Computer monitor vs. TV for previewing video footage…

[Jon Zanone]

Well, you’ve just stumbled upon the meaning of life. Really. This is it.

You should be looking at your video through (IMO)a waveform / vectorscope and a good quality (Sony BVM/PVM series or equivilant) CRT monitor. Since most companies (all?) have ceased manufacture of CRT tubes, you could find one on ebay (being careful of the condition, mind you).

You would hook this equipment up so the video signal passes through the scopes, to your deck and then to your monitor. The reason for a broadcast monitor is faily simple – most have a button called ‘blue only’. This turns off the red and green guns, and allows you to adjust your monitor correctly (here’s a good link – https://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm) You could do this with a blue gel on a regular TV….

Then you gotta’ ask yourself “how do I know the signal coming out of my video card is correct?” Well, unless you are a trained broadcast engineer, you don’t. Hence the scopes. In fact, in the old days, conventional wisdom said you had a pair of scopes prior to every deck (and after, as well) Monitoring firewire and S-Video is a little tricky – they are condidered comsumer connections, and you won’t readily find equipment to check the validity of your signal.

Now, this setup will cost a pretty penny – upwards of $8-10 THOUSAND dollars. If you are doing stuff for broadcast, I’d say it’s a necessity. If you are doing stuff for the web, corporate, stuff shown on a big screen during a convention, you could probably get away with your internal scopes and a good quality CRT. People are now using plasma and DLP projectors. Stay away from LCD – I’ve not seen one yet that was good for anything other than making sure the signal is there. Bottom line? Spend as much on a good monitor as you can. If you’ve got it, spend even more money on a waveform / vectorscope. If you are in this buisness to make money (and why wouldn’t you be?) it’ll be worth every penny down the road.

Jon