HD Reference Monitors for FCP Suite

[Shane Ross]

REFERENCE monitors? Just for clients to look at and see the footage? So not needed for color correction?

For color correction, the best I have seen under $10,000 is the TVLogic LVM-240W. LOVE that one. Off Axis viewing was the best I’d seen. Second would be the JVC. If I had the money, I’d get that.

NOW…how will you get a signal to these latter monitors? If you already have a capture card, and it happens to have Component out…and you JUST WANT REFERENCE….get a good large Plasma like the Panasonics. Those look amazing.

If you don’t have a capture card, then the MXO/ACD option is a nice cheap one…and it can be used for color correction as well. Drawback being that your editor is now limited to using one monitor for editing…as the MXO takes a feed off of one of the DVI ports.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Chris Borjis]

[Shane Ross] “If you don’t have a capture card, then the MXO/ACD option is a nice cheap one…and it can be used for color correction as well.”

Shane can you clarify something?

I find it hard to believe that the MXO and an LCD could display proper black levels. Color levels possibly, but blacks are notorously way off on LCD and even Plasma’s at least for accurate reference color correction.

Or is there something that the MXO and the cinema display do that corrects for this?

[Shane Ross]

The black levels on ANY LCD isn’t going to be what you see on an HD CRT. All the models I listed have less than black levels…all a very dark grey. Only the eCinema CRT replacement monitor gets your true black…but that is $35K, and I felt a bit OUT of the price range.

The black levels are the same that I saw on the JVC…so they are no worse than the other HD LCDs out there….and no better.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Chris Borjis]

OK, so for color correction your eyeballing the lcd and paying real close attention to the scopes then?

I guess I misunderstood what you meant.

[Shane Ross]

ALWAYS use both. Scopes to make sure your levels are good, monitor to judge the quality and look of your footage.

BUT…I have an HD CRT that I use 90% of the time…so my blacks are black.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Chris Borjis]

[Shane Ross] “BUT…I have an HD CRT that I use 90% of the time…so my blacks are black.”

If you don’t mind my asking, which brand/model do you use?

[Shane Ross]

PVM-14L5 with HD SDI card. Monitor was $1500…HD SDI option was $1500. I bought the second to last one B&H had in stock.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[David Roth weiss]

[Borjis] “OK, so for color correction your eyeballing the lcd and paying real close attention to the scopes then?”

This is precisely why I often giggle when I read a lot of the very emotional posts debating monitors and color correction. Because, unless one spends the really big dough for a true broadcast reference monitor, anything else is at best just a close approximation of “true color” anyway. But that’s perfectly acceptable, because as long as the user/colorist becomes familiar with the limitations of the display and uses their scopes properly to maintain legal specs on output, a reasonable approximation of true color is fine and dandy in almost all situations, except when an absolute mission critical color match is necessary, as in matching IBM blue or perhaps another trademarked logo.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY?

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Chris Borjis]

Good points all David.

Shane one more question (i promise heh heh)

I’ve been wondering about these multi-sync Sony crt
monitors with the optional hd-sdi cards in them.

when you monitor something in SDI or HD-SDI, does
the HD-SDI image appear much sharper or is it about
the same as SD SDI?

Reason I ask is, my sony bvm is spec’d at having 800
lines of resolution where the pvm’s are usually around
600-700. But for some stupid reason (typical sony) they
did not offer an HD-SDI option card for the BVM

[Walter Biscardi]

[Borjis] “I’ve been wondering about these multi-sync Sony crt
monitors with the optional hd-sdi cards in them.

when you monitor something in SDI or HD-SDI, does
the HD-SDI image appear much sharper or is it about
the same as SD SDI?”

I have two of these, but I didn’t bother with the HD-SDI card. We just feed them component and yes they are MUCH sharper in HD than SD. They have 800 lines of resolution so they are very sharp in HD mode.

I think the HD-SDI board is a waste of money and I put that money towards our plasma screens instead.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

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