Regarding the second part of your post... check out this thread that debates monitor vs TV.

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=220388

Mario

Oh sh**....here we go again.
Regarding the second part of your post....Vegas won't send a true signal to your SVid out on your video card, so no, you can't use that. You don't want anything between the signal and monitor that's going to color the image. You can't color correct on a video card out any more than you can accurately color correct on an LCD or CRT that isn't calibrated. Further, you need to know what your converter is doing to the signal, if anything. For instance, Canopus ADVC 100 will brighten the image/increase luma. The 300 and 500 don't. Most camcorders don't color the image too much on the way out either, but you wanna check yours with bars from the cam if possible to be sure.

The point you keep leaving out everytime this topic comes up is you can't do it on any monitor regardless what it costs ever those that cost thouands of dollars IF that monitor is also poorly calibrated.... which most are out of the box.

What gets me upset is the false impression some create suggesting if you get a "professional" monitor then everything will be peachy. That's bull. ALL monitors need to be calibrated. If they're not then whatever adjustments you attempt may be off. Period.

And for sure PROPER calibrating is far more that checking color bars. The poof of that is view any live event like a presidential news conference and do some channel hoping while its being televised live.
Note the various levels and hue. I assume the "techs" all fed color bars prior to going on air. So how come none of the broadcasts match?

It's equal bull to suggest that someone can color correct accurately on a Walmart monitor, which is what you've espoused for a while now. No one suggested anywhere that if you get a professional monitor everything will be "peachy." It IS known that with a professional monitor, you can see exactly what is going on. Is it accurate? Hmmm....says who? Colorbars can provide matching information to compare. That's why they're used. Of course calibration is more than just colorbars. No one said differently. Did they?
As far as color correction or output, who determines what is "right" when it's coming from a camera?
Hmm....raise your hand if you know the 3 primary answers to this one!
Why do you color correct in the first place?
Hint....3 answers.
Hint....Howard Zettl
And if you know the answers, then pray tell us what is "accurate?"

Just a small point before anyone gets too excited about say a 14L monitor with firewire in. The option card will buy you several ADVC-300, in fact you'd get an ADVC-500 and still have a lot of change so unless there's some extra magic going on in the Sony card I know where I'd be spending my money.

My excitement on this monitor is actually the HD card input. I don't have the Firewire input, which is why I use the ADVC. I'm pretty psyched to start working with HDV and HiDef of course, is already pretty awesome.
But that said, if I were in the market right now....I'd hold off.
Plasma, or flat panels, is where displays are going, and THAT's where I'd be saving my pennies for if I didn't have anything else, and didn't need something tomorrow. If you don't want to go there, just wait a few months, you'll see pro monitors all over the world dropping because everyone is going to be buying higher quality flat screens to color correct/monitor on.
And if I DID have a buncha pennies to toss right now, I'd be buying a Sony Luma, most likely. After playing w/one on the VASST tour....Damn! I want one.

You really want to chew on this threadbare topic again?

A television is a televsion is a televsion. The basic circuity hasn't changed since it was invented in the late 30's aside from the old fashioned vacuum tubes having been replaced by solid state intergrated circuits and transistors.

The forerunner of a picture tube, first used in a oscilloscope, actually dates back to 1887 when Karl Brau a German scientist, invented the cathode ray tube (CRT). The basic principles remain to this day only surpassed with LCD and Plasma of recent vintage. So what make a Walmart TV work is the same thing that make a "professional" monitor work. In 1929 Vladimir Zworykin invented the kinescope in 1929 which made the TRANSMISSION of TV possible, again based on the CRT.

That's true regardless if its a "Watmart" TV or a "professional" model with a better picture tube and a handful of precision resistors, a blue gun switch and maybe a beefier power supply. The rest is mostly marketing hype the gullible have fell for.

ANY CRT type television regardless what it costs, MUST have the red, green and blue, signals coming from the picture tube hit the thousands upon thousands of triad arranged phosphors in the picture tube squarely or your resulting picture will be distored, sometimes badly. This is called proper convergence. There are little magnets on the neck of the picture tube that bend the signal from the red, blue and green CRT guns so they hit the phosphors correctly.

Again there is nothing different in a low priced verses a high priced TV. In fact the smaller the TV screen the more accurately the guns are likely to hit all the phosphors squarely. It has to do with physics, not price. With larger screens more high voltage is needed to hit the phosphors squarely nearer the corners of the screen. As high voltage increases more distortion can be introduced.

After proper convergence then calibration is the next important step. You can or can't achieve proper calibration regardless how much your TV costs. The process is again the same. Of course its best to use test equiptment. Necessary? No!

