Grade-worthy Displays?

[Brandon Fraley]

I'm expecting my camera any moment and currently only have my 17" MBP. I wondering if anyone could advise me on displays.

1) What's a good deal on ANY 2nd display to view my footage on while I edit

2) What are some good Broadcast quality, grade-worthy displays. I probably won't be able to afford any of these, but I'm curious and would like to know what other people are using.

THANKS!

[michael zaletel]

From:

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/971186

Re: Matrox MXO & Apple Cinema VS Sony LMD-2050WHD
by Paul Escandon on Jan 18, 2008 at 10:57:45 pm

Yeah - the [new 23" Apple] cinema display when hooked up to a Matrox MXO WILL indeed display fields - I know because I use this at home. It looks just like it does on my $5,000 Sony Broadcast HD monitor at the office... you can see the field flicker when parking on an interlaced frame and everything.

* * *
Paul Escandon - Lead Editor @ Outdoor Channel
Producer | Director - Oremus Productions
www.oremusproductions.com
Apple Certified Trainer - Final Cut Pro
- -
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University


Re: Matrox MXO & Apple Cinema VS Sony LMD-2050WHD
by Paul Escandon on Jan 18, 2008 at 8:27:47 pm

Shane Ross did a great review here on the COW about the MXO and the Cinema Display. I am currently a Matrox MXO user and have it hooked up to a 23" Apple Cinema Display. The results are great - this setup gives you a broadcast accurately display and the price is right.

One thing to note though - it won't work with an Apple 30" Cinema display. You need 23". The box is designed for the 23" and won't drive the 30" because of it's need to have a dual link DVI port.

* * *
Paul Escandon - Lead Editor @ Outdoor Channel
Producer | Director - Oremus Productions
www.oremusproductions.com
Apple Certified Trainer - Final Cut Pro

[Brandon Fraley]

Thanks shooter, forgive my ignorance, but could you explain what an MXO is? Is it a card? Because again I'm editing off my MBP. Also, is the gamma accurate when using the MXO with the cinema display?

[michael zaletel]

Thanks shooter, forgive my ignorance, but could you explain what an MXO is? Is it a card? Because again I'm editing off my MBP. Also, is the gamma accurate when using the MXO with the cinema display?

Sorry about that Brandon. Here is the article referenced:

(Link not pasting properly, search "Matrox MXO Cinema" on Google instead and click first listing)

And here is the link to the details on Matrox's site.

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo/workflow/

You are lucky because you haven't purchased a Cinema Display yet. I already purchased a 30" but this solution will not work with that setup so now I have to buy a 23" to go this route.

23" Cinema Display is $899 and the Matrox MXO is $995 so all in about $1,894 for a serious setup not to mention you can use it as your primary monitor for your MBP when not using it for grading.

-shooter

[Brandon Fraley]

i can't get the first link to work, but i looked at the matrox site and the MXO sound BAD ASS This combo is WAY cheaper than anything I was considering and frankly has much more functionality.

Is anyone else using this? or have other suggestions?

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Would this work well with a Dell 24" ?

Can any of the high-end NVidia cards offer similar quality?

[Martin Weiss]

Stupid question (probably), but from what I read you can display up to 1080i/p. But what happens when I cut in 2k - is that automatically downsampled?

Karapetkov, yes it should work. Though I do not know how accurate the colors would be on the Dell. I have 2 of those, and they definetly show different colors, even when calibrated to the same setting.


Matrox MXO turns your Apple Cinema Display or other DVI monitor into an artifact-free, true-color video display you can trust

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Karapetkov, yes it should work. Though I do not know how accurate the colors would be on the Dell. I have 2 of those, and they definetly show different colors, even when calibrated to the same setting.


Thanks... hmm.

I was wondering... can one use a DLP Projector for grading, or is this totally inadequate?

I mean feeding one of those ~3K $ ones through a Matrox or high-end NVidia via DVI?

Of course, it won't be what a DaVinci2k + Christie2K is supposed to offer, but, it is something?

Thoughts?

