perfect IDE 100. So that's right, you guessed it... if you use these DVD's as a reference and your DVD player outputs anything other than 100 IDE for brightest white you're going to adjust incorrectly by whatever amount your DVD player is off and there is no way to adjust the internals.

I mention all this now only to warn that don't fall into the trap of trying to get "perfect" because you really can't.

Billyboy, interesting thought. I have a somewhat-related experience. Here at my editing workstation (actually a folding table with all kinds of PC stuff on and under it) I have an inexpensive 13" TV set, about a year old, that I use as a reference monitor. As has been argued many times in the past on this board, it sure isn't a calibrated standard, but since I watch regular cable TV on it I know what video is supposed to look like, and adjust my own stuff to match. Anyway...

I have two DVD players underneath the TV set and a switchbox on top, allowing me to see either player, or a signal from a spare camcorder used as a converter for the Vegas output, or a signal from a nearby VCR. One DVD player is a cheapo Apex AD1500, which plays anything, the other is a fairly expensive Toshiba unit about 4 years old.

The first time I put one of my DVDs on both players I was stunned to see that the Apex delivered a picture that looked just like the output from Vegas (via the camcorder converter), while the picture from the Toshiba had a noticeably higher black level. I assume the difference is that setup black is different for the two players. Either that or the Toshiba is out of adjustment, which I doubt, because I don't think there are any analog pots on modern equipment that are adjustable. I'll have to borrow a couple more DVD players in order to determine which of my players is telling the truth.

>Part of the problem is I'm using a Sony pd150 to take my firewire feed from Vegas and use the S-Video out from the camera. People have measured that Sony cameras add a 3.7 pedistal<

The camera section may change the pedistal, but you are not using the camera section to transcode from digital to analog. That does not appply in this situation.

BTW, the SMPTE bars in Vegas 5 in Media Generators>Test Pattern are handy and reliable.

Gary

All this brings up an interesting thought. The real intent in any monitor cal is to make the output video signal look like it will on the viewer's TV set. To that end, I've been in the practice(to get experience) of playing my final DVD's on as many DVD/TV set combinations as I can get my hands on...friends, family, etc. I've slowly tweaked my reference monitor, based on these observations, until I beleive it gives my the best representation of this sample group of viewers. How much better can one do? I submit that most TV set owners LOVE to turn up their chroma and don't even know what hue is. So, how many of these TV sets are calibrated to NTSC standards in the first place? My general observation is, however, that my computer monitor(calibrated with a Gretag-Macbeth photometer) is WAY too hot for NTSC.

>The real intent in any monitor cal is to make the output video signal look like it will on the viewer's TV set. <

Incorrect. The purpose of having a properly calibrated monitor (not a TV set) is to see an ACCURATE representation of your signal.

Gary

what's the difference, gary? why would I care if I have an ACCURATE representation of my signal ? what's the REAL reason?

If I'm working strictly for the web, I don't need an NTSC monitor, at all.
If I'm working for broadcast, I'll run everything thru a vectorscope and ProcAmp to make sure it's legal. Relying on just an NTSC monitor to decide if it's legal is a deadly mistake. The whole purpose of using an NTSC monitor is to make sure it LOOKS THE WAY I INTENDED IT on an NTSC display.

If for the web, then it's a moot point.

As far as NTSC, you don't have any control over what your prduct is being played on, so your job is to produce an image with proper levels and looks as you intend it to. If Your purples look blue on your customer's TV, then the customer has to adjust their set.

Gary

Agreed. My point is that if you don't have a blue gun switch on your monitor, one can arrive at a reasonably good calibration by comparing the image to a numerical sampling of other NTSC sets. If you think you can match your monitor to ONE other set, only, you're taking a big risk; and that's NOT what I'm advocating..

I don't know about any of this.

But as far as the DVD player contamination thing why not copy to the hard drive and run it from there?

> If you think you can match your monitor to ONE other set, only, you're taking a big risk;<

Agreed.

Gary