Question about how different monitors display your video differently

[Steve Rhoden]

Simply put, if you are serious about color correction and
color grading (two different things), for accurate color
perception, you need a broadcast monitor….There is so much
to advise and discuss regarding this topic its not funny, im
just too busy right now to go deeper on your issue….lol

Still (CRT, LCD, etc) monitors will give you different
color perceptions along with based on user settings etc.
(Much to cover here).

Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
1-876-832-4956

[Michal Bronec]

thanks. I would like to know more about this.. 🙂

[Mike Kujbida]

[Michal Bronec] “thanks. I would like to know more about this.. :-)”

Sony Vegas Color Correction Tutorial

[John Rofrano]

[Michal Bronec] “thanks. I would like to know more about this.. :-)”

In addition to the tutorial Mike pointed to and Steve’s advice of using a Broadcast Monitor, niether of them will do you any good at all unless you calibrate whatever monitor you are using for color correcting. If you are using a CRT, you should read up on how to calibrate it properly because this is most likely your problem. Here is one such article:

Using Color Bars to Calibrate an NTSC CRT Monitor

Until you calibrate your monitor (CRT or otherwise) you cannot trust anything that you’re seeing and all the color correcting tutorials in the world can’t help you.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Nigel O’neill]

Michal, laptop displays make terrible playback screens as they have not been properly calibrated for colour. If you are a serious video editor, you will need to use something like a DataColor Spyder monitor calibrator.

It can be used for your LCD, laptop or CRT.

https://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/profiling/spyder3elite.html

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Matt Crowley]

In addition to all that, laptop LCDs (and cheaper desktop LCDs) often have relatively poor viewing angles. Even if you’re in the correct position to view the center of the screen, the top and/or bottom (and sometimes sides) can appear quite different due to the change in angle between your eyes and the screen surface. This is especially noticeable for highlights and blacks. In this case you need to use a better external monitor.

[Dave Haynie]

Yup… agree with what everyone says here… calibration of any screen is critical. But it’s worse with LCDs, basically, since they’re worse to begin with.

A modern LCD television does a bit of magic to mimic the quality of a phosphor (CRT or Plasma) or DLP display. The typical CRT can deliver a contrast ratio of 15K-20K:1. A very good LCD does about 1K:1, and many do less. The magic in recent displays is dynamic backlighting. LCDs don’t create light, of course, they gate it. So there’s also a backlight. Dynamic systems use an array of LEDs (thus, marketing people call them “LED” monitors/televisions) as backlights, and the video processor varies the brightness of each LED based on the local brightness needs of a small area of pixels…. kind of the same idea as MPEG-2 macroblocks vs. color, only in reverse.

But this isn’t usually done on PC displays (if yours supports it, it’s probably switched off), simply because it only really works well with natural images, not pixel-precise computer graphics. Add to that your typical laptop uses a TN (Twisted Nematic) LCD, which will often only deliver 6-bits per color, not the minimum 8-bits per color we expect. And they have this whole viewing angle issue.. but hey, at least that’s a good way to prove you have a TN display and not something higher end. The main reason they’re used in laptops: they’re cheap, and they’re low power. They’re also pretty inaccurate, color-wise, varying by temperature. Calibration helps, but the typical laptop will never look as good as your CRT.

Apple and perhaps some other expensive laptops use IPS (In-Plane Switching) type LCDs, which are more expensive and more power hungry (two transistors per subpixel, versus the single transistor in a TN display. IPS displays used to have even worse contrast, but much better color, and recent improvements in LCD and backlighting have these at least competitive with CRTs, for a price. IPS have also moved down-scale a bit, kind of edging out yet another LCD variety, MVA/PVA (multidomain/patterned vertical alignment)… I have a pair of these on my desktop. About five years ago, MVA was the best LCD choice for video work; IPS was too slow and had some weird artifacts. Like IPS, MVA/PVA doesn’t have the viewing angle issue, it has good color (IPS is a little more consistent, but I run my calibration tool every two weeks or so anyway), and has pretty much been pushed out of the monitor business with the improvements and falling price of IPS technology.

-Dave