[michael zaletel]

From Apple Support Forums

MXO now works with newer MacBook Pros
Posted: Feb 14, 2008 9:38 AM

With the most recent Mac OS Update, OSX 10.5.2, the Matrox MXO is now compatible with all Mac models, INCLUDING the new MacBook Pros. Finally.

To get this to work, the following is REQUIRED:

Update to Leopard 10.5.2
Then Update to Leopard Graphic Update 1.0
Then install the Matrox MXO 2.1.1 drivers.

This has been tested by Matrox and according to them, it works. This has always been a thorn in my side, as I try to recommend this great box, only to have to tell people, "sorry, it doesn't work with the new MacBook Pro models."

Well now it does. Wheeee!

Here is the official press release from Matrox, with a link to the MXO 2.1.1 drivers

[michael zaletel]

There are only a few monitors that work with the Matrox MXO for this solution.

See following link:

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/support/mxo/system/monitors/


As of May 2008, this includes Apple 20-inch Cinema Display, Apple 23-inch Cinema Display, Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW, Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW. They do not currently support Apple 30-inch OR Legacy Cinema Displays with ADC connectors. Need to have a relatively new 20 or 23 Apple Cinema Display.

-shooter

[michael zaletel]

i can't get the first link to work, but i looked at the matrox site and the MXO sound BAD ASS This combo is WAY cheaper than anything I was considering and frankly has much more functionality.

Is anyone else using this? or have other suggestions?


Link not displaying properly for some strange reason. I've tried pasting a few times and each time it shows a differernt url than what I posted? PHP Bug?

Anyway, just search the phrase "Matrox MXO Cinema" on Google instead and click first listing. :)

-shooter

[Brandon Fraley]

Link not displaying properly for some strange reason. I've tried pasting a few times and each time it shows a differernt url than what I posted? PHP Bug?

Anyway, just search the phrase "Matrox MXO Cinema" on Google instead and click first listing. :)

-shooter

haha, did just that and it turns out i was able to find that page last night when I was reading about it :)


I'm SERIOUSLY interested in this solution. Can you reply to Martin's question about 2k?

[Cüneyt Kaya]

is this mxo a cheapo aja i/o hd.....?
what about imacs ?

[Rudi Herbert]

Black magic design has a couple of external cards that will map out pixel by pixel anything coming out of your video card all the way up to 2K on a 30'' display AND will allow you to load LUTs for proper callibration. They are moderately expensive but they are VERY, VERY good. I'm upgrading to them when I put together my RED system.

[Robert Mott]

Consider e-Cinema displays they simply are the best.

[Joe Carney]

Displayport is the new output standard coming around. A single port will support up to 2560×1600.
AMD/ATI has one on their new FireGl 7700...

Here is a prototype of what Dell is coming out with

http://www.gearlog.com/2007/05/dell_shows_off_superslim_displ.php

Samsung is announcing production of a 30" 2K monitor that only needs a single displayport connection.

wiki info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort

Does this mean that when Red comes out with their 4K display, all you will need is a single card with 2 displayport connectors? hehehehe.

[Brandon Fraley]

Black magic design has a couple of external cards that will map out pixel by pixel anything coming out of your video card all the way up to 2K on a 30'' display AND will allow you to load LUTs for proper callibration. They are moderately expensive but they are VERY, VERY good. I'm upgrading to them when I put together my RED system.

can you tell me more about these? considering my budget though it's going to be hard pressed to beat the MXO/ACD solution.

[Brandon Fraley]

Consider e-Cinema displays they simply are the best.

I saw these at the FCPUG Supermeet at NAB. look great, but i'm going to assume they're wicked expensive. Their website doesn't offer prices, but the "$1000 Off!" statement on the homepage isn't promising. :(

Assuming the MXO works as well as it sounds, you get th whole package for under $2000.

