How are you calibrating external SDI displays?

[Tero Ahlfors]

Use a calibration software that makes a 3D LUT based on the display. Then use a LUT box between the I/O device and the display or if the software you’re using has a monitoring LUT option (like Resolve) you can use the LUT in that. Lightspace and Calman can use Resolve as a pattern generator so you’d make a connection between Resolve and the calibration software and profile the screen with the probe.

[Shane Ross]

I take mine in to a calibration expert who does it.

Shane
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[Dan Powers]

Tero that makes sense except setting the monitor itself. I can see how sending the monitor a “LUT” corrected image is one thing, but what if the monitor is all jacked up. So the probe on the monitor makes the LUT offset the jacked up monitor settings? Sounds less than ideal but ok I can see how that could work.

It seems that there is no software that will take a probe, look at the monitor and a signal feed and advise you where to adjust the actual monitor values. Then I could set up each monitor to display correctly wihout sending the signal to a lut box.

So you use Resolve and Calman or Lightspace? So I assume you are on a PC/Windows machine. Neither of those make Mac OS versions…
I have yet to find a color tool (software and probe) that will send an image signal to the SDI video card unless it was a rare card that allows the OS as an extended desktop to the SDI output. BMD used to offer that but killed it. Bastards.

If you have more than one monitor connected to your SDI feed then you are going to need a LUT box for every monitor… right? So instead of adjusting every monitor, you adjust every LUT box for every monitor? What LUT box are you using? I need to correct about 10 large LCD monitors in our facility. Joy. Fun. Not.

[Tero Ahlfors]

I made a big effort post but apparently it disappeared so quick recap:

You can either:

-Put the LUT in a monitor if a monitor supports hardware LUTs eg. Flanders Scientific monitors, some Eizos/NECs/BenQs
-Put the LUT somewhere in the signal chain eg. a LUT box or a monitoring LUT option in a software
-Manually calibrate the monitor using, for example, the free Lightspace version to read patches and set the monitor settings one by one by hand. This requires a lot of time, skill and knowledge. You’d probably get more accurate results with a LUT especially if you’re using a cheaper monitor.

[Dan Powers] “I have yet to find a color tool (software and probe) that will send an image signal to the SDI video card”

You can use a bunch of different patch generators with Lightspace and Calman and the cheapest one would be using Resolve as one.

[Dan Powers]

Thank you for the time Tero. Going to work on this more today. I have BMD designs 6G SDI to HDMI converters that supposedly have some LUT support. Looking into how to transfer one into them.

I also have an Eizo 31 that supports the transfer.

Digging in. I will report back on how it works out so as to complete this thread for future researchers.

Thanks again.

[Dan Powers]

Wanted to go ahead and complete this thread for future readers.

Went through the Calibrations using Resolve, Display Cal, and Spyder 5, setting first the external display as guided and then it ran in Resolve for about 3 hours and completed.
Initially the monitor does look improved but apparently it did nothing to the display output, but just the initial calibration settings it had me do with matching color temps to what the probe sees was a significant improvement.

I then used the calibration profile that DisplayCal created and saved it as a .cube and loaded that into the black magic 6G SDI to HDMI converter via USB and it loaded the new profile, which did indeed match my calibrated display even more closely.

It seems to work. Thanks for your past input on this topic!
Dan