Calibrating yout TV for optimum quality

[snowmoon]

What good is hours of encoding if you can't get it to look decent on your TV because you have the setting all out of whack?

The link below tells you about the history and calibration of the 5 main TV settings ( brightness, contrast, color, tint, and sharpness ). You will be amazed how much better your picture can look after taking a few minutes to properly set these. Most of these settings are named very poorly and you would be very lucky to have them set properly.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/good_video.htm

[BJ_M]

you are 100% correct .. most monitors and tv i see are way out ...

we have to use calibration equipment hardware on all of our monitors and projectors weekly for perfect setups and then i see people viewng our stuff on monitors with brightness cranked 100% and wrong color temp etc.

[stormcrow]

Agreed- it is absolutely essential to calibrate monitors and televisions. I spent about an hour last week calibrating mine after getting the latest nvidia drivers.

BUT! This guide is pretty base level. He makes fun of telling people to calibrate by adjusting until it looks good, and then suggests doing that for each setting.

Find a movie with a black tuxedo? I don't know many movies where a black tuxedo is truly black--a 0,0,0 (RGB or HSV). Do yourself a favor, get some test bars, a still of test bars to calibrate your monitor. You can make one in premiere, its built-in. (Don't forget to do it on the video side and adjust your overlay controls as well!). The three black bars near the bottom right should disappear until you can only barely see the third one. Thats how you set your black level, but not to James Bond.

And if you can't afford a tv with a blue control (and how many people can?), you can process the red and green out of your color bars to have just blue, then adjust your settings so you have three blues that are exactly the same.

And so on. Do a search on google if you want more technical methods such as these, it's better than using movies.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Here's another link:http://www.pacificnet.net/~johnr/bars.html
Right-click on test pattern,save and burn with your favorite software.

[snowmoon]

I'm going to up the anty soon. I'm putting together a set of standard TV test patterns and the VCDeasy settings to add them as menu's to either VCD or SVCD. They are small and can be put on VCD or SVCD disks without impacing the usable space and you always will have a known quantity. to check against.

Anyone know of good hi-rez NTSC resolution patterns?

[BJ_M]

snowmoon - i have many in high def that i can down rez ..

also have mpeg 1 and 2 test samples ...

[snowmoon]

i sent you a PM

[tomreedtoon]

There is another trick for setting "brightness", i.e. black level. If you can find a TV station that is broadcasting color bars, which often happens very early in the morning or overnight, look at the black area of the bars.

Most bar generators create a blacker-than-black square. It's just a little bit below "legal" black. In technical terms, black is supposed to be 7.5 IRE units on a video scope. (That doesn't translate to anything you can see on a computer monitor, sadly; I only use it to establish a standard.) The blacker-than-black square is about 6 IRE units. This little square is called the "pluge." (Rhymes with Scrooge.)

You are supposed to adjust the brightness on your TV up, to where you can see the pluge in the black section, at the lower left hand side of the screen. Then, adjust the brightness down until the pluge JUST disappears into the rest of the black. That is supposed to be the ideal setting for brightness.

Sadly, some cretins use "full frame" bars without a black section on the bottom. You'll have to find someone who uses "regular" color bars.

One chief engineer I worked under had a means of dealing with the "sharpness" knob. He used to point to areas with a lot of detail, such as a highly-striped area, and he'd say, "See that? That should be sparkling with detail." Unfortunately, he tended to over-sharpen, to the point where you could see the edging effects mentioned in the FAQ. So, I turn the sharpness up to where the "sparkling" effects occur, then turn it down a little.

[snowmoon]

Unfortunatly I don't know of ANY station that still does color bars after hours. Either they shut down to save on transmitter power or the broadcast infomercials.

[chuckly]

Hey guys (snowmoon & BJ_M) did you ever release the set of standard TV test patterns on VCD or SVCD, that you talked about above? I ask because i'd like an overscan pattern to adjust my TV.

[BJ_M]

i will make up a set of test patterns this week on vcd

[chuckly]

THANK YOU BJ_M!!!! Your the greatest.

Anyone that wants to try adjusting their Sony TV check here: http://members.accessus.net/~090/awh/sonyadj.html?KeohiHDTV and here http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/brandspecific/sony/servicemenu_sony.html ......read the warnings though.

[chuckly]

Hi BJ_M, hows the VCD going?

[BJ_M]

got stuck in the studio on a project - but its still coming

[chuckly]

Ok thanks man

[EnNiS]

yo u still going to release that vcd or what??

[EnNiS]

.................................................. .................................................. ......

[EnNiS]

BJ_M
u goin to make those vcd's???
k i got a new 47 inch widescreen hitachi and the color is kinda out
its wierd
like it has 4 dif settings, sports, movies, news, music.
i want optimal quality
any help??