If you live in the states and a few other places you deal with the NTSC "standard". Long time ago engineers mocked it, labeling it "Never twice same colors":

See http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/bye2ntsc89.html

Its the nature of the beast. There's a long winded technical reason why that it so, but since we are nearing the light at the end of the tunnel with HD TV, I guess we can put up with it for awhile yet.

No two TV's will look EXACTLY like is closer to the truth. With a little effort you can make multiple sets "look alike" to the point the differences will be so slight hardly anyone will notice. If you have a couple sets you want to try to match, feed them both the same signal at the same time, then adjust both till they are as close as you can get them. Of course you would calibrate each first. Many old threads, where I give more specifics on how I approached this "problem".

Everytime the topic monitors comes up the same bunch get their shorts all bunched up. I just laugh. I also shut them up like they got hit with a lightening bold when I challenge them to explain WHY is it so-called professional getting ready to go live over broadcast or cable TV all covering the same live event, and supposedly first doing "color bars" end up broadcasting slightly different hues, brightness levels when they are all broadcasting the same event. Nobody yet, can explain how come.

We come full circle: NTSC = Never twice same colors.

My best advice for the present is, adjust your TV so it looks the best from a rental WB video tape, then tweak your projects to match. At least you have found the baseline and concensus. Enough said.

BB: "Nobody yet, can explain how come."

I did, search for it.

Before you folks badmouth NTSC, you might want to read this interview from Yves Faroudja:

Interview - AVguide.com

I also shut them up like they got hit with a lightening bold when I challenge them to explain WHY is it so-called professional getting ready to go live over broadcast or cable TV all covering the same live event, and supposedly first doing "color bars" end up broadcasting slightly different hues, brightness levels when they are all broadcasting the same event.

It's a union thing. AFTRA knows that additional time needs to be wasted at every shoot, live or EFP, and so they came up with this rule that says that outputting color bars to provide a field reference point is required. This means that overtime is almost always going to be a factor in a 2 hour broadcast due to setup times prior to the event. They lobbied to make white balancing an mandatory requirement, but the broadcasters wouldn't go for it. So, at the Geneva Convention held in the Hague in 1966, it was determined that ALL NTSC broadcasts begin with color bars and white balance. This has to date, resulted in more than 13.6 billion dollars in addtional union revenue. For clarification, color bars exist ONLY to allow AFTRA and SMPTE engineers to look professional. Amateurs know better, and never use color bars. This is why so many people are unaware that Vegas can generate all sorts of color bars or other reference tools. (BTW, they are only to be referred to, never actually used)
Further, SAG and Equity are both very unhappy at the level of diversity presented in color bars, and there is a movement afoot to add flesh tones from every major culture to the SMPTE standard. It's been proven that skin tones have changed significantly since the Convention in 1966.
SMPTE is expected to make a statement any day now, that adding flesh tones to generated color bars for calibration is a waste of time, because color bars are a waste of time. Finally, D.J. Lenoman is expected to step down as a SMPTE officer next week, as he's been outed as not being "professional." He was caught using color bars as a reference point, but they weren't genuine, non-union SMPTE-approved color bars. He was in dire straights and made them with crayons and butcher paper, and was caught when his blacks were really only 5.5 IRE.
It's a shame, because everyone who watches TV pays a subsidy to the union for the time they take to send those calibrated color bars.
My question is, who watches the guy who makes the color bars? Where did those silly standards come from?

BTW, PAL=Picture At Last
SECAM=System Essentially Contrary to the American Method

"Where did those silly standards come from? "

Actually in 1954, Crayola and NBC execs got together and were working on tying the peacock logo and a box of crayons together. Crayola also at that time had only been producing black, white and grey crayons and low and behold that magical day, the peacock came to life in living Crayola color.

It isn't coincidence that SMPTE color bars match the basic box of Crayola crayons you first got ahold of as a young child. It isn't ironic that D.J. Lenoman was caught using crayons, in fact it was a marketing ploy to tie in with the 61st anniversary of the venture.

I'm in fact teaching my 4-year old to color a blue-only chart. She's just a couple of shades from nailing it. :)

Man, I love history.

"you might want to read this interview from Yves Faroudja"

Great link!!! Now... let's see... who you going to believe Yves Faroudja or BillyBoy?

As an aside, I used to make a point of stopping by the Faroudja booth every year at NAB. Yves was very approachable and just loved to talk about television. He and Philo Farnsworth are personal heroes of mine. (Along with Nikola Tesla and Frank Zappa.)

John

You problem here is very simple. You are using a consumer TV and not a broadcast monitor.

Consumer TV's are designed to make bad pictures look good. Broadcast monitors are designed to show the flaws, so that you can fix them.

Your problem is caused by DC restoration. Your TV adjusts it's picture to make the contrast and levels look better than they do.

Dan Achatz

Yves is correct that NTSC is more efficient in bandwidth useage than either PAL or SECAM, and he is correct that an NTSC decoder (actually, it's a de-multiplexer) is simpler and cheaper than either PAL or NTSC, but that's where the advantages end. I have no doubt that one can get a perfect picture from an NTSC signal, as long as the lighting doesn't change.

It is really looking like Congress is going to hold fast to the DTV date of December 31, 2006. Then, NTSC will start dying slowly since it won't be broadcast over the air.

But the DTV switch is another topic, and my money is on yet another delay.

Steve Mann

Of course Faroudja likes NTSC, that's where most of his patents are!

NTSC won't die, it'll just be another format in a digital world. Along with 720p, 1080i, HDV, WMV-HD, MPEG-4, etc.

