ICC Profiles and monitor calibration.

farss wrote on 4/3/2009, 6:30 AM
I've been trying to calibrate my somewhat ancient Dell 24" LCD.
Not exactly the most rewarding experience. The range of calibration offered by the monitor is pretty sad. I'm not expecting much, just hoping to avoid the blacks looking like they've been run over by a steam roller wihtout setting the brightness so high I need sunglasses to edit.
I find my NVidia card offers quite a range of calibration settings complete with a number of test patterns. So I get the "video" settings calibrated only to discover that Vegas somehow bypasses whatever goodness NVidia provide. VLC doesn't, curious.
So it'd seem the only way I can get Vegas to play nice when driving the Secondary Display Device is via an ICC profile. I've selected SMPTE-C and tried a few other, as expected none of these are radical enough to cure the blacks.
So I'm left wondering can I cure my monitor's ills by rolling my own ICC profile, should I invest in a Spyder to do this or is there a ICC profile editor to be had?

Please note I am not expecting or attempting to achieve perfection, these class of monitors are incapable of anything remotely approaching that.

Bob.

Comments

craftech wrote on 4/3/2009, 8:00 AM
On your video card calibration try setting the brightness to 90% and the contrast to 102%.
Set the User Preset for the monitor to an RGB setting of 50. If you are using a DVI connection the contrast will be disabled. By default the brightness should be at 50%. Leave it there.

If it looks too intense back off the graphics card setting to a brightness of 88% and a contrast of 100%.

Let me know how that looks.

Also Spyder2 Express from Colorvision is under $100. Have you considered that?

John
farss wrote on 4/3/2009, 4:40 PM
Thanks John, gamma adjustment in Desktop setting rather than Video nailed it in both Vegas internal preview and Secondary Display Monitor. At least now I can see the bottom 10% of the vision which is good enough to calibrate my eyeballs against.

Yes I have considered a Spyder and other such gizmos. I've also been promising myself a workspace that doesn't throw my eyeballs and ears out of calibration.

Bob.
GlennChan wrote on 4/3/2009, 9:34 PM
I wouldn't use the video overlays. They affect stuff that gets play through.. directX I believe.
And then there is another set of controls that lets you adjust something (the LUTs?) on the video card. I wouldn't touch that either.

2- Is the monitor receiving an analog or digital signal? Analog is worth calibrating.

You might be able to adjust the brightness on the monitor. Hopefully it adjusts the backlight, and not some LUT inside the monitor (which would cause slightly more loss of bit depth).

3- Ultimately, a computer monitor is not the way to go for video output.
ushere wrote on 4/3/2009, 10:27 PM
all very interesting....

3- Ultimately, a computer monitor is not the way to go for video output.

picked up because it would seem that nearly everything i do nowadays ends up on pc, net, or 'display' lcds (either at galleries, or in homes).

i still monitor my 'video' output on my old, calibrated sony monitor - but as i wrote and read in other threads re studio vs computer colour space, i'm now looking at getting another video card to run a dedicated lcd to use with vegas as a secondary display (instead of using one of my dual monitors)....

since i'm much happier with computer colour space, how much longer do you reckon i'll have to keep my eye on my old crt?

leslie
farss wrote on 4/3/2009, 10:57 PM
1. Yes, some systems (IRIDAS) use LUTs in the video card for grading previews, yummy. Bob look at this, accountant have panic attack.

In my case nothing that sophisticated however I figured being able to adjust (not calibrate) the video preview independantly of the workspace would be useful. All NVidia give you at the price point of this card is RGB Gamma.

2. This old beast is just DVI, the panels only 6bit, I ain't trying to calibrate it just make it barely usable.

3. No arugment there but I'd qualify that, there's only so many panels being made and you can spend $30K on a monitor and it's still the same panel as what you get in a computer monitor, maybe with better backlighting and a lot of signal processing hung around it but even so there's only so much all that can do.

And I have to agree with Ushere, 90% of my stuff gets watched on a PC monitor anyway. Horrible thought I know but there you go.
Having said that as I've slowly realised that's not an excuse for being sloppy or giving up. Not so unremarkably stuff that's been graded on a $500K system still beats anything else on a PC monitor, it might all look like shite but there's kind of good looking shite and shite looking shite. Somehow we adjust and get used to things that are out of wack.

Bob.