Futz:
Check out the calibration instructions at the video university link posted here. They are fairly good.

A few extra notes (for correct TVs, not computer monitors):
Check that your blue gel is strong enough. Pull up bars on a COMPUTER monitor (NOT A TV OR NTSC MONITOR). Put the gel in front of your eye. If you can still see red or green then you need to double the gel over. In my experience, I find that a strong enough gel gets really, really dark. You will need to turn off the lights and turn off your computer monitors most likely. If it is dark enough, your eyes will get more sensitive to light after a few minutes.

I have uploaded an alternate chroma + hue/phase test pattern to my website at
http://glennchan.info/video/alt-test-pattern.veg

You may find that easier to calibrate to than NTSC bars and tone. Compare that test pattern to the one at videouniversity- notice I just re-arranged the color bars to make things easier and blurred the top one.


Another good test pattern is the color gradient generator. Change the settings so it makes a gradient from 16 16 16 (RGB) to 235 235 235. Use pan/crop or track motion so the whole thing appears in frame. You should see smooth changes in brightness from the brightest value to the dimmest value. On some monitors, the gradient to totally whacked. To check, apply the color corrector filter and play around with the gamma setting to see what looks wrong.

Some monitors crush blacks so you'll never see much detail/gradations for dark colors.

Masks: In Vegas, make sure the filters are applied before masking (if that's what you want). In the filters window, click on the little triangle in the bottom left beside the filter names. Or read the help file.

2- The IRE setup/pedestal thing, which can bite you in the ass sometimes.
For NTSC TVs, blacks are defined at 7.5IRE and whites at 100IRE. Anything below 7.5IRE should appear the same as 7.5IRE (black).
For DV, blacks are defined at 16 16 16 (RGB computer values) and 235 235 235. (I don't think colors in DV are stored as RGB; but that's not too important.) If you have a color that's 16 16 16 in the digital domain, it should translate into 7.5IRE. That's in theory anyways. I believe most DVD players translate 16 16 16 into 7.5IRE. Some but not all DVD players will put 0 0 0 at 0IRE and not 7.5IRE (this is useful when you want to play color bars off a DVD player; the pluge bars are supposed to 3.5IRE, 7.5IRE, and 11.5IRE, not 7.5 7.5 11.5).

All consumer camcorders and most prosumer gear improperly translates 16 16 16 (RGB/digital) to 0IRE. So if you calibrate your monitor for 16 16 16 = 0IRE you'll be ok for Vegas/camcorder DV to analog conversion, but DVDs will be wrong (black level too high, colors will be washed out slightly).

If you play material off a DV camcorder to a TV, it may be too dark by a little bit and blacks will be crushed.

Japan and PAL (different television system) uses 0IRE for blacks as far as I know, so those are different.

3- Consumer TVs may have cheats in them that screw up the colors. They are also hard to calibrate precisely (with a NTSC monitor with blue gun, you can get much closer). Please note that calibrating a monitor to NTSC color bars only calibrates the analog circuitry in it. The phosphors in it can still cause messed up colors. Aged phosphors also give imprecise colors- they change behaviour and lose brightness as they keep getting hit by electrons and undergo chemical changes.

4- Correcting by vector scope + histogram (+ waveform)
If you don't have a NTSC monitor, it's a decent compromise to try to color correct based on the scopes. However,
A- Still watch your material on a TV so you will see interlacing, chroma crawl (use composite/RCA connection, not S-video), overscan, etc. You don't see this on computer monitors or scopes.
B- You do not see effects of colors played in context. The colors surrounding a color will affect your eye's perception of it. see http://www.finalcolor.com/Trick.htm

5- Vegas is mainly oriented towards blacks at 0 0 0 and whites at 255 255 255. However, you can get things to work with blacks at 16 16 16 and whites at 235 235 235. i.e. if you do a s curve with the color curves then it'll push values towards 0 0 0 and 255 255 255.

Spot: Try yousendit.com for sending files to people. Limits are 25 download/1week *1GB file size* (yes, that's a G and not a M)

Re: pro monitors versus TV set
I don't think they generate a better looking image. Case in point, a small Sony TV I've seen comes with factory settings of brightness, contrast, saturation boosted way up. Underexposed footage looks great on it. Not so with a NTSC monitor, which shows that the footage in exposed and flat-looking.

Professional monitors are easier to calibrate, especially when they have blue gun and auto-calibration (which is the easiest thing to use in the world... feed the monitor color bars and it calibrates for you). They also have all the adjustments available for calibration, including user-defined white balance (not all TVs have this?) so you can set WB at anything and correct for white balance drift.

