gl2 lcd screen/tv
 

I've finally gotten to the point where I hook up a tv to my camera while editing in post. Here's what I'm observing. The picture on the lcd screen of the camera is crystal clear with beautiful colors. That's not the same on the tv screen. The tv I have hooked up is just a standard tv, but I also have a sony HD letterbox tv that also doesn't show as vivid a picture as the lcd screen of the camera. Is there an adjustment on the tv or something that I need to mess with, or is this just the way it is. I'd be bummed if I have super clear beautiful footage but am missing some way to make it that same way when watching the footage on a tv screen.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Rosie

I think the LCD lies. It does look more vibrant, but that’s because you’re not getting a true representation of what’s being recorded to tape. My LCD for instance really seems to overemphasize green. About the only way you can tell anything is with a good monitor that has been color corrected. Also, the LCD may look crisp, but its still a fairly low resolution compared to a monitor.

i don't know, but the resolution on my camera lcd looks way better than my tv. How does one color correct a monitor?

Rosie

I’m more familiar with equipment for color correcting computer monitors, which consists of a suction cup thingy that sticks on the screen and actually tests the color output. Cheapest ones are a couple of hundred bucks. I know there’s really expensive equipment you can buy to adjust televisions, but I would just pay to have it professionally done, and then never tamper with the settings.
As to why the LCD looks sharper, I have to say I’ve wondered myself. Maybe because it’s so small? I wouldn’t mind hearing from someone in here who understands the technical issues better. But try connecting your camcorder to a television and manually focusing using first the LCD and then the television. You’ll see what I mean. Even a poor quality television will have a much higher resolution.

I found a little piece that may help solve (or complicate!) the puzzle.

The S-video output from the GL2 never looked that great on a nice Sony TV or on a Panny pro monitor. To my untrained eyes it seemed like the resolution was too low, so I blamed it on NTSC.

I then connected the RCA outputs to a consumer VCR that could read NTSC tapes and output a PAL signal, which was connected to an old PAL TV. The picture on the PAL TV was clean and sharp, much better than the pro NTSC monitor.

Maybe there are some XM2 users out there who can offer their opinions.

Neither the LCD panel nor a consumer television are "right" with respect to accuracy. The phosphors on consumer televisions are different than those on a truly professional production monitor. And LCD's are a different matter altogether.

If you really want to accurately judge your image, either during production or post-production, you need to use a pro monitor that features full calibration facilities (ex: blue-only display, contrast, brightness, chroma, etc.). To perform the calibration you would feed bars to the monitor and then follow a basic procedure to adjust the monitor's display.

Video University features a good tutorial on how to use SMPTE color bars to perform a monitor calibration.

LCD what you see is what you get??
 

What I hear is that you monitor on a television because you need to face the reality of what it's going to look like when people view it on their televisions.

I've used a cheap tv before to do this and it's a shocker, but useful. You can adjust the brightness and contrast, etc. but every TV will be different. If Rosie has a HD TV that should be a pretty good picture, I would think, esp as a monitor (the images are not compressed)

I've noticed a big difference between my LCD and computer monitor lately. The lighting, texture, etc of, say, an axe stuck into a block of wood at sunset looks perfect on the lcd screen. But when I look at it on my Apple Studio Display it's way too dark and has none of the light play I (still) see on the lcd in playback.

I thought the lcd was pretty much what you see is what you get. It's one reason people use when they say you don't need a light reader when working with digital.

I've tried turning off overhead lights, etc. I don't mind calibrating my screen (although it seems a lot like rocket science to me), but in the end, I want to be able to trust my lcd to a large degree.

Is that an unrealistic expectation and, if so, how does one adapt? Would the software setting I'm using (FCP) perhaps be impacting the quality of the picture? I have image on high rez...

d