Broadcast Monitors – The Right Choice
I talked to different people here at NAB about my quest for the perfect monitor. Guess what, there is no such thing as a perfect all-in-one monitor.
So let’s imagine that your target is either SD, HD or web – or even all three of them. For web, you can use your computer monitor to correct color and check on quality. What about SD or HD? No matter what you produce, some will watch it on CRT Television and others will use a HD LCD flat screen. So you need to have BOTH to make sure that in both cases your picture looks good. You will use CRT more for color correction because it has better accuracy when it comes to color – and the LCD to check your picture’s details and ensure a great quality.
Equipped this way, you would be able to also check interlacing issues. you would also see how your SD pictures look on a HD display or your HD picture on a CRT – it could be useful if you want to check your safe and title zones.
You need to output an SD video signal and a HD one. You also need your card to be able to convert your HD down to SD in an HD editing case. You can have a look at Blackmagic design website. They have cards and addons that would do the job and play your content on both screens simultaneously. The other big advantage to use a solution like Blackmagic’s is that they have HDMI output meaning you can just go to Best Buy and get a consumer LCD monitor for a good price.
I’m going to try that setup in one of our editing rooms. I’ll keep you posted. I have many things that I’d like to blog about, especially what I learned here at NAB Show ‘09. Stay tuned.
Tags: Color Correction, Video