I've noticed, at least in Los Angeles, almost all of the stations are already transmitting in digital. Biggest problem is the *reception*. When it's good, it's good. But when it's bad, you get garbage or zilch. At least with analog RF, you get something.

Ok, I'll try the S curve for my "LCD balanced" clip taken from the "CRT balanced" master and see what happens when viewed on LCD screens.
I'll apply different curves to my "TV balanced" clip and watch it on different TV sets and go with the best of both worlds.

Questions remains: having "calibrated" my "toy-TV" monitor with blue gels, adjusting contrast and everything, how come I can see Poncharello's face on both my friend's TV and mine and not see the faces of performers from my clip only on his set...
Aaaahh right, I'll boost the mids and see what happens.

how come I can see Poncharello's face on both my friend's TV and mine and not see the faces of performers from my clip only on his set...

Futz, It sounds like you've set your TV similar to the setup described in the Video University article and that's fine. Have you done the same thing to your friend's TV? As others have pointed out here, no two TV sets will be exactly alike and I suspect this is where the problem lies.
As far as setting up your CRT goes, there's an article on the Paint Shop Pro site that might be useful.

Mike

Comes to mind: next time I'll correct colors, I won't close my cam's viewscreen so I'll get both LCD on the cam and TV thru 1394 so I'll try to find a way to make the two look ok at the same time.

Now you pros will think I am a heathen, but once when I had no video monitor available and only an old poor computer screen, I color corrected some footage blind, by using the scopes only. Like flying at night on instruments. I'm pretty good at reading the scopes as I never edit without them all on. I burnt the finished footage to DVD and went watched it in the home theater and I found I got really good results. As good as an amateur like me would have got with my usual HDTV monitor. Try it.

Mike S

Mike, you're no heathen, you're a guy who knows fine champagne!
Was good seeing you in Vegas, as brief as t'was.
All the broadcasters use scopes along with the monitor, it's just sorta standard. The Calypso and similar systems are all more scope oriented than image oriented. Using scopes is more advanced than using a broadcast monitor! But not everyone knows how to read them. Which makes for a good plug for Steve Hullfish' book on Color Correction, it's got an excellent chapter on scopes.

Oh nuts Mike, now you went and spoiled it. Stop giving away secrets. <wink>

BTW, I've done that many times. Works as good or better. But Mike, wait till someone in the peanut gallery pipes up and claims you need to use "professional" scopes. I'll just sit back in my "professional" video editing chair, I have on my "professional" video editing shirt and pants, and I just took a sip of my favorite beverage out of my "professional" coffee mug. Ain't coffee either.

Mike - being relatively new to video editing I'd be interested in knowing what you rtechniques were in using the scopes - or at least how tou learned them - I am quite new to color correcting with scopes and BillyBoys color correction tutorials look to be pretty good - but in the next couple of weeks I have to bear down with some serious corrective actions and I only have a basic tv monitor - so any extra tips you could provide would be greatly appreciated....

It takes a trained eye to set up a monitor (professional or consumer) to look the best it can. However, with the proper tools and knowledge a consumer tv can look decent. But, a consumer tv will still not allow you to monitor your signal adequately. The quality of the image is directly related to how much money is spent on that monitor. For editing, you use what you can afford. If your bank account will not allow you to spend $5000 on a monitor, you use what you've got and make the best of it, but your image quality will suffer.

There are so many variables involved in the broadcast chain that making sure the edited program is properly color corrected is critical and you hope the rest of the chain is maintained by other competent professionals, which it usually is. I will not edit a project without a broadcast monitor, that I calibrate myself, along with a waveform monitor and vector scope. No professional should work without any of the three. But, that's the world I work in. Yes, Billy, I am a professional editor and yes, I am related to John Cline. I am not here to defend John, Spot or anyone else for that matter. I am here to defend a point of view. As I said above, you work with what you can afford. Luckily, I have all of the edit gear I work with provided for me. I edit content that is used in network sports broadcasts and if I produced something sub-standard I wouldn't be called back again. That's the difference! Professionals use professional gear to produce the best product possible. It's not marketing hype. It's fact! If this weren't true, then why would networks and facilities spend millions of dollars on monitors and hire competent professionals to use it. There is a reason for it! To produce the most consistent, highest quality content for distribution possible.

I'll just whistle past the graveyard.

Fultro:
You need do a lot of color correcting using your eye with the scopes on. Every time you make an adjustment watch what the scopes do. Soon you will be able to predict what the scopes will do and then you can reverse your technique. Adjust the scopes and watch what the picture does. It will come.

In general, at the very basic level, what you can do with scopes is set the black and white in and out points and set the middle, gamma to the feel you want with the histogram. Then use the vectors to get the color ranges and central images within the brightnes windows you want. Keep everyhting below 110% and get you major spread from 40% to 80% with your skin tones at about 70% and you will be close. That's my science and the rest is just art, and that a piece of cake, right?

thanks for that Mike - I am going to check that out later this week


BillyBoy - it might be helpful for some of us to understand you if you reveal what it is you are sipping out of that "professional" coffee cup if it ain't coffee.....

Fultro:

An after thought. What I said assumes you have correctly exposed and white balanced footage. If your white balance is out, ie what is really white does not look white, you need set the white point with the negative eye dropper on the color corrector.

AND don't take this too seriously. Have you ever been in BestBuy and seen the rows of $5,000 HDTV plasma screens? They ALL LOOK DIFFERENT!

Mike