Vegas 6 - Calibrating a secondary display

.Alex wrote on 4/19/2005, 4:29 AM

Hi All,

The new feature in Vegas 6 to preview on a secondary window display is pretty cool, but can it be used to replace previewing on a broadcast monitor and/or TV?

I've got a couple of BENQ flatscreen displays and was hoping to use one of those for color correction etc, but I'm not sure how to go about calibrating it correctly.

I've seen there are various Monitor Profiles available, but I really don't know which one I should be selecting to suit my monitor.

Any help or advice wold be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

.Alex

EDIT: Probably a better way of asking this; is the output through the secondary window display the same as that output through the Firewire? I used to go through firewire to my camera, then out to a TV or projector. If I can use the secondary display instead it saves having to have my camera setup.

Comments

RBartlett wrote on 4/19/2005, 7:00 AM

What a fantastic new feature. One that people who slammed the notion of gigacolour TV-out will probably support in principle now. ;)

Can't answer authoritatively for you Alex. However it is clear that the latest Pro flat panel displays (typ LCD) have already grayed the concept of what is a broadcast monitor. There are no broadcast phosphors for instance. So if everybody moves to flat panel displays, what is the point of having broadcast phosphors. There is a similar argument for engineering for the fineries of 4:2:2 when DVB formats are typically less ranged than that with their sub-sampling matrices.

Now the consumer market is converging now that HD is moving along. So with regard to your Benq monitor, I'd say your largest enemy is the fact that the aspect ratio is probably way off 16:9. So you'll be somewhat restricted to 4:3.

In 4:3 SD resolutions you are scaling by virtue of most (computer) video adapters not having rectangular pixel modes (though many Matrox ones do). Also the legal color and luminance velocities are that much more tolerant on DVI-D and analogue component monitors than through modulation.

Remember the interlacing aspects of using a PC display surface.

Another consideration for the converging video and computing industry is that the quality of the video circuits with laser trimmed passive components is pretty much the same in consumer electronics as it is in broadcast solutions.

So the integrity (noise and level) of the circuits in your consumer camcorder, your prosumer cam and your PC VGA port are likely to be within a few percent of eachother.

The greatest pity is that even though a computer game can update a display at 120fps in 120Hz mode, it seems that a computer can only output 25 or 30 progressive frames per second. Never field based drawing on a progressive scanned display. I believe this comes down to the programmers intention to avoid frame rate adaptation artifacts. ie Those horizontal bars that sometimes appear when your 60Hz video is playing on a monitor in 75Hz mode.

It'd go for the nearest whole number multiple of 768x480. Assuming your monitor isn't stretching the horizontal in your own settings. Thereby you are using square pixels on your display for a rectangular source.

Don't get me wrong. If I buy Vegas6 it will be for the VGA preview function alone. I'll be totally satisfied as I like to satisfy the 23" widescreen LCD owner with computer and HD-DVD/HD WMV playback equipment. Yet I'm using SD sources and only might go to HD video sources if I can justify the expense with work of that type coming my way.

I'd like to know if Sony recommend setting the display frequency to 100Hz if running PAL and 60 or 120Hz for NTSC. Whether using EBU HD, ATSC HD or SD resolutions.