That applies equally to high prices "professional" monitors or cheap ones. The sad truth is most out of the box "professional" monitors are no more "calibrated" than your typical Walmart TV some so detest. So simply buying a "professional" monitor achives nothing extra as far as convergence or calibration. If you don't know how to calibrate or do convergence or have someone do it, then you're no better off in fact you may be worse off lulled to sleep thinking because you got a "professional" montor already is or can be calibrated or converged "better". That's bull and only suggests some don't really know what's involved. So is claims of drifting high voltage, and other gibberish I've seen others comment on. You've been conned by marketing hype. Such things now rare can happen in any TV regardless what it costs.

So what does that leave us with? Just a better quality picture. Of course you can see a sharper picture. Damn, I would hope so if you paid anywhere from two, three, four even ten times or more for that "professional" monitor.

But all you're getting is mostly a better picture tube. Because it has a better picture tube you'll "see" a better, crisper picture, but you won't make a better picture because either you do convergence and calibration correctly or you don't. Its that simple. Has nothing to do with the cost of TV and you either do convergence/calibration with a high priced monitor as well as a inexpensive one or you're just kidding yourself.

So guess what... that expensive monitor don't do diddly-squat for the purpose you are hooking up you external monitor for. You're suppose to set a proper black and white level and remove any impurity mostly due to misconvergence and don't forget to adjust focus/sharpness. And surprise, surprise, that's possible with ANY TV assuming you know what you're doing and since I built at TV from scratch, part by part way back in the 70's when I was in my 20's I have a pretty good idea how which is why I wrote the tutorial I did. It works. The reason SPOT has trouble is as he admits he has tried to use some motel room TV, well duh... no that I don't recommend.

Admit? Hell, I don't ADMIT that I corrected on a hotel room monitor,I PROCLAIM THAT I'M PROUD I GOT A GOOD color out of the monitor. You betcha, I am. :-) Because that means my eye has matured to the point that I can work with lesser tools and still get a good result. Either that or I'm blind and the broadcast distributor is blind too, because that spot is airing all over the US right now.

No difference from a mid grade broadcast monitor like a PVM14m and a 199.00 flatscreen from Walmart? Yup, you're right on. I'll be among the first to sell my broadcast monitors in all 3 rooms, I'm sure John Cline, Gary Kleiner, Cheno, Filmy, and every other working editor is going to sell theirs too, all in favor of buying a Walmart top of the line TV because you have spoken. Ebay, here I come. Dang, we can have us a partee with the cash we'd get for our monitors. Sony should be ashamed, so should Ikegami, so should Panasonic, so should JVC for selling us these super high end falsely rated pieces of Walmart junk. (my tongue hurts)

Thanks for the history lesson, I larn't my historee of teluvison frum
http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?id=657 an' it mayd meeuh betr edtor cuz of it. I larnt a buncha stuff frum theyre an frum yer posst. Did eye ferget to tell ya thet Philo Farnsworth 's frum Utahr? Yup. An' we gots a reel cuul musee for thet teevee here'bouts. Fact is, ah even knowed his wahfe Pem an' sat on a bord wif her of eddykashun.
Damm. Fergot to menshun ah mayd mah ohwn teevee in 1981 frum a heafkit to.

Hey, you gonna answer the questions about Color Correction?

Well, there are some things that the pro-level monitors have going for them in this respect. They have the controls necessary for the adjustment available on the outside of the case. Since they contain better quality parts (one of the reasons that they are more expensive is that they contain hand picked and tested parts) they will retain calibration much longer. Cheap TVs will drift away from calibration much faster. Today's cheap TVs often don't have any controls other than brightness and possibly hue shift available to the casual user. Even if you open up the case and void the warranty, lots of the newer TVs don't have any internal adjustments for things such as convergence. It makes it hard to adjust when there isn't even a knob to turn inside the case! True, i suppose you could obtain a schematic (doubtful), trace out the circuit board, find the relevant resistors, unsolder them, and replace them with other values or possibly even a variable resistor. By the time you've done all that you'd definately wish you had spent a few hundred extra on a pro monitor.

SPOT doesn't realize it, but he just proved my point.

You don't need expensive boots to go for a a walk in the woods.

Putting a big white cap on your head doesn't make you a expert cook.

Being driven from point A to point B in a limo doesn't reduce the distance traveled.

Using a expensive monitor verses an inexpensive one doesn't guarantee your video will end up looking better.

