Practical ways to callibrate VHS sources

[olyteddy]

All consumer displays are, by default, set-up to look good in the shop when compared with other TVs.
So, if you have 100+ TVs in your front room, all set up for maximum contrast, over saturation, extreme sharpness, high brightness, with a colour temperature that looks correct under several kilowatts of fluorescent lighting, then the default settings on a new TV should be perfect.

However, if you're going to use your TV in a normal living room and not try to make it look sharper/brighter/bigger/better than every other TV in the universe, some adjustment may be necessary

Cheers,
David.

So you buy the one that's furthest to the right in the display (if you're occidental) or the top one (if you're oriental)???

[sanlyn]

I just checked my TV and you are all infuriatingly right!

My TV is just set to maximum contrast/brightness/sharpness and when I'm watching a movie at night on this thing it feels like my eyes are going to explode.

I guess I'll put in an order for Digital Video Essentials.

Throw your DVE disk out the window (fairly useless, but on second thought keep it; you can use it later) and go to this website:
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10457
The info here is relevant to tv displays and well as PC monitors, both of which are calibrated in pretty much the same way but require different methods. Your tv might not have all the controls mentioned, and your PC certainly won't. In any case, learn what a clean grayscale is supposed to look like and how to get there, regardless of the kind of monitor, and learn to develop an eye for "correct" color balance and what might be the cause for error.

For your PC monitor and tv calibration, try this:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/465156-REG/X_Rite_EODIS2_Eye_One_Display_2_Colorimeter.html
or this:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/484457-REG/X_Rite_EODLT_Eye_One_Display_LT_Color.html

Any other means of calibrating monitor/tv is a waste of time,money,effort, and endless grief.

For VirtualDub color and level adjustment tools, try these:
Gradation curves plug-in: http://members.chello.at/nagiller/vdub/index.html
ColorTools histogram: http://trevlac.us/colorCorrection/colorTools.html
Color sampler: http://www.netreach.net/~gavin/gavsfreeware/csamp.htm
(These three are free).

To learn how to use gradation curves, histograms, pixel sampler, etc., try this website dedicated to very similar tools in Photoshop. You don't need Photoshop to use the tools I mentioned, but the VirtualDub versions work very simialr to these -- the Vdub versions even look like them! This website has several pages (see "Next" link at bottom of each page). You can use this info for video as well as photos:
http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/curves/