Panasonic Plasma Monitoring Solution for davinci

[Tony Manolikakis]

It is not essential to have use a LUT if you are going out to film. There are many factors, including source material ( is it log for example ) but you can quite successfully provide a lab with a 709 colour space file or tape and they will be able to print it to film. They will of course be applying a LUT for their own process which includes the film stock, chemical bath etc etc. Of course what you see on your 709 monitor will not necessarily be what you see on film but 709 colour space is not far off. Now if your source material not in HD colour space -RED, Alexa, Film scan, Vyper etc then you will lose information going to 709 that you will not be able to recover when going back to film.

Tony Manolikakis
Rev13 Films

[Ronald Anderson]

I am using the Panasonic’s new 42″ Professional Plasma 20 series (model TH-42PF20U) with davinci 2K and Spirit Datacine. I am told it’s 10bit, but what I do know is that the picture quality is superb. I also have the BlackMagic DeckLink HD Extreme 3D, in the path, and using the auto mode it sees A & B Link 4444 to a 3Ghz output just fine. All other formats work well. I did notice some sort horizontal line “split mis-match” today while in 1080psf 23.98. Definitely a monitor issue, the media recorded just fine. Still researching this problem. Also have the 50″ plasma in a DI suite. Looks terrific!

[Denver Riddle]

Ronald your observation is very helpful! Are you running HDMI or dual link HD-SDI? As noted on another forum and in the PDF specs of the 20U off the Panasonic website if you look at the chart on the third page it indicates that it doesn’t support 1080P 24fps but that it does with the dual link HD-SDI terminal board. It’s believed that this is purposefully disabled over the HDMI in an attempt to get you to buy the expensive terminal board. Please advise 🙂

Cheers,
Denver Riddle

[Rory Hinds]

“by Peter Chamberlain on Jul 20, 2010 at 12:25:43 am

Currently the HDMI output from Resolve is YUV 10-bit.
RGB 10 bit is available from the DeckLink HD-SDI in dual link and 3G standards.
Peter”

Hi Peter
What do you mean the HDMI out of Resolve?
Resolve is software and HDMI is hardware, do you mean HDMI out of a Graphics Card?
What Mac Graphics card has HDMI out?

Cheers
Rory

Rory Hinds
mine
http://www.minefilms.com

[Gary Taylor]

Hi Ronald,

Thanks for sharing your experience!

Are you using one of the HD-SDI boards? Can you also share your configuration for the 50″ Panny?

Thanks again,

Gary

[Pete Putman]

After receiving a few emails about this topic I decided to set up an account and log on to read the discussions.

I would be very careful using consumer plasmas in a post suite. Unless Panasonic’s driver and controller designs have changed a lot in the past two years, the gamma performance of consumer models is not nearly as consistent as the pro displays, particularly at the high end of a grayscale. My TH42PZ80U’s brightness control has a dramatic effect on gamma performance, something I’ve never seen on the pro models.

I also wanted to clear up a misconception – plasma monitors are not analog displays (LCDs are). Plasma monitors have two states – on, and off. They use a technique similar to pulse-width modulation to recreate grayscales (weighted on-off cycles) and can run at very high switching rates, easily in excess of 600 Hz.

The issue with 3D plasma displays is phosphor decay during the off cycle. The newest consumer plasmas use a shorter duration phosphor, which I do not believe the 20-series plasmas do.

As for any differences between black levels on 20-series and the VT models, I haven’t measured a significant difference. I did spend some time at VTP back in May measuring a brand-new TH42PF20U and can say that it offers similar black level and contrast performance to an 11-series, with similar color gamut. The gamma settings appeared to be a bit shallower than the 11-series.

It is true that none of these models have color management. No surprise there; they were intended as general purpose digital sign monitors. But my experiments showed that they work very well as reference-grade monitors, provided the dynamic range is set up correctly. Color management for critical applications can be done with the Davio product. For less critical applications, a simple calibration does the trick. The main issue is in the tracking of the blue channel.

As for LCD vs. plasma, I have yet to see any LCD monitor that can achieve the black levels of a plasma monitor. Even the PVML230 series monitors black levels were 3x as high as the average black on a TH42PF11, and the L230 monitors used local area dimmed LEDs.

You can also see higher blacks on the Dolby 42-inch LCD with high dynamic range (the old Brightside Technologies local area dimming system). While that monitor has excellent color accuracy, it does suffer from off-axis contrast flattening. And if you are editing or correcting Scope content viewed with a hard letterbox matte, you will see haloing and light spill over the matte with bright objects. You won’t see that on a plasma monitor.

I would be curious to see to what extent plasma is being adopted into post houses and color correction suites. I’ve done two presentations at VTP so far on using plasma as a reference monitor – is there continued interest in this topic that would warrant additional presentations?

[Rory Hinds]

Hi Pete

Thanks for your input.

It seem the only real difference in the Pro vs Consumer is that the pro has slots available, for HDSDI or HDMI while the Consumer has HDMI built in. And I also understand that the Pro series offers more control over the picture in the menu while the Consumer requires you to access the service menu for the same control.

I’ve read that Panasonic doesn’t offer 10bit via HDMI on the Pro version as they want people to purchase the very expensive HDSDI board.

Everyone want to get setup for the lowest cost as money saved and be spent elsewhere on the suite.

Maybe a proper side by side test for color critical work of both the pro and latest consumer is in order to get to the true of things. You could also have other manufactures join in.

Could this be arranged?

Rory Hinds
mine
http://www.minefilms.com

[Ronald Anderson]

Hello Denver,
Sorry for the delay. I use a Black Magic dual link to HDMI. The box outputs only 422, and while in the auto mode, does pass all HD formats to the plasma. For the relative low cost, it’s an acceptable way to monitor. The same holds true for the 50″plasma, although the picture set up controls do not have the same features as the 42 inch. Why Panasonic cannot offer the identical menus for all of their professional plasmas is a mystery lost in twanslation. Once set up properly these monitors really look terrific though, from all angles.

Hope this helps.

[Christopher Adams]

Yes i too would like a good starting point for setup of the Pany plasma! 11 series here.. Mxo2 but contemplating selling it for DaVinci for mac. Unless they will support the matrox equip.
CJ Adams
Colorist
Simplexity Digital Post
https://simplexitydigital.com

[Illya Laney]

Isn’t the TH42PZ80U from 2008 though? From what I’ve seen, the new consumer plasmas are much better than what they used to be and so are the controls. Personally, I work on spots and reality, not 3D features, so spending money on a Davio isn’t necessary at this point. The Matrox is working fairly well right now anyway, though it seems I’ll have to use the Blackmagic card to calibrate for Resolve.

Motion Design, Color, Editing
SWGC Incorporated