Critical color monitoring for HD on SD monitors / BM downconversion quality

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Georg,

The new Multibridge Studio and Extreme models, which are due to ship some time this northern summer, are the ones that will include DVI-D monitoring which you could use with an LCD monitor. The current shipping DeckLink Multibridge model does not include DVI-D monitoring and that’s why we have the seperate HDLink product which has been shipping for around 1.5 years.

The point of this is that you’re not going to see the quality of the down conversion on the new models until they are released. However I can say that the down conversion in any of our products does do colorspace conversion and you can check this out for yourself in the DeckLink Extreme. Just plug the DeckLink Extreme in to a dual-processor G5 with PCI-X and you can then play out HD material and it will be automatically be downconverted to SD using software down conversion. This will give you some idea of what we can do and I think we will be using hardware down conversion on the Multibridges which will provide quality that is at least as good as the software down conversion.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Bryan Rawles]

Hi,

I would not recommend using the Apple 23 inch for color correction, or for that matter any LCD. There is one LCD that sounds promising, the eCinema 23,” but will cost you.

What I have found to be a great solution is the Sony BVM series multiformat monitors. They will automatically switch between HD and SD. You can get a downconverted SD signal out of you Blackmagic HD pro card, and the monitor will automatically detect and change to SD. No color space worries.

The monitors can be precisely calibrated and give reliable results for years. A 14″ will set you back about 5k, a 20″ about 13k. We have a 14″ which has been great, as well as a 45″ Sharp Aquos for the clients.

For color grading and critical viewing, there is no real option besides a CRT.

Hope this helps,

Bryan
Impact Productions

[Kevin Christopher]

Bryan,
Do you know what the model number of the 20″ is?

Kevin

[Bryan Rawles]

The model number is BVMD20F1U.

-Bryan

[Markus Prinz]

[Bryan Rawles] “I would not recommend using the Apple 23 inch for color correction, or for that matter any LCD.”

full ack.

lcds contra
– no real black, which isn

[Grant Keiner]

A couple of notes on Final Touch,

1- Final Touch seems to work best when you are using two computer CRT monitors. In fact it requires that you have two computer monitors.
2- On my last projecct we graded 11 episodes with final Touch, and we viewed 1080p down converted to 720p via a decklink HD pro. We still got full res on the second computer screen, but our color was all done on the Sony reference monitor. the fact was trying to watch the full Res coming out of the black magic was too slow, voidig any real-time advantages. 720p was slow, but bearable. The couple of Demo systems I’ve seen for Final Touch Seem to use two highend CRTs, with no “reference” monitor. The idea is that you can calibrate the computer CRT to what you need.
3- Final Touch HD gave us problems when re-importing to final Cut. Often a frame was missing at the end of the file. It appeared to be random. There were also a couple of exporting quirks like limiting the size of the sequence and making sure each clip had a unique name.
4- We were disappointed with the quality of some effects particualrly the blurs. they looked plain bad.

Finally. Final Touch really helped us speed up our workflow, despite these bugs. It was certainly faster than grading in After Effects, which was our other option. Now I think there might be another option you should consider, Motion 2. I have not personally used it But I believe it can do color correction, and HD. The idea behind motion and FInal Touch are the same. Before you drop thousands on Final touch Check out Motion 2. It’s cheeper and it might give you what you need, even if it doesn’t have the extensive catalogue of effects Final Touch does.

Hope that Helps
Grant Keiner