[Aiden Cornwell]

My understanding is the Dell and the apple displays are exactly the same. (anyone able to confirm this) If true then the Dell would be the cheaper choice

[John Tissavary]

I saw these at the FCPUG Supermeet at NAB. look great, but i'm going to assume they're wicked expensive. Their website doesn't offer prices, but the "$1000 Off!" statement on the homepage isn't promising. :(

Assuming the MXO works as well as it sounds, you get th whole package for under $2000.

eCinema's displays and Cine-Tal's Cinemage are (arguably) the industry standard in LCD grading monitors for DI suites, but yeah... they're expensive. They do a lot of stuff that 'normal' monitors don't, but not every business plan and market is going to support dropping $10-20k on a single display monitor.

I haven't seen the TVLogic monitors up close and personal, but I think their 24" comes in at under $5k, and is supposed to be really good at reproducing black, which is normally a serious weak spot with LCDs. These units have SDI, HDMI, DVI and analog inputs.

EIZO CG241W is at the top of my current list of 'budget' displays due to its wide gamut color panel and 16 bit luma processor and 12 bit lookup (gamma). Those are good features for grading. At under $3k this seems like the best bang for the buck, if absolute top of the line is not part of the requirement. Couple this with Cinespace color management software and I think it gets kind of hard to justify spending 5x as much for a marginal improvement. Downside is there's only DVI and RGB analog inputs.

For super budget conscious folks, or as a desktop companion to something like a Cine-tal or EIZO, the DELL 2408FWP seems like a nice monitor, especially at just over $600. I've got one coming in a few days so I'll report back when I've had a chance to bang on it a little harder. It's got wide gamut color, excellent brightness and contrast, and coupled with color management software should function reasonably well for color work as long as it's not a critical application. It's also got HDMI and DVI inputs, as well as analog, which is quite nice for a computer monitor.

But none of this matters without color management. Your monitor can cost $20k, but it's still not enough to be sure that what it's displaying makes sense in relation to what your work will be seen on.

Budget solutions like Datacolor Spyder 3 can help establish a baseline of performance from a monitor. There's also the eyeOne(?) and a few others out there that are very affordable.

On the higher end of things, Rising Sun Research's Cinespace (just acquired by Cine-Tal) can map your display inside the gamut and 3d colorspace of other measured displays, making absolutely sure that you are observing a close a replica of another display technology as your hardware will allow. Sample your display, sample another display, and create a lookup that will remap your display values to correspond with those of the target platform. Here's a very efficient way, with maximum user control, to make the absolute best of _any_ monitor, no matter what the final delivery colorspace or medium will be.



cheers,

John Tissavary

[Brandon Fraley]

For super budget conscious folks, or as a desktop companion to something like a Cine-tal or EIZO, the DELL 2408FWP seems like a nice monitor, especially at just over $600. I've got one coming in a few days so I'll report back when I've had a chance to bang on it a little harder.

Please do :) and thanks for the rest of the info

[Cüneyt Kaya]

the mxo has no 10bit
support....

http://www.matrox.com/video/media/pdf/products/mxo/de_product_selection.pdf

[Brian Broz]

So assuming the Apple 23" Display will support 10 bit over HDMI then it looks like the MXO2 will be the best solution (?).
But I never assume anything:-)

[Brandon Fraley]

the mxo has no 10bit support....

what??? eww :(

[Daniel Browning]

EIZO CG241W is at the top of my current list of 'budget' displays due to its wide gamut color panel and 16 bit luma processor and 12 bit lookup (gamma). Those are good features for grading.

That's only true when grading the feature in the same wide gamut as the panel, which is invariably AdobeRGB. Features that go to filmout, DCI, and other 10-bit+ outputs could benefit from that; however, when things get down to the level of Blu-ray, internet distribution, and most NLE, the only color gamuts that matter for HD are rec709 and sRGB. This is obviously a far more common situation, and there are two reasons why current wide gamut monitors are not accurate for grading it.

First, the panels only display 96% of the *eight* bit AdobeRGB space. So when an 8-bit rec709 is displayed on a wide gamut panel, it is converted to a 12-bit AdobeRGB value in the LUT (this value looks exactly the same as the 8-bit sRGB value), but then (and here's the kicker), it's converted to an 8-bit Adobe RGB value for display. This does not look the same. It's still 8-bits input and 8-bits output: what happens in the middle cannot help that.

