CRT/TV Calibration?

MrMikeC wrote on 6/12/2004, 12:26 PM
I have a regular television hooked up to my video camera, then hooked to the computer via firewire to use the external display feature in Vegas. I'm mainly using the TV to determin the safe areas for a picture-in-picture thing (make sure it doesn't go off the edge) Anyways, I was told that CRT monitors and TVs differ greatly in how they display color, brightness, etc,,, so I'm also using the TV now as a way to determine what looks best, to get nice dark blacks, crisp colors etc. and it looks great. However, after I've done all the editing, rendering and authored to DVD, when I play it on a different TV in the house, those rich colors and dark blacks are now somewhat faded...Is there a solution to this? A way to either calibrate my CRT monitor or my TV so that the finished product will look how I want it to look?

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/12/2004, 1:16 PM
You really can't accurately balance a computer CRT to have correct gamma for editing, this is what the TV is for. As far as calibrating, there are loads of tools and sites to help you do this.
http://www.calibug.com
http://www.videouniversity.com
http://cybertheater.com/Tech_Archive/YC_Comp_Format/yc_comp_format.html
http://myweb.accessus.net/~090/how2adj.html
http://www.dvformat.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=21771
http://www.execulink.com/~impact/bmonitor.htm
are the bookmarks I've got loaded.
MrMikeC wrote on 6/12/2004, 1:45 PM
That calibug thing sounds like exactly what I need, I think? To make sure what I'm seeing on the computer screen will be as close to as what it will look like on the TV screen in the end?
Spot|DSE wrote on 6/12/2004, 4:38 PM
Surely does help, but you can also use Vegas' test tools to do accomplish much of the same thing. Calibug is a little more 'guided' but Vegas has many of the same test patterns in the generated media tool
MrMikeC wrote on 6/12/2004, 5:09 PM
I just don't know how to use some of them, does your book go into detail about the test patters? I know about the color bars but there are others that I have no clue about...
MrMikeC wrote on 6/12/2004, 5:11 PM
since I have you paying attention to my post, let me ask something off this topic, that I still can't get quite right,,, do you know a sure-fire way to not have the volume drop when going from PCM to AC-3? I've tried all kinds of things such as turning dynamic range compression to none, turning off all pre-processing.... Is it possible that the decoder automatically lowers the volume no matter what?
Spot|DSE wrote on 6/12/2004, 7:50 PM
It's the way the decoder is reading the file, generally.
So;
in Render As: AC3, go to Custom, and set Dialog normalization for -31. In preprocessing tab, set film mode to None. There are many threads on this issue, just search for AC3, normalization and you'll find several.
MrMikeC wrote on 6/12/2004, 7:58 PM
thank you, now that I heard it from you, I feel pretty safe =)
farss wrote on 6/13/2004, 6:11 AM
I'd just add one thing that I've found. DVD players will compress your video so it will look somewhat less vibrant. You can wind the gamma up a bit to compensate before you encode but just remember to wind it back if you're printing to tape.
It seems that the players are keeping the output within broadcast legal range, which is probably a good thing. I suspect you may see different results going from the player to the TV using a component feed.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 6/13/2004, 6:19 AM
Mike, I'll sell you one that's been used only one time. You'll save a few bucks, that way.

J--