[Catalin Brylla]

Thanks a lot for the link, Walter. Now I really understand what the 1:1 scanning is all about. When I said the Flanders does not do full HD I meant 1080i cause in UK this is more common than 720p.

Walter, you are saying that you see hot colours and dark blacks on consumer LCDs and Plasmas. This happened to me on my last project. Does this mean that when I grade (with a grade 1 monitor) I should slightly desaturate and increase the blacks? Do most consumer screens over-saturate and over-contrast?

Any other comments about the above hardware setup?

Catalin Brylla
Filmmaker – Editor – Lecturer
http://www.catalinbrylla.com
Mobile: 07789004745
Skype: cbrylla

[Catalin Brylla]

Ok, I have finally decided on the following setup:

Matrox MXO2 LE
(as I understand, in terms of output only it is as good as the Kona LHi; plus no one has reported any big technical issues re playback and monitoring the formats I use)

Panasonic TH-42PF11EK
https://www.panasonic.net/proplasma/specsheets/pdf/specsheet/TH-42PF11EK.pdf
(this is the European version, but I believe it is the equivalent to what people recommend as a Pro Plasma in the US, right??)
Connected to Matrox via HDMI

Possible addition:
Flanders LM-1760W
Connected to Matrox via HD-SDI

Here are my questions re this setup:

1) is it a decent setup for grading in FCP and Colour?

2) some people suggest to have an HDTV and a grade 1 monitor to check “real” colours and colours that consumers will see on their screens (my work is usually for DVD, maybe Blu-ray soon; broadcast and online video/broadcast); so, is this dual setup good/necessary, or can I just stick to one monitor (Panny or Flanders)

3) I am a bit confused about full HD raster: the Panny obviously has it, but the Flanders has only 1366 x 768 pixels with 1:1 scan. If I chose the Flanders, would this “1:1 scan” mean I can still see full HD? An is the size and contrast ratio of the Panny not an advantage over the Flanders?

Thanks. Hope to close the case soon, so I can go back to edit 🙂

[Catalin Brylla]

By the way, what is the difference between full HD resolution (like the Panasonic TH offers) and 1:1 HD scanning (like the JVC and FSI offers)? Isn’t a full HD raster better than the scanning method?

[Catalin Brylla]

Thanks for the clarification Walter. Just one more question: If I had the Matrox MXO 2 LE with calibration software, would this be an acceptable calibration solution for the Panasonic Plasma (if I do it regularly)?

I also looked at the JVC DT-V20L3D (same JVC as in my initial shortlist but 20″), and it is better value for money, the difference to the 17″ version being only £160.

So, if I can choose between a 42″ professional Plasma (Panasonic), a 20″ Grade 1 (JVC) and a 17″ Grade 1 (FSI). Hard decision. Do I go for screen size, connections (is there a real difference between 10bit HDMI and HD-SDI when monitoring HD??), or other criteria (???).

[Catalin Brylla]

Thanks Walter. I will definitely put the FSI into my shortlist and try it out for 30 days 🙂

Re the Panasonic, you mention in several other posts that you have been using the TH (or TX) Plasma range as client monitors, and the colours looked very similar to the grading monitors, so you would recommend it as a low budget solution. Or am I missing something?

[Catalin Brylla]

Thanks for all the responses.

I gather the Datavideo monitor is off my list.

Rafael, I checked out the HP Dreamcolour and reading all the posts on this forum suggest that it is rather good for graphics and animation.

Walter, I’ve put the Flanders on my shortlist, but the problem is that they do not have a branch in Europe, so I need to think about this. You have been using the Panasonic, right? Would you say they are good (enough) for grading HD? It doesn’t have SDI, but I would use component or HDMI from the card.

[Catalin Brylla]

Thanks. The Flanders monitor looks good, but they don’t seem to sell it in Europe (UK). They ship it internationally, but if there are any problems, or I need technical support it will get tedious.

[Catalin Brylla]

Thanks for the response John. I also read the comparison specs on the AJA side, and was not quite sure what up and cross-conversion actually means. Does it relate to inputting (capturing) or outputting (monitoring)? Could you maybe mention some real-life examples of up and cross-conversion? I am just confused because playing out SD/HD from the timeline to the HDTV is also kind of cross-conversion, isn’t it? I just want to be able to monitor, not to input anything. In the near future I hope I can afford an FSI or TV logic monitor, which either of the two Konas could feed via HD-SDI, so it’s future-proof for my monitoring-only purposes.

Re HDMI, Walter mentioned in another thread that HD component from the Kona to the Panasonic HDTV it fairly accurate re colour grading (the cheap solution, that is). So, I guess HDMI is not priority.

[Catalin Brylla]

Jeremy, trashing the prefs and thumbnails did not help. The whole thing got back to normal for a day, and then the solid green issue re-appeared today. Again, I copied some raw media to my internal drive and it still shows as green in the L&T window. When I look at it with RedAlert the raw media is fine.

Any idea?

[Catalin Brylla]

Hmmm. This explains why the 4k media was converted to 2k on import. However, the 3k media stays 3k. I can see the size in the FCP browser. Obviously, when I mix 2k and 3k in the timeline I have to render one of them. I will try the transcode suggestions from the other forum you suggested.

Thanks a lot.