Here is an illustration:

8-bit sRGB is like 10 to 50, counting by 5 (10, 15, 20, ...).
8-bit AdobeRGB is like 10 to 100, counting by 10 (10, 20, 30, ...).

When you display an sRGB "25" on the AdobeRGB panel, the closest thing it can convert it to is a 20 or 30.

10-bit AdobeRGB is like 10 to 100 counting by 1 (10, 11, 12, ...). Therefore, mapping the sRGB 25 is very accurate.

If the wide gamut display could display 96% of the *10-bit* AdobeRGB space, things would be different. But as long as you are converting between two 8-bit spaces, no amount of LUT will help.

Furthermore, even if you have a true 10-bit wide-gamut display ($3000 for 17" right now), the only benefit right now is accurate color space conversion of 8-bit material: there is *still* no way to transfer 10-bits to the display through existing operating systems. Dual-link HD-SDI and HDMI 1.3 are the only options, and they're handled by special hardware.

All that is to say that I recommend a top notch, highly accurate sRGB display for rec709 video. The NEC LCD2490WUXi fits the bill for around $1200. Just change the white point from native to sRGB and it's ready to go. IPS-derivitive panels like that can sometimes has too-slow pixel-response times for moving images, but the NEC does well enough in that regard (YMMV) and it's more accurate than XVA-derivitives.



For super budget conscious folks, or as a desktop companion to something like a Cine-tal or EIZO, the DELL 2408FWP seems like a nice monitor, especially at just over $600. I've got one coming in a few days so I'll report back when I've had a chance to bang on it a little harder. It's got wide gamut color, excellent brightness and contrast, and coupled with color management software should function reasonably well for color work as long as it's not a critical application. It's also got HDMI and DVI inputs, as well as analog, which is quite nice for a computer monitor.

But none of this matters without color management. Your monitor can cost $20k, but it's still not enough to be sure that what it's displaying makes sense in relation to what your work will be seen on.


That's true for print photography where the color changes slightly for every variation of printer, ink, and paper (and even what batch of ink and paper). However, the distribution of video content is far more standardized: Rec. 601, Rec. 709, and sRGB. (Excluding filmout, DCI, etc.). That's not to say that every (or even *any*) two displays will be the same, but that they're all supposed to be trying to implement the same standard. A true sRGB display will be calibrated perfectly at the factory and not require any additional calibration.


So assuming the Apple 23" Display will support 10 bit over HDMI...

It's not a 10-bit display.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

So assuming the Apple 23" Display will support 10 bit over HDMI then it looks like the MXO2 will be the best solution (?).
But I never assume anything:-)

the mxo2 has no DVI in...same link
this sucks!

but the hdmi way is still interesting if someone knows more about this solution

[Steve Sanacore]

My understanding is the Dell and the apple displays are exactly the same. (anyone able to confirm this) If true then the Dell would be the cheaper choice

I thought that too. I read some reviews recently on the 30" displays and the Apple's color was more accurate. The LCD panels are the same but the software and hardware that drives them is different I guess.

[John Tissavary]

First, the panels only display 96% of the *eight* bit AdobeRGB space. So when an 8-bit rec709 is displayed on a wide gamut panel, it is converted to a 12-bit AdobeRGB value in the LUT (this value looks exactly the same as the 8-bit sRGB value), but then (and here's the kicker), it's converted to an 8-bit Adobe RGB value for display. This does not look the same. It's still 8-bits input and 8-bits output: what happens in the middle cannot help that.



Very good points, but though this is an issue, with proper 3d color management it's minimized into a manageable range imho.

With a good quality probe and proper software like Cinespace a 3d model of the color and luma output of both the target and work display devices can be created, then your particular display device can be re-mapped to the target device via this 3d lut. There will obviously be some errors/differences, I believe that in the cases you have presented they will be so minute as to not cause practical problems except in the most critical of situations.

BTW, my Toshiba Regza 42" lcd tv has a 10bit panel, and costs under $2k, so I predict prices & availability are going to change pretty drastically for this technology in the near future.


cheers,

John T.

