Gary Kleiner's right, and so is Riredale.
A broadcast monitor is always the BEST option, and if you're producing media for broadcast, you're nuts to not have a calibrated, broadcast monitor.
Riredale is right, ANY monitor is better than no monitor. You can semi-calibrate a consumer monitor, especially the newer systems. I've seen some of the Sony WEGA monitors that aren't that far off a broadast monitor.

Although it's a good idea to check your media on cheaper monitors (we do) it's not necessary. If the broadcast monitor is properly calibrated, doesn't matter if it's going to DVD, VHS, or broadcast, it will appear correct. If it doesn't , then it's the fault of the display set, not the media.
Hollywood, professional broadcast, and most professional production houses never view their media on anything but at least a 400 line calibrated monitor.

Glad to see Spot is learning. Now he includes the term "calibrated".

Way to go big guy.

It seems to me that it might be possible to have some kind of master
calibrate button that when pushed it sets everything perfect using the FX's, even if the monitors are not calibrated. Maybe in V6.2.

JJK

Bubblevision,

To answer your question about the gap between my monitors... I don't mind it, but I heard people in England do "mind the gap." Ha Ha. Right. Anyway, I've been streching timelines for a few years now, and I don't mind it. I'd like to do the two plasma thing, but I doubt Santa will bring them tomorrow.

That fat b*stard!!!

no text

BillyBoy, are you stalking Spot? only 15 minutes behind!!

BTW. just kidding.

No, it's totally correct.

You get DV compressed output to the monitor.

Rob Mack

>>anyone looking to invest in dual cards still make sure you have decent processor and RAM in your machines. it'll start being intensive when you branch out into further monitors.

I use a matrox g450 with 32MB RAM on the card. No problems, even on the slowest machine, a 1 GHz PIII.

Rob Mack

As 16:9 takes over more and more from 4:3, surely something else will finally take over from the Sony PVM 14L as "industry standard"? I know it can be switched to 16:9, but it would worry me to invest that much in something that is essentially designed for an out of date format.

>>It seems to me that it might be possible to have some kind of master
calibrate button that when pushed it sets everything perfect using the FX's, even if the monitors are not calibrated.


Huh?

I think that would screw up all of your meticulous color correction.

Just calibrate your monitor. And while you're at it, zero out your mixer too. It's all elementary best practices.

Rob Mack

Just bust out that wall between the theaters. And you can get digital projectors with higher rez than that anemic plasma screen. More space for Vegas to spread out on. Oh Yeah!

Rob Mack

It's better than Fox News, thats for sure!

Rob Mack

When it comes to this subject, BB stalks anyone who doesn't agree that a Walmart monitor isn't as good as a real broadcast unit.
you'll see where BB claimed he couldn't see the diff between a Panasonic 1950 and a Walmart television. And when that was challenged, the thread grew so insane that BB's remarks ended up edited by the forum moderator. Gary Kleiner, Mike Chenoweth, John Cline, and several others have been castigated to death by BB in the past. So, I'm fairly sure you'll see this thread either die a quick death, or like the other ones before, become a contentious display of unprofessionalism by persons who've never had broadcast works before.
Bottom line is this; If you have clients paying you money, they expect accuracy and correct image. They expect that their media will look the same today as it did yesterday, and will look the same tomorrow in the edit stage. Home televisions can't provide that confidence.
If you're editing for fun, or for non-commercial ventures, it doesn't matter at all what you use, if you use anything at all. A cheap television for monitoring is better than no monitor at all. A broadcast monitor is better than a cheap television.
ANYONE with half an eye can see a monster difference between a standard home television and a broadcast monitor that's worth a damn.

But home televisions are indeed growing better and better. And in another 18-24 months, this will be a totally moot point anyway for most of us.

>>>And in another 18-24 months, this will be a totally moot point anyway for most of us.<<<

Why Spot?

A lot of people make very good livings doing SD corporate production. I don't see it really dissapearing for a long while but when it does it'll be for HD-not simply for 16x9.

I think it would worry me more to buy a monitor that couldn't do SD since that's so much more likely to be meat and potatos. But, yes, you want to be able to do both

Rob Mack

Because I'll wager the majority will be moving towards HDV, and even if you're not going there, the coming dump of SD monitors will have serious editors buying all the used monitors pretty quickly.

OK, so let's assume I AM going to buy a Sony HDV camera at some point in the next 2 years, so I want to be future-proof. Do you think we will be seeing a new wave of 'professional' monitors that are 16:9, designed for HDV, but also capable of displaying 4:3 SD? And will they likely be LCD or CRT? And what will their resolution be?

