Monitors and RED Camera Info

As I mentioned before I was at the FTX west trade show and found some interesting things. I was able to visit the Sony display and have a look at their new BVM-L230 backlit LCD monitor. I had seen it at NAB this year in a darken room beside 2 other monitors but this was my first chance to really have a look at the unit and I have to say the images on that monitor are really, really nice. This is Sony’s grade A replacement for the BVM CRT and it’s definitely worth having a look at. The 23”model I was looking at was $25,000 approx CDN. Hopefully, they will be coming out with larger versions to fit into telecine bays and could be useful in grading.

Now it may not be 100% right for your application but it’s still a monitor you should check out. Another product I saw at the show and want to touch on is the Red Camera. As I’ve mentioned before I’m teaching a class on Apple’s Color on FXPHD.com, (blatant plug) and they are doing a Red course, which I’m about 8 classes into. Although I’ll never be a Cinematographer, being a Colourist goes hand in hand and it’s really important for me to learn what’s happening on set. A Colourist needs to understand how cameras work and what the crews are going through to create the images that we are going to enhance. So, feeling that my pockets were half full I went up to the Red camera booth to get more information so that I can understand what the technicians say. With technology changing so quickly now, we in the industry need to keep up by constantly training. However, that’s a whole other topic, which I’ll get into next week.

Writer's Strike

A hot topic of discussion with film and television professionals is the state of the industry. Specifically in regards to the writers strike and what is happening with the crews and post production. In the Vancouver area the shows are starting to shut down which is starting to have a ripple down effect in the post production industries. A strike is never well timed but this now leaves post production people scrambling to do one of two options. Either they lay off their employees to save a little bit of money or if they have deep pockets they can try to weather this and keep people on. To get laid off is a wake up call that this industry has changed and many job positions are freelance. You’ll be better prepared if you are vertically integrated so that you can do a number of jobs and do them well. Case in point is being a colourist with on-line capabilities at the same time. It’s up to you to make sure you are trained, that you seek out the training that will make you future proof. There’s a sidebar in my website that can direct you towards classes in Final Cut Pro, Color, and colour correction in Avid Express. Major manufacturers of Nucoda and Baselight both offer colour classes as well as DaVinci. Now a day, with the workstation model being adopted, the other 8 hours of time spent at a colour correction system is doing editing. Therefore, it would be a good idea for you to learn part of that whether it be conforming or just dropping in visual effects shots, doing outputs or dirt fixes. With automation improving, the job market is starting to shrink and you just want to make sure if you’re in it for the long haul that you have the tools that you need to weather this out. I was on a DaVinci for over 20 years and in the last 5 years I’ve found it necessary to re-invent myself just to stay current. Sometimes I feel like I’m pedaling a bike endlessly but that’s the model for today, it’s change, change, change. If you want to work in this industry it’s all about being versatile and keeping up with technology. Make sure you lift up your eyes and see the forest for the trees and hopefully you’ll have a long and prosperous career in the television industry.

Trade Shows and Networking

I attended the FTX West tradeshow in Vancouver last weekend. Trade shows are a great place to see the new technology as well as a great place to do some networking. You won’t find books that cover all aspects of the jobs we do in the industry. So if you run into some issues that you’ve never experienced before a reference book isn’t going to help you. There are lots of spots on the Internet that provide information but the best way I’ve found is to go networking. Belonging to user groups, formed of people who are experiencing issues the same as yourself is just an amazing resource. Tradeshows are the same thing, going around and meeting the exhibitors and the technicians as well as other people who are interested in these products. You have the opportunity to build a large data base of people to talk to so when you have a problem with a certain program or a certain piece of hardware you have a pool of resources to ask those questions and to get you around that issue. Whatever the problem someone will be able to help directly or be able to connect you up with someone else in the know. Manufactures also take note of these networks and design or modify products to better serve their clients. At the tradeshows there is a good chance you’ll meet up with people you communicate with on the Internet, which is usually an interesting experience. I’ve realized that our industry is a small world with the same names popping up in various places. Also on a social issue, the beer and wings that follow these events are well worth attending.

HD Monitoring Cost and Quality

HD Monitoring Cost and Quality

 

If you asked a group of industry professionals what their choice in HD monitoring is you would find a line drawn in the sand.  High-end post production facilities have always gone with the best CRT they can find,  mostly the Sony BVMs.  These monitors are found in the grading suites as they are able to display what the image really looks like and they are expensive.  On-line bays have a mixture of CRT and LCD as a more cost effective solution.  The images have been graded or quality checked in the Telecine suites before they arrive in On-line.

The cost of edit suites have been coming down steadily and these suites are being used more and more replacing the on-line edit bays.  They need high quality monitoring as well.  The Kyoto Accord, whether you support it or not,wants the use of lead reduced.  Lead is an important part of the monitor.

As your CRTs wear out and you can’t find parts you’ll be looking for the smaller, lighter flat panel monitors.  The price spread between these monitors is big so you have to start asking yourself some questions.  What’s my application for them going to be?  Am I grading, editing or monitoring?  Image creation in Telecines and visual effects get the best monitors as they are creating imagery.  Quality control and media ingest stations and On-line need good monitors. VTR as usual gets the leftovers. 

Manufactures are rushing to bring the newest technology to the market.  The first few generations of LCD displays answered the need for a cost effective wide screen monitor.  The colour resolution was 8-bits with high blacks and not directly comparable to CRTs as yet but you knew it would be a matter of time.

At NAB this spring I was running from booth to booth seeing what was new. 