Not to mention that today's home televisions from Circuit City don't have nearly the horizontal resolution. Most are 240 lines, some are as many as 400 lines.(yes, this is different than the 525 scan lines of NTSC, think of it as dpi, somewhat, and of which only approx 480 lines are visible) whereas professional monitors have at least 400 and upper end units have 800. Powersupplies are more robust, controls are more finite, confidence factor higher.
Look, we test our audio mixes on a cheap, crappy Craig boombox before they ever go out anywhere. They are also checked in mono. But no engineer in his right mind, and no money-accepting videographer in their right mind, would ever monitor on cheap plastic speakers or monitor on even an expensive monitor from Walmart.
I will say that we got to use one of the new Sony Wega monitors, fresh and brand new out of the box in Seattle. Retail price of 949.00 from Best Buy. Had the price still on the box. It was impressive. But even brand new, loosely calibrated using Calibug, left on all night before event, it still shifted by end of day next day. And went red-hot in color like most home TVs from Japan do.
Same goes for converters. You end up buying a DVC of some sort, and what's coming off the timeline *might* not be the same on the monitor as it is on the timeline. Buying a higher end converter helps the confidence factor. The higher end Canopus converters have a limited amount of control on output factors as well. Do you want to be an editor or an equipment fiddler/calibrator/hobbyist that has the time to prank around with all these settings and still not be sure you're working with the same color in the evening as you had in the morning? Or that you had yesterday or last week?

No one ever said having better gear makes your video "look" better. Having better gear allows you greater ability to see the detail that lets YOU let your video look better. Your point, all along, has been that high end monitors are a waste of time. You point, all along, is that it's stupid to use a high end monitor.
Easy position for you to take since you've yet to put anything out for replication. Easy position for you to have since you've never put anything out for broadcast.
But anyone who is aiming for a profession in this biz [edited by moderator] is going to need to have tools that they can see everything, every possible detail. Especially as they work towards composites, keying, color correction.
You do people a grave disservice by saying that a circuit city monitor will be as good as a Sony broadcast monitor. It's not. And if they are color correcting or keying, a cheap monitor isn't going to cut it.
My project edited on a hotel room TV was decent because it was lit and shot right from the get go. No C/C, no keying, and only very light compositing (titling effects) was needed at all. That's rare, that's lucky, that's a blessing. All I needed was a monitor to see what I was doing vs using a 16" laptop. You don't get the reasons why I'm proud and most folks are surprised that it was edited on a hotel television. Because you've never done anything professional. But most that work in the industry as opposed to working in their garage, are aware that this was a dangerous, "walking without a tightrope" scenario. And one that while I'm proud of, I'm also not stupid enough to repeat unless necessary, as this particular scenario was.

Feeble attempts by you to try to put words in my mouth only make you look desperate. I have always said use whatever you can afford. The point is you now have admitted yourself is it ISN'T necessary to obtain good results. You just slam dunked yourself SPOT. Try to get over it.

I'm sorry I have the ability to easily deflate that giant ego you lug around with you.

And again, you don't have a clue what you're talking about. [Edited by moderator] [Images in] my tutorials weren't shot by me in my back yard, it isn't a hobby, I don't have a clue who any of them are. They were obtained off the Internet and used because they presented good subjects for the points I was illustrating. Unlike [edited by moderator] your tutorial on how to do super sampling and everyone reported back in the forum they could not duplicate the results you claimed you got even if using the same source material and following your "instructions" exactly.

Your endless trumpting that you are a "professional" suggests others are not, or less than you is naive, tiring and self-serving. And SPOT there is a huge difference between being proud and being a obnoxious self promoting pontificator obsessed over his own self importance. And buddy, neither you or anybody else has a clue what work I do, since I have no need or desire to use this forum to boast.

Thanks SPOT,
you saved me a lot of typing!
You're exactly right, there's a vast difference between the electronics in the average TV and what goes into a studio monitor. I've replied to at least two worried newbies here who'd done nice stills with black borders that looked fine in Vegas but went all wonky on their TVs. I guess that's kind of an arguement for not only working with a proper monitor but also doing a check on a cheapy ala audio on a boom box. The point is though when you see it go wrong on the cheapy you don't start pulling everything apart looking for something that isn't there.
One thing I've noticed , good monitors don't last. For some reason that I've never got my head around, as the quality of the tubes goes up the life expectancy goes down. I only mention this because I've seen people pay absurb prices for clapped out monitors at auctions.
I'd also add as with monitors speakers, studio monitors if being used for full on color grading need to be in the right environment.
Another thing I've noticed, and this applies to anything. Give a craftsman even the cheapest tool and he'll do a half decent job. If you've not spent a lifetime honing your craft then you need all the help you can get and yes I definately fall into the later category.

