monitoring HD via SD??
by Wes Greene
on
May 20, 2008 at 8:16:38 am
So I've searched and found a lot of talk about options and downfalls in monitoring HD on a budget.
How would grading HD on a SD monitor work?
I realise this is not ideal but if you're on a budget, have a broadcast SD monitor and purchase something like a Blackmagic card or MXO2 which will downconvert your HD to SD outputs,
would monitoring your colours on a SD monitor be helpful and (semi) accurate????
Just considering the options and budgets. BE great to people's thoughts.
Re: monitoring HD via SD?? by Craig Seeman on May 20, 2008 at 11:11:54 am
Bob Zelin wrote an article in Cow Magazine on budget HD monitoring with color accuracy I believe. Sadly there's no way I've found to search for it on the Cow short of going through all the Cow magazines. There's also no particular forum I can find that one can post a question to Bob about the article or any updates.
Maybe we need a searchable Cow magazine and/or magazine specific forum . . . or maybe either is hidden somewhere.
Re: monitoring HD via SD?? by Arnie Schlissel on May 20, 2008 at 8:11:09 pm
The ITU has different standards for SD & HD color space. If you use a Kona card, Decklink card or MXO to downconvert your HD to an SD monitor, you're looking at it in SD color space. IOW, if you try to grade HD on an SD monitor, you're really grading an SD picture.
IMO, color grading is a place where you don't really want to save money. You want to spend a bit of it, but you can spend less or more. (The same goes for your sound mix, BTW.)
If you want to stretch your budget, get your color grading done in a smaller but well experienced shop, like Du Art in New York, or Cine Film in Atlanta. Smaller shops will work with you to control the budget, but their long experience & self contained operation will give you very good results for the price.
Another way to stretch your dollar is to work "night side" in a larger, more modern operation. That lets you use the "big room" (which actually is bigger, sometimes, and sometimes just more modern) at a lower rate. At night. With a less experienced operator. Did I mention that it's at night?
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
http://www.arniepix.com/
Re: monitoring HD via SD?? by Bret Williams on May 21, 2008 at 3:18:59 am
Just a thought, but if HD is a whole different colorspace, why do we only have one set of scopes in FCP? Where do we set bars for HD? What's legal for HD? If you tried to pump your colors
to 100% on the SD scopes, can you go to 120% for HD or what?
Re: monitoring HD via SD?? by walter biscardi on May 21, 2008 at 10:17:06 am
[Bret Williams]"Just a thought, but if HD is a whole different colorspace, why do we only have one set of scopes in FCP?"
The scopes are handling the digital information before it leaves the system. Also, you'll note that the scopes say "HD" when you're cutting in HD.
[Bret Williams]"If you tried to pump your colors
to 100% on the SD scopes, can you go to 120% for HD or what?"
Not for broadcast, you still need to stay inside 100%, but if you do this in Color, you can get a lot more saturation without the appearance of clipping.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: monitoring HD via SD?? by Bret Williams on May 21, 2008 at 1:07:53 pm
Thanks! I hadn't thought about these things. When dropping an he clip into a we timeline, does the colorspace conversion occur automatically or do adjustments need to be made? In working with 720p in this way and never noticed and out of range colors other than the errant overexposure.
