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the benefits of a good monitor
Please excuse the long explanation and strange request… but I figured the DaVinci group would have some insights here…
In wrapping up an indie feature (graded in DaVinci) I was blown away by how good it looks when viewed on a good monitor. I’ve been editing and doing vfx using typical junk monitors, but when I saw it on a 10-bit cinema projector (at the theater) and on a Dreamcast, it almost brought tears to my eyes seeing the banding disappear and the real array of colors/lights/darks/etc.
SO, at my day job, my boss refuses to see the benefits of getting a Dreamcast since we’re only shooting 7D and most of our stuff is delivered online. It’s true we do most of our coloring in Colorista, but my contention is that with junk monitors, we can’t even see what we’ve got. The colors aren’t true. Our fine-tuning isn’t really that fine. And no matter the delivery format, garbage-in garbage-out applies, and a good monitor is a necessary part of post house that wants to take itself seriously.
My understanding is that your typical monitors actually downsample to 6-bit color, providing even crappier display.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here could give any thoughts on the value of having a higher-end monitor that I could communicate to my boss. Or am I up in the night. A strange request, but any ideas would help.
thanks,
Tom
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10 Replies
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Without a proper, calibrated, monitor you have no idea what you are doing. This basically makes you an amateur or enthusiast and even crappy 7D foortage can be graded to look better and will look better even on the web. So unless you want to be stuck doing dslr web junk forever time to put a relatively small amount into a actual broadcast monitor.
-Rob-
Robert Houllahan
Director / Colorist
Cinelab Inc.
http://www.cinelab.comMAHC-PRO 6-Core 3X GTX285 20Tb SAS Wave Panel Panny 11UK SDI Plasma.
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I think you mean HP Dreamcolor (there is no such thing as “Dreamcast”).
I would echo what Robert said. There is no point to color correcting on a standard computer monitor unless that’s the only way the work is going to be viewed. For anything else, you need to be using a monitor that displays a proper image in order to have any kind of sensible feedback. There is no substitute for that.
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I had loads of fun with My SEGA Dreamcast back in the days 😀
I say , get yourself a new boss who understands the nature of your work.
With all those noobs running around with cameras tight now, you need to have at least one constant in the pipeline.A slice of color…
DaVinci 8.0.1 OSX 10.7
MacPro 5.1 2×2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB eSata 6TB
GTX 470 / GT 120
Extreme 3D+ WAVE -
Take a look at the new FSI Monitors. They’re sweet.
Joseph Mastantuono
http://www.goodpostny.com
Color Grading & Post Production Consulting -
I did not mean to be entirely flippant about monitoring but scopes alone do not cut it. There are so many different monitors and displays setup in so many different ways today but I think that if you grade in a proper calibrated space it is the only chance you have of making the images look good on all of them.
I think it is basically about trust, when you have a display that works and is calibrated, you then know it and can trust what you are seeing on it.
Otherwise you can grade something to look good on YOUR monitor and it may look ok on 20% of the monitors out there and total crap on 80% of the rest and you might not ever know… until someone says that thing that came out of your shop was really flat and cyan looking a year later.
-Rob-
Robert Houllahan
Director / Colorist
Cinelab Inc.
http://www.cinelab.comMAHC-PRO 6-Core 3X GTX285 20Tb SAS Wave Panel Panny 11UK SDI Plasma.
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Part of it is education of both clients and those above you. If you need more ammo. Think of having to go back and correct stuff that looks wrong.. time and money your company may have to eat the cost of. Also hurts your reputation too. Each client i get in i find that there is a learning curve there.
CJ
p.s. I like my 11uk Panasonic too HD-SDi though is the only way to go. -
Yeah I got the 11UK a few years back and was running it on Color and I had a HD-Link Pro display port but the 11UK hdmi is only 8 bit. So I got the SDI card that cost as much as the display…;-)
I calibrated it with Light-Space and a X-Rite Hubble and made a 3D LUT that I have on Resolves display LUT output.
-Rob-
Robert Houllahan
Director / Colorist
Cinelab Inc.
http://www.cinelab.comMAHC-PRO 6-Core 3X GTX285 20Tb SAS Wave Panel Panny 11UK SDI Plasma.
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Yeah I got lucky and got the SDI board used and was fairly cheap they were selling a bunch from the olympics a year back. I totally saw the difference. How has that color solution been working for you? I had a THX guy come in and probe everything etc. I still don’t know how much i can trust the panny though.
CJ -
It took a wile for Steve Shaw and I to get the 11UK calibrated (it’s 98% of REC 709) but it looks good and I have good confidence in the display now. I don’t think it is possible to get a good 709 cal with the pannys internal adjustments. I had it setup with a klein k-10 and internals when I first got it and it is pretty far off from perfect even after that.
The Hubble and Light-Space together are more than the display and SDI card but well worth it IMO plus you can then calibrate other displays.
-Rob-
Robert Houllahan
Director / Colorist
Cinelab Inc.
http://www.cinelab.comMAHC-PRO 6-Core 3X GTX285 20Tb SAS Wave Panel Panny 11UK SDI Plasma.
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Thanks for the “ammo” folks!
And yes, I meant Dreamcolor… 🙂
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