Spot and Billyboy I have learned great things from both of you. The videos I have produced could not have been done without both of your expert advice. To hear you guys argue over the forum it's not very cool. Come on let's not argue over things that will have no value when you die. So take care guys and continue to help those in need. God Bless both of you.

BillyBoy, here's another way to put it...

If you use a decent WalMart TV, you can calibrate it and get acceptable results. Maybe. Regardless, you would need to calibrate it what - once a day? Twice a week?

If you use a properly calibrated pro broadcast monitor, you WILL get true results - without having to calibrate it as often. Why? Because the components and power supply are made to much tighter specifications, for one.

So...
1. Buy cheap, calibrate often, you'll probably be ok....
2. Buy pro, calibrate less often, you'll definitely be ok...

Why would a pro ever do #1? Speaking of being a craftsman and using inferior tools....when it's time to go to work, you want your tools to WORK, and work well, without having to think about adjusting them all the time!!

If you were a mechanic for a living, would you use tools bought at the Dollar Store? I don't think so. You would get something between the best you could afford and the best available. Depending on your need for the tool.

Sounds to me like it's better to use a broadcast monitor. This is not a solution everyone (myself included) can afford to do - but it IS better!

David

[edited by moderator]

Give it a rest will ya.. agree to disagree.. just quit it will ya?

mike

The point that seems to escape some is this. Vegas is used by a wide range of people from "pros" that make movies, commericals, whatever, to hobbyists with little or no experience. I wrote the tutorial I did to HELP those that have no need, maybe limited financial resources or no desire to buy an expensive monitor for what they're using Vegas for. I'm guessing that's the majority in this forum. I have never suggested a so-called Walmart TV offers a picture quality comparable to a "pro" model, no more then I would suggest a 1960 Honda is better than a 2004 BMW. in fact I've constantly said the exact opposite. However some of the comments I've seen about so-called "cheap" TV's is exaggeration in the extreme.

I object in the strongest terms to the same indvidual constantly implying that he is more 'professional' because he uses a "professional" monitor, and those that don't, aren't. Such remarks have no business in this or ANY forum. Period.

Proper convergence and calibration while it can rise to almost a science IF you have the right test equipment and knowledge to use it correcdtly can also be an acquired skill, almost a art form and can also be done accurately, quickly and reliability manually, after some practice and the results will rival anything anyone can do with test equipment. I get to say that because I've done exactly that. I have adjusted countless TV's MANUALLY, then just because I can, (electronics has been my hobby for over 40 years) I sometimes have ompared the results by hooking that little cheapo TV to state of the art test equipment costing thousands and the differences most times were so trival that to adjust further with such equipment would be a exercise in futility.

It boils down to this... a properly converged and calibrated Walmart TV is actually a BETTER tool than an expensive improperly or never converged and calibrated high priced monitor. Don't be fooled.

Another fact... if you invest in a expensive monitor chances are you'll hang on to it for for five, seven years or more. If you do, and use it as a test reference, you'll basically looking at a dimmed picture once the monitor is 3 years or so old and you may not even know it, because ALL CRT type picture tubes (the more expense ones found in expensive monitors more so) lose brightness as they age. Its such a gradual change, you can't see it looking at it day to day. Buying a less expensive one every other year or so before the picture tube fades can make more sense... for some.

This is where you make the point that there is no difference between a $1900.00 monitor and a $99.00 monitor. And this is where I, and many others in the forum have taken issue. There is an IMMENSE difference between a $99.00 monitor that might have 250 horizontal lines of resolution and a high end monitor with 800 lines of horizontal resolution. Not all that long ago, you didn't even know the difference between horizontal resolution and display.
No one said you have to have an expensive broadcast monitor to be a hobbyist or user of Vegas (or any other tool) for fun or small weekend productions. I've also never alleged that by having professional tools, I'm more "professional" than anyone else. But what I do allege, is that professional tools are there for a reason. They exist so that people aiming to be professional can see what they're doing. Would you trust a half-blind mechanic that uses a Swiss Army knife to adjust the small screws on the dashboard of your car while he's not wearing his glasses? I sure wouldn't. And moreover, clients that walk in and see their washed out, soft image on a $99.00 or $299.00 consumer display are not going to be happy when they potentially have better display equipment at home. They demand to see it as good or better than it will be once it's broadcast. And THAT's where it's important. Professionals make money at their job. The rest is passionate pursuit. One doesn't necessarily indicate more or less talent, or more or less quailty. But one is a LOT less risky.
See, it's always easy to poke at and rant at those that do this for a living, because you don't. It's easy to take positions that you don't really understand, because you don't put your work out for critique. It's really easy to kick the head off of the snowman in the yard, because you've never built the snowman. And until you've built the snowman, you will never understand what it means to labor your butt off building a snowman only to learn that the summer sun was gonna melt it in a few hours. Knowing what's going on in all of your video is critical. No $99.00 monitor will allow you to know what's truly happening. And with HiDef coming on hard and fast, this is even more of an issue.
All I can say is....if you can't see the difference between a Samsung monitor from Walmart and a Panasonic 1950, you need your glasses examined.
The rest of us, laboring to produce the best work and images we can, may only revel in our foolishness in the pursuit of excellence. It's costly, but worth it, IMO.

