Matching Comp Monitor to external Vid Monitor

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

A properly calibrated computer monitor won’t look exactly like a video monitor.

But AE can take advantage (new in CS3) of your computer display’s ICC profile to simulate the tonal rendition of an SD/HD video monitor.

Basically, you have to enable a project working color space, make sure that AE is using display color management (view menu) and then turn on Simulate Output (also on view menu).

LCD monitors can’t be accurately calibrated by using the typical calibration wizards with color and gamma sliders (like the Mac OS colorsync utility or Adobe Gamma). You need a hardware device with the right software. I have the Spyder2Express ($80 or less) and it is more than acceptable for AE work.

If you have a quality display and you use a device like the one I just mentioned to build an accurate monitor color profile, then the simulation is really, really close to a “correct” video monitor.

It’s a deep subject. Adobe posted a terrific document on AE CS3 Color Management:

https://www.adobe.com/designcenter/aftereffects/articles/aftereffectscs3_color_mgmt.pdf – Similar pages

[Kevin Camp]

in addition, you’ll want to make sure your broadcast monitor is calibrated. you can do a pretty good job visually using smpte-c bars and the blue only switch on the monitor… google ntsc calibration and you’ll find several instruction sets. you’d prefer to calibrate the bars that play thru the computer (via your capture card) versus from a vtr or other source, since you are trying to match what you see on the computer monitor to what you see thru your capture card on the broadcsat monitor. also, try to find good bars (not compressed jpegs from the web), nle software usually packages smpte-c bars with the software, tyr those.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Absolutely.
Most modern Sony video monitors (generously including in the category my 7 year-old PVM) have an auto-calibration feature. You feed them bars, select auto-calibration in a menu and that’s it.

[Reggie Spires]

THanks guys …