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Monitor upgrade situation
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Pick up one of the new UltraSharp Dells to replace your Apple Cinema Display.
Pick up a Flanders Scientific 1760W or 2461W for your broadcast monitor. These come with a 30 day money back guarantee so you can essentially demo the unit in your facility for a month with no pressure to keep it.
Those are the two best recommendations I can make.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
Walter, if I remember right, I believe you are the one that recommended the Lhe and broadcast monitor I have now
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[Andy Mees] “No. Thats a “display” output, not a “video” output ie it appears as a extended desktop monitor output to the OS but not as a broadcast video output to the NLE.”
Mind you, in FCP X (sorry if this violates forum boundaries, but it seems relevant to someone trying to save money on monitoring), there’s a fair chance you’ll be able to get decently accurate video on a monitor connected to a normal GPU, thanks to its new ColorSync support.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “it seems relevant to someone trying to save money on monitoring), there’s a fair chance you’ll be able to get decently accurate video on a monitor connected to a normal GPU, thanks to its new ColorSync support.”
I suspect that’s wishful thinking Chris, because accurate color is only part of the equation. I don’t think that even Apple has yet figured out a way to properly display fields on computer monitors.
So, I wouldn’t be throwing all those Flanders monitors and AJA, BM, and Matrox I/O devices in the dumpster just yet. However, I will provide my address and the precise location of my dumpster for anyone who thinks I might be underestimating the FCX architects in this regard.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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[David Roth Weiss] “I suspect that’s wishful thinking Chris, because accurate color is only part of the equation. I don’t think that even Apple has yet figured out a way to properly display fields on computer monitors.
So, I wouldn’t be throwing all those Flanders monitors and AJA, BM, and Matrox I/O devices in the dumpster just yet. However, I will provide my address and the precise location of my dumpster for anyone who thinks I might be underestimating the FCX architects in this regard.”
You don’t display fields, you de-interlace in software first. What kind of external display are you monitoring on? Unless it’s a CRT, there’s a de-interlacing step in there somewhere anyway, probably handled by hardware within the display. LCD, plasma and DLP are all natively progressive.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “You don’t display fields, you de-interlace in software first.”
Yes, you DO display fields. 1080i is an interlaced format. Standard definition is an interlaced format.
Yes you DO want to see fields so when these formats are displayed on interlaced monitors / projectors, there are no surprises. You absolutely positively do NOT want your software or hardware converting your interlaced to progressive unless you need it to.
That’s why we recommend Flanders Scientific monitors. They properly display interlaced images.
So when Discovery Channel requires 1080i for delivery your answer will be “You don’t need to display interlaced, just display progressive instead.”
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[walter biscardi] “Yes, you DO display fields. 1080i is an interlaced format. Standard definition is an interlaced format.
Yes you DO want to see fields so when these formats are displayed on interlaced monitors / projectors, there are no surprises. You absolutely positively do NOT want your software or hardware converting your interlaced to progressive unless you need it to.
That’s why we recommend Flanders Scientific monitors. They properly display interlaced images. “
Again, LCDs are natively progressive. Flanders Scientific monitors may “properly display interlaced images”, but unless they’re doing something really, really bizarre (and their marketing material doesn’t seem to mention any especially unusual handing of interlaced material) they do so by processing them and then putting them on a progressive panel. There is, in principle, no reason this couldn’t be done in software.
If you absolutely need to see interlaced material as interlaced material, with no processing of any kind, as far as I know the only way to do this is to use a CRT.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.
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Chris,
We are talking about apples and oranges here, because the focus of this discussion should really be about the signal that’s feeding the monitor. A true video signal output via a camera, deck, or video I/O device, is quite different from the signal generated by a computer display card, such as ATI or Nvidia, and the monitors designed to display those signals do so very differently.
HDTVs or monitors are designed to display both interlaced and progressive video signals, despite the fact that they are native progressive displays. And, improper or mismatched fields are processed and displayed improperly on such monitors, making such anomalies easily detectable. The same errors go undetected on computer monitors fed by graphics cards or computer display cards.
So, as Walter and I said earlier, your advice is a tad unrealistic, and hopefully, no one will chuck out their Flanders monitors or I/O devices based on your advice. However, my offer remains in place, and should anyone decide to chuck theirs, I will gladly accept them.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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[David Roth Weiss] “HDTVs or monitors are designed to display both interlaced and progressive video signals, despite the fact that they are native progressive displays. And, improper or mismatched fields are processed and displayed improperly on such monitors, making such anomalies easily detectable. The same errors go undetected on computer monitors fed by graphics cards or computer display cards. “
I fully acknowledge that this is true with current editing systems (all of them, as far as I’m aware), but there is no fundamental technical reason why it has to be the case. The result of the de-interlacing that takes place inside an HDTV to drive, say, a 60p panel from a 60i source just produces a 60p signal that’s sent to the panel. This process could be precisely duplicated in software and used to generate an image to send to a 60p panel connected via a standard computer graphics card. There are even computer displays and graphics cards that can natively sync at 24 and 50 Hz, for dealing with other frame rates. Or, for that matter, you could simply hook up an HDTV to a standard graphics card via a DVI to HDMI adaptor, and then calibrate it via ColorSync rather than having to mess with LUTs.
About the only real limitation to this approach is that OS X can’t currently drive computer displays at more than 8 bits/pixel. But it’s probably fine for 90% of what people are presently using external monitoring for.
Basically, a lot of people are wasting a lot of money on monitoring because NLE developers haven’t been interested in moving past the traditional approaches, which originated in a world of interlaced analog video, desktop operating systems with no color management, and computer displays that couldn’t duplicate TV color spaces. I don’t know that Apple has managed to entirely solve this problem, but supporting ColorSync in Final Cut Pro X is at least a good first step toward dragging digital video monitoring out of the past.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “The result of the de-interlacing that takes place inside an HDTV to drive, say, a 60p panel from a 60i source just produces a 60p signal that’s sent to the panel. This process could be precisely duplicated in software and used to generate an image to send to a 60p panel connected via a standard computer graphics card”
You really don’t understand broadcasting do you?
David and I are not talking about the signal that goes to the TV. We are talking about the requirements of broadcaster across the world.
If you are required to deliver a 1080i / 59.94 (or 29.97) signal to a broadcaster (which 100% of the broadcasters I work with do) then you MUST be able to view that 1080i / 59.94 (or 29.97) signal properly on your editing monitor.
If you are NOT able to properly display that signal on your editing monitor then you have the possibility of delivering a signal with mismatched interlacing issues (which David mentions) which will result in your project being rejected by the Quality Control dept. of said broadcaster, which will result in you fixing the project (on your own dime) until it clears Quality Control.
THIS is what David and I are talking about. We really don’t care what the end television / projection system does to the image. What we care about is delivering the proper image to a broadcaster or any other specific client requirements. Simply “using progressive because that’s all you need” is not the correct answer in a professional video editing environment.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media
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