In the past year I've had a look at the Sony, Cine-tal, e-Cinema, Panasonic, TV Logic and JVC offerings. 

Over at the Sony booth they had a darkened room with 3 monitors playing the same media.  The idea was to guess which monitor was Sony’s new back lit, 10bit  LCD display.  The images were very close and well worth a look.

Sony recently announced an OLED monitor was on the way and this wide gamut will be the new standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/sony-demos-9mm+thick-high+def-oled-displays-251613.php

The e-Cinema offer wasn’t working when I dropped by but I would have liked to have had a look at the DPX monitor.

All looked good but my preference, for an all around LCD, was the Cine-tal mainly due to the cost and available features. Firstly, the staff at the NAB booth were very helpful in answering my questions first.  The monitors have a good-looking image and many handy features such as the waveform and vector-scope option.  The blacks had the slight LCD blues you get with that version of technology but it was minimized through the software and is well thought out.  I had heard many good things about these monitors from people who are  shooting in the field as well.

Remember the service and support aspect of the monitors as well. Hope this helps.  Now don’t get me wrong here, you can’t beat the resolution or solid blacks of a CRT monitor. Their cost is another issue.  CRTs day in the sun is at an end.  If you want a new monitor you’d better start educating yourself and moving forward with the new technology.

It would be very interesting to see all these monitors in a sidei by side shoot-out against the a Sony 32 inch CRT reference monitor. http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/DisplayModel?m=0&p=8&sp=20073&id=80823

This would make it easy to divide monitors into 2 groups, good and affordable.  Buy the best for what you can afford and know the technology will be changing as fast as your last computer. 

Sony (Backlit LCD technology)

http://pro.sony.com.hk/nab2007/products_bvml230.html

E-Cinema (Backlit LED technology)

http://www.ecinemasystems.com/products/dcm/intro.html

Sony; (LCD technology)

http://pro.sony.com.hk/nab2007/products_lmd2050w.html 

Cine-tal (LCD technology)

http://www.cine-tal.com/

Panasonic (LCD technology)

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp...roupId =14625 

JVC.com (LCD technology)

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101631

TV-Logic (LCD technology)

http://www.postium.com/products/mf_lcd/ml_index.php

FYI

Boland

http://www.boland.com

Brightside / Dolby (Backlit LED technology)

http://www.dolby.com/professional/vi...by-vision.aspxa

Teaching At FXPHD.com

A year ago I was looking through the forum on the Telecine Internet Group’s website, tig.org., and saw a thread in regards to Compositor’s doing visual effects.  It mentioned that Compositors are highly skilled artists, as are Telecine Colourists, and it would be a help for up and coming artists to have access to training on the basics.   A gentleman named Mike Seymour replied to this post saying that he was setting-up a web site to do just that. 

I pitched to Mike 12 classes of Digital Colour Theory.  At that time I had been teaching color theory courses at a number of area colleges and thought this class might apply to what he was talking about.  So, I sent him an e-mail and told him that I had color theory pertaining to digital media and would he be interested in doing something with it.  Turned out to be Mike from FXGuide and FXPHD and with support from John Montgomery, I developed the classes that were placed on the Internet.  To my surprise they were widely popular.

The e-mails I got back in the FXPHD forum numbered in the 100’s along with tons of questions. It was so amazing and gratifying to have the classes out in the world wide forum and hear questions coming back from Russia, Spain, Israel, United States and Canada, it was just an amazing experience. 

Once the classes were finished John Montgomery contacted me about doing a color correction class with a software called “Final Touch” which was developed by Silicon Color.  This year Apple purchased the Silicon assets and re-branded it as Color, part of the Final Cut Pro Studio 2.   Once the dust had settled on the acquisition, John asked me about teaching Color.  The DCT classes were such a positive experience I said yes! I drafted 10 classes together on Color, workflow and some looks at the entry level.  I checked out a lot of the forums on the Apple website as well as Creative Cow and certainly there was a groundswell of people wanting to know about this software so there was a big base of people interested in it.  So the first class was completed and put on the Internet for download in the middle of September.  In it I discussed calibrating your monitor. It’s extremely important that while Artists are creating their images they use a properly aligned monitor (canvas) so there are no surprises when your peers are judging your work.  Previously in the Digital Color Theory class I talked about calibrating a CRT monitor and this time around I thought I would take it up to the next level. Compositors, Digital Intermediate Artists and Editors were doing color correction based on computer monitors, mostly flat panels.  So I contacted Jeremy Pollard at Rising Sun Research and asked him to give me the ins and outs of how this software functions. 

I felt it was good that we went over alignment of the flat panels.  Rising Sun Research has 2 pieces of software that first profile the monitor, CineProfiler and then apply a look-up table (LUT), equalEyes.  I’m up to class 3 now and just received a note from John Montgomery that they will be capturing footage with their Red camera for an upcoming colour corrections class so I’m looking forward to working with log images from the camera.
  

October 23, 2007

Hi, I’m Lorne Miess. I’ve been a Colourist for the past 25 years and in my spare time I teach digital colour theory. This web site has been assembled as a focal point for people interested in digital colour theory and aspire to be Colourists. As well as those working Colourists who want to know the industry news or want to know what’s going on with the new technology.

Over the next weeks and months to come, I’ll be making entries on a specific range of topics pertaining to colour theory and colour correction. I’ll also be assembling web links, reference materials and book selections to learn more about our industry. Our industry is vibrant and constantly changing and as professionals we need to keep up. I look forward to some bristling discussion on how our industry needs to evolve to be completive.