Slightly OT: Interesting results with AVIA and calibrating consumer TVs (for external monitoring w/ Vegas)

musman wrote on 2/15/2005, 12:55 AM
Finally sucked it up and bought the AVIA dvd to try to calibrate my external monitor. I tried the dvd out on my new (this past summer) Panasonic 20" flat screen tv. It was impossible to set the black level. There were some other difficulties setting the white, hue, and color, and sharpness levels but the black level was particularly disappointing. No matter where I set the brightness, the TV could not show either of the 2 bars you're supposed to use to set the levels. That sounds technical if you haven't tried AVIA, but basically it's like trying to color balance your tv but all the color bars are monochrome. You're not even in the game.
I tried AVIA out on a JVC 25" I bought 2-3 years ago and the black levels were even worse. Thinking there was something wrong with the dvd, I finally tried it out on a Panasonic 20" flat screen I bought 3-4 years ago. SUCCESS!! It's not perfect and I'd be curious to check out a real broadcast monitor, but finally a TV starts to fit AVIA's specs. So here is what I have learned:
1- Bring AVIA to the store next time you're in the market for a new TV
2- Things look better when a TV is calibrated. Richer, fuller, more accurate, and not glaring or distorted.
3- Most TVs are probably horribly calibrated
4- Consumer TV quality may be going downhill. The difference b/t the brand new and the 4 year old Panasonics was dramatic. The old one even weighs more, though I don't know how scientific that is.
So, I was surprised and thought I should share this with the community. I almost got burned with my first short which looked fine in the external monitor I was using at the time, but looked extremely green tinted on most other TVs. It would be really cool if there was some kind of site for how various TVs responded to calibration attempts. I don't know of one, but it would certainly help point a lot of us in the right direction.

Comments

farss wrote on 2/15/2005, 1:01 AM
We've found much the same thing with any of the LCD monitors, getting the pluge right, forget it. About the only one that comes up OK is the 23" HP. The VAIO we're running DV Rack on you just cannot get any graduation down to the blacks.
Bob.
musman wrote on 2/15/2005, 1:33 AM
That's either very disappointing news or I'm more of a technogeek than I thought I was. Still, it is great to hear that the HP passes the tests. Guess that seals it, I'm going to have to buy one. Now if only I could figure out how to put a battery on it and the Panasonic 4:2:2 60p I-frame cam comes out at the Z1 price I read about . . .
Bill Ravens wrote on 2/15/2005, 6:19 AM
Using DVRack, I can cal my Sony Vaio laptop screen and my Sone widescreen 23" just fine.
jsteehl wrote on 2/15/2005, 6:36 AM
Good info Musman. I'm looking to do the same with my 14inch Tosibha that is my external TV/Monitor.

I was looking at the AVIA DVD on ebay and some come with a set of filters. Did you use them? Where did you get your copy?

Thanks,

-Jason
BillyBoy wrote on 2/15/2005, 6:50 AM
"Things look better when a TV is calibrated. Richer, fuller, more accurate, and not glaring or distorted"

Really? I've been telling people that here for years. AVIA is OK, but showing its age. Was produced in 1999 and never upgraded to include Plasma or LCD. While also disappointing, Digital Video Essetials, another home theater set-up DVD anyone can use to calibrate their TV or monitor is a couple years newer.It also comes with a three color gel to "help" set color intensity and hue. Both have HORRIBLE DVD navigation systems. Of the two DVE has the better, newer higher quality test patterns, but the narative in several places is overly wordy, almost preachy. AVIA does better with audio side, if you're into phasing speakers and tweaking placement for a home theater.

I found setting black and white levels very easy on my Plasma, more difficult on the LCD. Because by design a LCD's produce a very bright picture (made to view TV in a brightly lit room or in bright daylight) out of the box the constrast (white level) was set to a crazy 90% value. So before attempting to set black level (brightness) be sure to drop the contrast down. Even then getting a totally back screen (your goal) when nothing is being broadcast is more difficult.

You may not be able to find either title in retail stores. Both are all over the Web and carried by places like Amazon.
trock wrote on 2/15/2005, 8:27 AM
I've had similar results when trying to use TVs as my external monitor. I was lucky enough to find a Panasonic video monitor on eBay for $50 and that calibrated really well so that my DVDs look "right" on multiple TVs (as much as they can taking into account all the differences between one TV and another).
corug7 wrote on 2/15/2005, 9:12 AM
This is probably a really dumb question coming from someone who works as a video tech, but why can't bars from Vegas be used to set a monitor? Maybe I haven't put enough thought into it before asking the question, but couldn't one fake a blue gun with the color corrector, and aren't the bars set to proper NTSC levels?

Please don't respond like an A**, as I have already learned a lot from these forums, and it really ticks me off when others who are trying to learn something get a verbal pie in the face.
B_JM wrote on 2/15/2005, 10:17 AM
vegas bars are a better choice - because what people here fail to realize is that dvd players are all over the map also on output and are fairly usless to set up TV's to correct STANDARDIZED levels ...

the AVIA dvd is not correct for 0IRE , but it is for home CRT based systems i am guessing ..

thats why external calibration tools and scopes are important ..


trock wrote on 2/15/2005, 11:31 AM
I used the Vegas bars together with a blue filter and it seems to have worked out well.
musman wrote on 2/15/2005, 1:10 PM
Got mine from amazon and it did come with the filters. Thought they all did. ANyway, I recommend testing BEFORE you buy a tv if at all possible.
musman wrote on 2/15/2005, 1:16 PM
"the AVIA dvd is not correct for 0IRE , but it is for home CRT based systems i am guessing .. "