Pro monitors also have a beem feedback circuit that handles white balance drift for you.

SMPTE C phosphors (found only in high-end monitors) mean you'll be on the same page as everyone else using SMPTE C phosphors. Ideally, everyone would be color correcting for them and TV material will look more consistent. Phosphors emit colors at different wavelengths and this affects your perception of color. If you show only R, G, or B on two monitors I don't think they will look like the same color even if you compensate for brightness.

Some TVs have some cheats in them that enhance the image.

The highest grade NTSC monitors have color probes to help counteract color drift. On really old CRTs, you can see very noticeable tints in dark colors (that's the most obvious example of color drift).

Resolution may be a moot point when Vegas can deliver close-to-perfect resolution when you have it not simulate device aspect ratio. But pro monitors typically have better resolution.

Gamma response on a consumer TV can be totally off. If you display a gradient from black to white, the gradations may not be smooth. I've seen this on a Commodore monitor (which is not really a TV).

Overall, with a consumer TV, you have to make a lot of guesses as to what the original image looks like or do mental compensations for errors or cheats in the consumer TV set.

Spot - yes that would be great to see -- if you want, you can e-mail it to me - I have e-mailed you with the info
otherwise do let me know when I can download it

And thanks Mike - adding the update to the HD (hyper database)

and as for the rows of screens at Best Buy - I was in one recently - and asked a salesman if anyone actually tried to set the TVs up optimally (knowing it was most unlikely - I mean what a job!) and of course he assured me that the manufacturers would only allow the sets to be packaged at opitmal settings if they ever hoped to sell them -- meanwhile I can see at least two sets that have absolutely no green information in them -

I'd forgotten about yousendit, glen. Thanks for the link.
Regarding the other...good information in your post, but we've been down that road before... :-(
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=374867

It's an interesting thread, even though it got locked off. when you have a few minutes and want a good read....

To clarify my previous two posts:

A- NTSC or television set: Television set refers to CRT-based TVs, not plasma or LCD TVs.
B- Monitors hooked up to your computer (i.e. connects to video card using VGA or DVI) versus an external monitor (NTSC monitor or CRT-based television) connected via firewre:
Always connect the external monitor as it will give you a good idea of what your video will look like. For color accuracy, it may (or may not!) be possible to get a computer monitor calibrated with a Colorvision Spyder or similar device for decent color accuracy but you should still use the external monitor so it shows things like interlacing (which computer monitors will not display like a CRT does), chroma crawl (which computer monitors will never display), etc.
C- I assume your video will be shown on a television (CRT-based), which is why you need a TV or NTSC monitor to see what your video will look like. If your video is only seen on web or projected, this information may/does not apply.
D- I assume you are going to try to calibrate your television (i.e. the video university instructions). My first post in the thread gives added information.

Spot: re
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=374867
There's some points there I didn't think of, which do point to advantages of pro monitors (underscan for field use, color drift as the monitor is turned on and parts heat up, convergence.
You bring up other features NTSC monitors have over TVs (loop-through, external sync, SDI, component, RGB input), although they may not necessarily be useful for the DV hobbyist.
The part about degaussing I disagree with (NTSC monitors being better)... generally you don't need it, and the degaussers in normal TVs are fine (you might just need to power cycle a TV over a few days with 20 mins in between). You can use an external degausser (which is stronger than whatever's in a NTSC monitor or TV) if you ever really need degaussing.
The part about lines of resolution I also disagree with, because this spec is fudged very often and useless without information on measurement method (what % difference in aplitude modulation, is the figure per picture height, etc.). But NTSC monitors generally do give higher resolution (although certain model TVs may also give excellent resolution?).

Anyways, dead horse. I guess the practical information we need to know are:
A- How to make the most out of a cheap TV.
B- What cheats cheap TVs do, and which TVs don't have them (or let you turn them off).
C- Which TVs have the calibration controls you need (i.e. setting manual white balance). Billybob claims some TVs have blue gun... I'd be very interested which models these are (or if they exist [yet?]).
D- Which TVs are modestly priced and have good resolution (i.e. if you need a field monitor, where resolution matters and you don't have a computer monitor / DVRack).
D- How to figure out the deficiencies in your particular TV or NTSC monitor.

Everyone: Can we please keep the level of personal attacks down?
There's lots of pot shots here that have little relevance to Vegas or Futz's problem.

Futz: So uh, has your problem been solved yet?