Pro monitor or TV, hmmm...


Depends on quite a few things.
What's your budget?
Do you have the rest of the basics for editing video at your level?
What IS your level? Pro, Prosumer, hobbyist?

Budget is always first. If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket...

What's your level?
A Pro monitoring through a $99 Wal-Mart TV isn't going to impress the customers when they show up to see how things are going.
The other end of the spectrum is a hobyist like myself buying a $750Can monitor for stuff I'll only be playing on my home theater.

Do you have the rest of the basics for editing video at your level?

This is the important one I think. Depending on your answer here, you'd see both Spot and BillyBoy agree on a common answer.
If you're editing using a single 5400rpm hard-drive, 15" display, onboard soundcard with two computer speakers all being driven by a 450Mhz Celeron, I don't think the $500 monitor is the place Spot would recommend you spend your $$.
Again, at the other end of the spectrum, if you've got all the latest stuff (dual 17" displays, three hard-drives, Pro soundcard with proper audio monitors being driven by a P4 3.4Ghz machine) I doubt BillyBoy would suggest you buy the $99 TV from Wal-Mart (especially if that money is still burning in your pocket).

¢¢

I just stumbled across this thread and what did I find? BillyBoy, once again, attempting to defend his powerless position that a P.O.S. TV is as good (or better, as he claims) than a more "expert" monitor built to tighter tolerances using better parts. Well, those people who are more "skilled practitioners" of the production arts KNOW for an absolute fact that this is simply not the case and obviously there is nothing that can be done to change Billy's mind.

BillyBoy is like a kindergarten teacher, he does have enough knowledge to help the "newbies" and less-serious hobbyists get started. There is no doubt that the world needs kindergarten teachers, but you don't find them teaching graduate-level courses in universities. Judging by the various positions has taken, Billy doesn't seem to have the knowledge or experience to be anything but a kindergarten or elementary school teacher. I think most people around here know this and those that don't usually figure it out soon enough.

Now regarding Billy's statement, "I object in the strongest terms to the same indvidual constantly implying that he is more 'professional' because he uses a "professional" monitor, and those that don't, aren't." It isn't because one uses professional equipment that makes him/her a professional, it is because they are professionals that they use higher quality equipment. Some hobbyists use pro gear, but I don't know any pros that regularly use hobbyist gear for professional production. Do you need a pro-level monitor to produce vacation videos? No. Do you need one to produce video seen by a larger audience and viewed interspersed amongst other professionally produced video? Yes.

John

But you see, once again, this thread was taken off-topic. It was about card output and not about monitors. The question was asked about quality of card output vs Firewire/iLink/1394 output directly to a monitor. Since the old, offending thread was referenced, it once again turns into a name calling free-for-all. Fortunately this time, the moderator stepped in and killed the offensive names used in this thread. For no reason whatsoever, this keeps turning into an incendiary topic. Shouldn't be, and I think the majority of the forum is smart enough to know what's reality and what's fiction.

It boils down to this; (and no, apparently BB and I don't agree) If you are doing work for clients, to be seen on a wide range of display devices, you need to have a good monitor, PARTICULARLY if you are compositing, color correcting, or titling. Does it need to be a top end broadcast monitor costing 3K? No. Can it be a Samsung from Walmart? No.
If you are doing vacation vids, family vids, fun vids for school, web media, or low-grade porn, then a Samsung/Apex/Toshiba/Sanyo/IEmerson is just fine. We cross check our media on a low end Sanyo just to check title safes and blowout. Most pro's do.
The monitor is your "magnifying glass" that allows you to peer into the fine minutae of your vid.
I doubt I'll ever agree that a $99.00 monitor can look as good or even no different than a high end broadcast monitor. Both are sitting side by side, and regardless of how long or hard anyone tries, you can't make them look similar. Any more than a print house can take a 72dpi photo and make it look as good as a 300dpi image.