Also it seems I'd be foolish to get just another 1280 x 1024 LCD as my second of dual monitors because the resolution would not be high enough to display the largest/clearest Vegas preview window, which I guess would be 1440 x 810 pixels plus chrome??? A 1600 x 1200 LCD would be more appropriate, wouldn't it?

MAC350:
I forgot to add that the button would calibrate the monitor at the same time and if your eyes didn't like it then a menu would pop up saying to get color corrected glasses. This is assuming that the magic button is correct.

JJK

Sorry to be such a jerk about it, JJK. The thing about any calibration is that it relies on looking at the screen. As it should. I don't think there's any way to automatically calibrate anything without either looking at the screen or using a good calibrator gadget.

Of course, you could be joking and I'm just being incredibly dense...

Rob Mack

BubbleVision, these monitors are already hitting the streets now, and yes, LCD seems to be the order of the day. The Luma or Premiere series from Sony, Samsung's got a few. You need 1900 x 1200, not 1600 x 1200. Remember, it's 1440 anamorphic. When you convert to Cineform, you'll be seeing full rez.
If you have one of the newer series PVM's from Sony, they're upgradeable as well, via a hardware card. Everything is going 16:9 as well.
Keep in mind that the colorspace of HDV/HDTV is different than that of SD as well. However, anything that is HD compliant is also going to manage the correct ITU 709 colorspace.
You can likely also eventually use an external converter device to go to an LCD television panel, I saw this at a show recently, and also saw it again at VideoLife in Honolulu. I've not done this, but using an HDTV recorder as a passthrough, I've seen a few guys sending m2t over firewire to the recorder and using it as a pass through. Looks great.
There is no "future proof," unfortunately. HDV is coming on like a freight train, and will replace DV fairly quickly in the hands of the semi-pro and budget conscious professional. That part won't change. What may change is the workflow, and we're early enough now, and there has been enough experience in the migration now, that I suspect manufacturers will do everything they can to make it smooth. But there are no guarantees, right?

Rich, I think JJK is just kidding. In fact, I'm sure he is. (I hope he is :-) )

rmack350:
I guess I'm just in my old "MUNTZ TV MODE" where they built the whole tv with one tube to do everything. Just fantasizing that with the Vegas way of doing things ---five steps reduced to one step---that if we pushed a calibrate button in V5 it should look like this, and if it doesn't then hit the calibrate button on the monitor. Then whatever we put on the timeline in V5 will set all of the colors automatically to the reference
circuit in V5 (if desired) and clip is all done. No color wheels, no saturation adjust, no brightness adjust, no contrast adjust, no gamma adjust etc. Of course if you want to trick it up after that no problem just use all the stuff manually. Some still picture software people already have "Auto Equalize" which does a lot but not everything and it sometimes doesn't work. I'm thinking along the lines of the script "match all aspects" where if you have 500 still pictures on the timeline everyone is matched with the push of a button. Auto equalize could be done by setting markers on the timeline then pushing the button that says "auto equalize all markers" and /or just auto equalize and the whole clip is done. Then if the results are not correct hit undo button. What I'm getting at is if I have 100 clips on the timeline and each one has to be color corrected why not do it with a script? Or do one clip manually as a reference and then push the button that says "auto match all selected clips to colors of reference clip"
Like I say just dreaming.

JJK

Thanks again Spot. Here's a link for those Sony Luma monitors:

http://www.expandore.com/product/Sony/Monitor/LCD_Monitor/LCD_Monitor.htm

They look very nice. No prices on that page but I suspect I will have to sell A LOT of DVD's to afford one of those.

This convergence of computer monitors and TV's and pro monitors can be confusing when it comes to forward planning. I'm probably fairly typical of a lot of folks on this forum in that the budget will have been well and truly blown on a new Sony HD camera, so I will have to monitor on the computer screen(s) as a stop gap while I save up for a HD TV or Pro monitor.

I'm still a bit confused about this HD resolution. Footage from the new Sony HD cams will be displayed in a "Full" Vegas preview window (i.e. on the computer itself, not out over firewire) at 1920 x 1080 pixels, right? So you mean a 1920 x 1200 display, not 1900 x 1200 don't you Spot? Sadly those PC displays look like they're still a couple of thousand dollars. I guess a half HD resolution Vegas preview window (960 x 540) would make everything more manageable and affordable because it can just be displayed it on a 2nd 1280 x 1024 display. But would half resolution be enough to do the job in terms of judging sharpness/focus etc?

I wonder how long it will be before we get a 1920 x 1200 LCD display that can be used as a HD TV and a computer display and costs under $1000.

Final question... could a Sony HD camera rather than an HDTV recorder be used as a pass through for m2t?