Aren't we supposed to be setting for 7.5 IRE? You know, the whole damn pedistal thing? This is one reason why I don't use Vegas to calibrate, my transcoder is a Sony pd150 that adds 3.7 IRE, so my black levels would be wrong. This halfway measure really pisses me off, but is true of many prosumer cameras. Apparently only JVC handles this corectly.
farss wrote on 2/15/2005, 1:48 PM
Having run a few fairly basic tests what B_JM is saying is 100% correct, what you get out of a DVD player could be anything. You can make your own perfectly useful test DVDs using Vegas, I've even done one with the classic audio sync flying bar thing, calibrated so you can measure how many frames off you are.
But most DVD players basically seem to convert Computer RGB to Studio RGB or 'legalise'. If you've got any form of A->D converter try this simple test.
Put bars on T/L, encode to mpeg-2, bring file back into Vegas. looks a little messy but still at the right levels. Make DVD, play and capture it back. Now I know this is far from scientific, you'd need hardware scopes to do any better but we've done that and guess what, the levels have shifted!
For what it's worth I only realised the other day that DVD mpeg uses the 622 space, DV uses 601 and HDV, 709.
Bob.
BillyBoy wrote on 2/15/2005, 2:10 PM
ANY method you use assuming you're adjusting off anything on a DVD be it your own brew, or some packaged 'set-up' DVD can and probably will inject its shortcomings into the mix.

I wish I could find it, but I guess I didn't bookmark the site. Some time back I found a site that REALLY tested A/R receivers, DVD players, etc., with top end bench test equipment. The results were surprising, maybe even shocking in that just about every DVD player tested regardless if a cheap Walmart special or something costing thousands had the TESTED IDE value running either too hot or cold. So the typical DVD will play back any DVD including the set up DVD you trying to use to calibrate your TV with its IDE instead of being 100 being anywhere from 95 (too cool) to 105 or more (too hot) which of course effects any calibration attempt short of using test equipment yourself. Kind of like buying a tape measure and its actually only 11.8 inches in every foot.
Orcatek wrote on 2/15/2005, 4:19 PM
Yeah, but if you are setting your display to your DVD player, then your should be ok (not perfect), but at least get the best from the player.

Now for the other inputs, assuming you can adjust them independent, you will need another method.

craftech wrote on 2/15/2005, 5:55 PM
I have both the Avia and Discwasher setup DVDs. They are quiite similar. One of the problems you run into with both of them is that "proper" brightness and contrast level settings are darker than factory default settings for televisions. When you color correct with your "properly" set monitor the customer will end up with a washed out video on their television because they will view it on televisions with factory default settings for contrast and brightness......ie: higher than "standard". I always compensate for that which is why I have never spent a fortune on a so-called "professional" monitor. Instead I ballpark the settings and then try them out on 5 different makes of televisions until I am sure the customer will actually "see" good color when they watch my videos.

John
ottowr wrote on 2/15/2005, 11:20 PM
BillyBoy,

would this be what you're looking for?

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_3/dvd-benchmark-introduction-9-2000.html
RexA wrote on 2/15/2005, 11:50 PM
>Instead I ballpark the settings and then try them out on 5 different makes of televisions until I am sure the customer will actually "see" good color when they watch my videos.

Sigh. Not encouraging, but probably realistic.

Why do we spend all the money and fight all the battles to define the standards if the manufacturers then choose to ignore them for cost reduction or to give "what customers really want."

On a similar note, after several years of watching HDTV from several local stations OTA, why are there more problems with them giving me a dependable signal now than a year or two ago? I'll give my best guess... They have cost reduced their broadcasting enterprises to the point where the engineers that are left are incompetent.

These kinds of bending rules or incompetence by major companies seem to be more frequent to me. Maybe I its just me getting older and thinking things were better before. Maybe not.

Good thread though. Brings up things we should be thinking about.
musman wrote on 2/16/2005, 2:35 AM
Defintely depressing. Thought I had it all figured out. And you're absolutely right, it's damn time manufacturers established a standard and actually made products to fit it. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
I'm waiting for the day I can use an HP 2335 just as a preview monitor and have an eye one (or whatever the thing is called) do the calibration for me.
B_JM wrote on 2/16/2005, 6:40 AM
going back in time -- my sgi 540 and 320's 1600 flat panels came with hardware flat panel calibratiors as standard ..... that would be nice to see on a few more systems
BillyBoy wrote on 2/16/2005, 6:55 AM
A little off topic, but as a relatively new viewer of HD broadcasts (couple months) I've noticed a couple things, one minor and one that really bugs me.

1. Every so often the picture freezes, then breaks up, then its OK again. Only last a few seconds at most, usually less.

2. The audio kicks out. At first I thought it was my A/V receiver or maybe a wire to one of the speakers, but it only happen when watching TV, not playing a DVD. If I change channels, it comes right back. So is this more likely the cable company or at the source or is it really something wrong with my receiver?
Bill Ravens wrote on 2/16/2005, 6:57 AM
musman...

just read your post, above. i beleive the convention used in the industry is to encode all DV material to 0 IRE. Reason being, as follows
1-DV specification is 0 IRE.
2-IRE has no meaning when speaking in DV. IRE is an analog definition.
3-most all DVD players add 7.5 IRE when outputting to NTSC
4-Pedestal should be added to FINAL output to NTSC only, not to DV.
5-If you add 7.5, or any value to your DVD's, when you play it, your player will add 7.5 more, resulting in muddy looking blacks.
B_JM wrote on 2/16/2005, 7:03 AM
cable company -- not unussual ..