SD monitoring to LCD HD TV

[Jerry Hofmann]

I think that SD on HD sets looks pretty bad… you’d be much better off getting a standard def monitor for this.

Jerry

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[John Fishback]

especially for checking interlacing issues.

John

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[Sean Oneil]

You may be going about this all wrong. First of all, what do you mean by “interlacing issues?” Bad 3:2 cadence? Or just seeing interlacing at all? Because for 60i footage that’s exactly what you should see on an LCD if the signal is not being processed/deinterlaced.

Secondly, LCD televisions have built-in deinterlacing chips. Depending on the quality and age of the TV, it will attempt to cover-up or even eliminate bad 3:2 cadence. Sometimes it does this well. Sometimes you get blocking artifacts because it’s using linear filtering. TVs will also deinterlace 60i footage to 60p. TVs are generally designed to cover up mistakes made in post – not help you identify them.

Sean

[John Fishback]

I interpreted the original post as a desire to detect field order issues. While I’m not an expert, I believe you’d want a 60i glass monitor to show if field order was wrong.

John

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[Richard Day]

Hope this clarifies my issue:

Before I left my previous place of work, I was using a Mac Pro and occasionally sending playback from FCP through a DeckLink card to a Panasonic DVCPro 450 using SDI. Then I would check all titles and graphics with fine horizontal lines to make sure they would not flicker, using an external CRT monitor attached to the DVCPro.

This is the issue where fine horizontal lines flicker as they shift from one scan line to the adjacent one, and I wanted to do at home what I was doing at work. It proved very successful there, and I could apply a FCP Flicker filter (or a mild Gaussian Blur) to stop or greatly reduce flicker problems.

I will not be buying a *CRT* monitor at home for this purpose!

Lately I’ve been wondering if a little 8″ or 9″ Ikan LCD monitor might do the trick — they are often used for a field monitor or big “viewfinder” perched on top of a camera. I could use this device for this purpose (on or attached to a camera) and also check for flicker when editing. Certain models support 4:3 video. Now I’m concerned that these might try to “fix” flicker problems, as you seem to suggest in your post.

Shane Ross has a “stock Answer” #8: External Monitor Viewing. I’m essentially trying to follow his suggestion, but using an LCD monitor. Previous posts indicate an HD TV would be a bad idea, which is why I’m thinking about the Ikan.

[Sean Oneil]

[Richard Day] “Shane Ross has a “stock Answer” #8: External Monitor Viewing. I’m essentially trying to follow his suggestion, but using an LCD monitor. Previous posts indicate an HD TV would be a bad idea, which is why I’m thinking about the Ikan.”

Didn’t realize you were talking about scrolling text. One could write an entire book about scrolling text on interlaced formats. With your described workflow I think you need a CRT. Sorry. Maybe you could consider making you graphics and text as progressive-scan. I’ve never tried throwing progressive-scan scrolling text on top of interlaced video, but it might solve the problem.

Sean