[Mike Nagel]

Hi Brad,

best option for display calibration is always is a 3D LUT, which is the most accurate calibration u can get.

Resolve can take a calibration 3D LUT, which means the video output from Resolve can be accurately calibrated for your screen.

A more versatile approach is an external LUT box, if you work in 1920×1080 and can feed the HP with HDMI then the eeColor LUT box is by far the best and cheapest option and will give u the most accurate calibration possible.

– Mike

Profiling & Calibration Workflow Tools: http://www.DisplayCalibrationTools.com

[Mike Nagel]

Hi,

here are calibration approaches for your HDTV/monitor, starting with best possible results:

1) full 3D LUT calibration (using probes and calibration sw)

2) 6pt calibration using the CMS controls of your TV (using probes and calibration sw)

3) ICC based calibration (using probes and calibration sw)

4) calibration using calibration discs and dedicated calibration patterns (no probes or sw involved)

re (1): I can only highly recommend this, which will give the best possible results on any screen – there is no better alternative. This is the only calibration suitable for color critical application.

Purchase list for (1) – cheapest option for best results:
* i1D3/i1Display Pro colorimeter OEM version (do not buy RETAIL version): ~ US$250
* i1Pro spectro rev D (make sure to get rev D version): ~US$200 used or new off eBay
* Lightspace HCL: GBP400 (~US$670) – best 3D LUT calibration sw available
* eeColor LUT box: US$699 – 65^3 (274,625 correction points) external 3D LUT box supports full HD up to 10-bit

total ~ US$1,819

you can use this over and over on any HD screen (–> max resolution 1920×1080) and get stellar results.

If this is above your budget, you could try Argyll CMS (instead of Lightspace) which is another 3D LUT calibration sw and also supports the eeColor LUT box and is free – total now: US$1,149.

re (2): buy again both probes mentioned above, get Calman or Chrompaure and calibrate HDTV/monitor using internal CMS controls. If the screen does not have CMS controls or only limited or these controls don’t do much, there’s not much u can do. If you have a VERY linear display and good, usable CMS controls u can get a decent calibration from this approach. Other than that, not suitable for color critical application.

re (3): buy again both probes mentioned above – u could create an ICC profile using Argyll CMS which is free. Obviously ICC profiles are limited and cannot target a gamut when active on the OS level, so there’s only limited use… not suitable for color critical application.

re (4): since you tweak by eye via on screen patterns and cannot directly target gamut, greyscale or gamma, this is not suitable for color critical application.

Hope this helps 😉

– Mike

Profiling & Calibration Workflow Tools: http://www.DisplayCalibrationTools.com

[Mike Nagel]

Hi guys,

if you’re calibrating the Eizo directly with a 3D LUT (the HDLink’s LUT is smaller and the LUT processing is bad) then here’s a very detailed calibration & workflow guide comparing Lightspace & ColorNavigator calibration approaches:

Eizo CG275W Calibration Guide Using Lightspace And ColorNavigator

– Mike

Profiling & Calibration Workflow Tools: http://www.DisplayCalibrationTools.com

[Mike Nagel]

[Mike Most]
“I have to say that I used the Dreamcolor calibration puck and software quite a few times and never had the issues that you’re describing.”

Question is how you verified the calibration that you performed using the HP tools… u need a good meter (colorimeter profiled to a spectro) and software such as Calman or Chromapure which have sections that allow you to analyze a display and give u a full report… THEN you’ll see how good a given calibration is for the target (colorspace) you were calibrating for… eyeballing results will not be accurate…

[Mike Nagel]

“I did not know that 12 bits were scaled down to 10 bits for processing. I doubt, in terms of monitoring, that you could ever tell the difference.”

yeah, that info comes straight from the manufacturer. But in order to see it, you’d need a 12-bit application, 12-bit graphic card and of course a 12-bit display… so 12-bit via that box not really needed atm 😉

[Mike Nagel]

Thanks Robert for confirming that !