[Petr Dvorak]

With LCD I'm bit confused now. I heard that any LCD panels can only reproduce 8 bit of colors. Even manufacturers (like some EIZO) which talk about 10 bits, only reproduce 8 bits (they work with 10 bit colors internally).
So I wonder how many bits of colors can reproduce old CRTs?
What is better for gradind CRT or LCD and how graders can live with 8 bit color displays now???
Nevertheless some people CC on notebooks which are all 6 bit!!!

Not 100% sure about it but EIZO, Apple, Dell, even e-Cinema displays probably use same 8 bit Samsung LCD panels (because there are just few LCD manufactures) so everything else is about electronics and advertising.

[Daniel Browning]

Very good points, but though this is an issue, with proper 3d color management it's minimized into a manageable range imho.

With a good quality probe and proper software like Cinespace a 3d model of the color and luma output of both the target and work display devices can be created, then your particular display device can be re-mapped to the target device via this 3d lut. There will obviously be some errors/differences, I believe that in the cases you have presented they will be so minute as to not cause practical problems except in the most critical of situations.


Maybe you're right. There are certainly more important things that people get wrong more often: such as using 6-bit panels, bright backlights, and inaccurate colors.

But to me, the difference is between a nice, warm skin tone, and a face that is a little too red. 8-bit rec709 is already too granular (quantized) and making the distance between colors even greater makes a bad problem worse.

I remember seeing the 8-bit sRGB to 8-bit AdobeRGB conversion chart on the internet somewhere, it shows the distance between the points on a plane. Some of them (especially the reds) are pretty long.



BTW, my Toshiba Regza 42" lcd tv has a 10bit panel, and costs under $2k, so I predict prices & availability are going to change pretty drastically for this technology in the near future.


Agreed. I think the next big step will be a relatively inexpensive HDMI 1.3 10-bit card, like the BM Intensity, and software to fully support it as a 10-bit path like the current HD-SDI cards. Unfortunately, most of the consumer 10-bit sets aren't color-accurate (yet).


With LCD I'm bit confused now. I heard that any LCD panels can only reproduce 8 bit of colors. Even manufacturers (like some EIZO) which talk about 10 bits, only reproduce 8 bits (they work with 10 bit colors internally).


That's correct. (Some manufactuers talk about their 10-bit, 12-bit, or 14-bit LUT despite the fact that it's just an 8-bit to 8-bit conversion.)



Nevertheless some people CC on notebooks which are all 6 bit!!!


Some people also mix audio for -3 RMS and use a hundred different wipes and transitions. :) The most common problem I see is having the brightness turned up as high as possible, in a darkened room. Unfortunately, most consumers do the same thing, so they might not notice the problem until they do a filmout or see it in a calibrated environment.



Not 100% sure about it but EIZO, Apple, Dell, even e-Cinema displays probably use same 8 bit Samsung LCD panels (because there are just few LCD manufactures) so everything else is about electronics and advertising.

Keep in mind that panels are sorted and sold by quality. And don't discount the value of electronics. The backlight has a big impact on image quality (brightness, evenness, color temperature, etc.). The backlights in all my displays have worn unevenly, so that after just a year or two one side has a slightly different color cast. (Just like older Kinoflows sometimes have slightly different color temps.)

Also keep in mind that most manufacturers will change the panel on a whim. Dell is notorious for teasing buyers with top notch X-IPS panels, then switch to a much junkier panel in later shipments (for the same exact model number and product specifications).

[Petr Dvorak]

...
Also keep in mind that most manufacturers will change the panel on a whim. Dell is notorious for teasing buyers with top notch X-IPS panels, then switch to a much junkier panel in later shipments (for the same exact model number and product specifications).

Yep, I know, I hate this. Same like with some 2GB USB Flash Drives - 1st GB was quick RAM and 2nd RAM was cheaper slower one. :angry03:

I heard that Apple maybe put only 6 bit LCD panels in some 20" iMacs, beware. But in specification they talk about Millions of colors insteads of thousands :angry2: