Production monitor and compromising

vitalforce2 wrote on 9/6/2005, 1:05 PM
I'm at the end of a long period of editing a DV feature and have used a 13" TV monitor to adjust color. Surprisingly, it's worked pretty well so long as I made a point of rendering multiple versions and trying them out in numerous other TVs and once in a rented theatre with a DV projector (for a Vegas-made DVD).

But the final tweaks are driving me nuts. I've read the invaluable forum posts about "eyeball drift" and the importance of a studio monitor.

I'm trying to get a presentable product out, but I'm trying not to give up $1000 for a reference monitor I probably won't use again for two years.

I eyeballed a Sony consumer Trinitron as follows:

Flat-Screen model KV-13FS100 13-inch FD Trinitron® WEGA TV, 3-Line Digital Comb Filter, Dynamic Picture, Component Video(Y,PB,PR) Input. Doesn't have a blue switch of course, nor beam-current feedback but does have something called "Auto white balance" and stood out from a wall of TVs as having a notably clear and less red/yellow picture.

I have tutorials on calibrating and have the test patterns needed, but can't adjust R, G or B separately--just 'color,' 'brightness,' 'contrast' and 'hue.'

I know, sounds like an unprofessional compromise but waddya think--it's around $200?

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 9/6/2005, 1:13 PM
Obviously, you're aware of the pitfalls, but if you are...then you'll probably be just fine anyway.
I've been using the higher end Sony WEGA monitors in several cities as part of our tour stops, saves having to carry a big one with me. Usually, the newer ones are just fine, and you can calibrate them fairly well. The reds tend to bloom quite a bit on the cheaper units, but again...you're testing on a variety of locations, so you've got an idea of what the benchmark should be.
Smaller is usually better, especially for DV. Just get as many lines of horizontal rez as you can.
vitalforce2 wrote on 9/6/2005, 1:24 PM
Thanx DSE, appreciate your taking a moment to respond.
Spot|DSE wrote on 9/6/2005, 1:31 PM
You're welcome. I was actually editing my post when you reposted, so...
Obviously the monitor is critical. Knowing the monitor and where it's weak is critical. Knowing if the monitor is shifting on you (or not) is critical. But since you're already aware of all this, you can likely do just fine on a lower cost system, heaven knows all of us have had to.
Will it be perfect? I dunno. Probably not. What's perfect when it comes to color? So long as skin tones are natural, not much else really matters anyway. :-)
I'll be curious to find out how your project finished out. Please let us know.
winrockpost wrote on 9/6/2005, 2:31 PM
i agree , to my old eyes the sony wega and also a flat screen toshiba 15"" (sorry dont know the model #) does a pretty darn good job as a monitor. I'm not going to suggest it is a perfect substitute for a pro monitor , but I will say our "pro" monitor sits in its portabrace case and goes on shoots and occassionally gets hooked up to the edit system to compare with the wega and toshiba.
Stonefield wrote on 9/6/2005, 3:10 PM
Do television monitors ( TV's ) start to go "green" when they're old ? I got a little 13 " monitor that keeps drifting towards a green shift. I've replaced it but, is that a sign of age in older tv's ?
John_Cline wrote on 9/6/2005, 3:40 PM
"Do television monitors ( TV's ) start to go "green" when they're old ?"

Yes.

However, up to a point, you can adjust the monitor's white balance. Although, this usually involves opening up the TV to access the controls and knowing what you're doing.

John
Spot|DSE wrote on 9/6/2005, 3:41 PM
Ditto to what John said, but Stan, does this explain the gorgeous green eyes on some of your models? :-)
vitalforce2 wrote on 9/6/2005, 3:54 PM
Thanks again to DSE and winrock. I'll post some before-after screen grabs at full res. when I have this thing at a point (soon) where it doesn't feel like I'm showing somebody my operative scar. In the next 3-4 weeks we'll also have a trailer on a web site. Shot with a DVX100 (not the 'a' model) so I developed a specialized secondary color correction setting in Vegas which softens the 'knee,' i.e., squeezes as much detail as practicable (within my skill level) out of highlights that are so light that they are a bit clipped (create a smoothed mask from luminance alone and darken it till just the highlights show, then reduce gain).

It was a tremendous relief to read some of the color-correction advice on this forum and see that the tricks my eyes seemed to play on me, specially when I worked too many hours in a row, were inevitable and shared by many others. It's also fascinating to learn-by-doing and see the distinctions between correcting with the 3-wheel corrector vs. curves vs. HSL, etc. After a while it gets nonverbal, hard to explain. Sort of like, "Just talk to the horse, she'll calm down..."

As to Stonefield's question, I have to defer to an expert. My own experience is that an aging TV tends to either lose color or shift toward red or green--but that's anecdotal, and applies to really old sets.
riredale wrote on 9/6/2005, 4:38 PM
I use a little 13" monitor to do my color evaluations, too. It's a newish no-name unit. Often I'll watch regular TV on it, and since regular prime-time TV looks great on it (balanced color, about the right contrast, about the right color saturation) then I figure that if my own video also looks great on it, I'm fairly close.

Broadcasters have gotten MUCH better at putting out a clean and accurate image than twenty years ago.
GlennChan wrote on 9/6/2005, 7:00 PM
Some TVs have some tweaks on them to make your image look good.

Case in point:
A sony TV I saw makes underexposed footage look properly exposed. It was used as the monitor on a shoot and the footage was severly underexposed.

2- Some TVs have flesh tone correction, which may screw things up.

3- As your monitor warms up, the colors do change. Just watch out for that.

4- To avoid color drift, it may help to have the area behind your monitor a neutral gray. That's what the SMPTE standard calls for (although they say the surround should be under 10% intensity of the monitor showing a full field of 100% white).
vitalforce2 wrote on 9/7/2005, 11:35 AM
Thanx also glennchan for the tips. Skin tone is everything in the end, I agree. I wait half an hour after turning on the monitor, and I try to keep a grey field around the monitor, and even on the computer monitor, I keep the Vegas GUI a grey color. Also, the WEGA set I'm looking at has general color-tone settings of "warm," "cool" and "neutral." I plan to check the footage both in "neutral" and "warm" as well as circulating a DVD on other sets.

Strange, this reminds me of radio. Everything in the station was a neutral grey. Including the station manager.