Indeed I was wondering if the HP calibration kit is any good, for the sole reason that others have claimed it does a good job – I would have been surprised if it can match any of the Pro packages.

Here’s more info on the eeColor package in case anybody is interested:

Lightspace VMS:

> creates a 65^3 LUT (to be stored in the eeColor box) from a 17^3 profile – it will read 4913 points on your screen. You can create smaller profiles, 17^3 is the current maximum.
> you only need to profile your display ONCE – u can then create all kinds of LUT’s (Rec709, Rec601, sRGB, P3 DCI etc.) from that ONE display profile

eeColor box:

> 6 internal storage slots for LUT’s
> 3D LUT algorithm only supports maximum of 10-bit input
> max bit-depth of internal processing: 10 Bits for the 3D LUT
> max resolution: 1080P is the offical max supported resolution
> 12 bits HDMI in will be 12 bits HDMI out but will be rescaled to 10 bits for 3D color table processing

– M

[Mike Nagel]

Robert,

so u can confirm that the eeColor provides progressive 10-bit to the HP DC ? If so, how did u confirm that you’re actually getting 10-bit on the HP DC ?

I was looking into this solution [LS / eeColor / HP DC (10-bit)] for quite some time but I was not sure if the HP DC receives a pristine 10-bit progressive RGB signal from the eeColor box which it needs otherwise the Dreamcolor engine shuts down and switches to 8-bit…

My eeColor is on the way and will arrive Monday but I don’t have an HP DC (yet) – I will get one if we can establish a 10-bit workflow with the eeColor box…

Thanks !

– Mike

[Mike Nagel]

I would only caution that we regularly test just about every probe we can get our hands on and if you elect to use calibration other than what is built in we strongly recommend using at least 5nm spectral bandwidth spectroradiometers. We find significant deviations when going to 8nm and especially 10nm spectral bandwidth spectroradiometers. If we felt we could use a $1,000 probe to calibrate our units we certainly would, we don’t invest in the significantly more expensive probes because it is fun, it is just what we find is necessary to get good results.

Bram,

can you go into more detail regarding the probes you are mentioning here… I’m assuming by the US$1,000 probes you are referring to the i1Pro spectros (10nm)…

Obviously, proper calibration equipment is as important as the capability of the screen, but if you’re saying one needs a US$11,000 (or higher) spectro to do a decent calibration on the FSI screens (as in: correcting the default color inaccuracies) then this is a very important consideration…

Can you elaborate on the deviations you found when using a 10nm spectro and how severe it was for the FSI screens ? Obviously 2nm / 5nm meters are more accurate, it would be interesting to know how much of a difference you guys encountered…

Low light capability is less of a concern, as any spectro will be used to profile a colorimeter…

Thanks.

– Mike Nagel

[Mike Nagel]

I forgot to mention, the reason why I was thinking about doing AE first and then PP is, is that all of our footage needs to be tweaked in AE.

So if I edit everything in PP first, then export to a lossless format, then import and start tweaking the footage in AE – how can I tweak footage properly that fades-in ?

On some points we definitely gonna have longer transition, fade-ins etc..

If I have the (lossless) output movie from PP I can’t tweak the footage that is aleady ‘waiting’ behind the fade-in transition…

I see two options to this:

a. wait till the footage has faded in, which means having partially bad and un-retouched footage in my movie, or…

b. use Dynamic Link to bring in the PP project into AE – then I just need to hope that all transitions and effects I applied in PP are available in AE

That was one of my main reasons why I thought about doing AE first and then bring in all the tweaked footage into PP.

What would you suggest ?

Thanx again for your help.

Mike

[Mike Nagel]

Wanted to share two other solution that I found:

1. click on the POSITION property in the target layer which now selects all keyframes and the adjust the position

2. David Bogie recommended the following solution to me:

Create a null and use that as your target!!! After that, parent your layer to the null and you should get a perfect track. The problem that you probably encountered is the first track point will equal the anchor point of your layer; which most likely won’t align. Using a null alleviates that problem.

In my opinion a perfect solution.

Thanx again everybody for your help !!!