What you see aint what you get
 

Why is it that whenever I complete a project and port to DVD and view it on a tv that the details of the picture are not the same as what I see when I'm editing? I'm not referring to the interlace line issue, but rather brightness, contrast, color sat, and other video effects. They appear different on my TV than they do on my PC.

For example, when editing I've noticed that when I adjust the brightness, color sat, & contrast to my liking as viewed on the PC monitor, then encode to MPEG-2 and view via DVD on my TV, I see a much brighter, more contrasted picture and I've noticed the transition timings appear to be different as well.

Is ther anyway I can emmulate the TV picture on the PC monitor so I can eliminate the trial and error that I need to do?

This is the best case for a real time edit board that has output to a monitor. Since the colour space and contrast ratio of your computer monitor is much greater than your cathode ray picture tube on the television, you will often be dissapointed when you send your project out to DVD only to find that your ideas for the right colour correction are muddied by the scanning of the picture tube.

Test test test to your preview monitor, and commit to your "look".
The majority of viewers with out of calibration NTSC tube tvs will never know.

The best solution is to hook up a calibrated NTSC monitor to your deck.

If on a budget, substitute an industrial-quality monitor for the NTSC monitor (maybe) and use a cheap camcorder as a deck.

2- You could also run color bars through your computer monitor and calibrate it like a NTSC monitor. Nvidia and Matrox cards may be able to get closer. ATI is worse.

A lot of it depends on how accurate your CRT or LCD is (or isn't). You are probably better off spending your time with option B (industrial or NTSC monitor + cheap camcorder).

In most DV NLE packages it is easy to use your PC to preview.
Hook up your camera through firewire and set it to VCR mode.
Then switch your NLE to external preview and the picture should
appear at your TV.

This is a known issue in the way that TV's and computer screens
work. They can't be compared. Also a TV is of lower resolution
(normally) than a computer screen, so it will just look different.

hopefully you are editing with a real crt monitor on your pc, not an lcd monitor... if so, try this:

http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/calibrati...d_contrast.htm

i tried doing something similar with my laptop, but you can only get so close with an lcd monitor... getting the black/contrast right is the single most important thing you can do with a pc monitor.

i ended up having to search the 'net to find the factory password to get into my nokia 21" monitor, because i couldn't get the black to go fully black with the limitations of the factory user controls.

the real trick comes with setting the color temperature:

http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/photoshop...alibration.htm

high-end pc monitors will also have pre-set color temp calibrations, which are well worth exploring.

Dan, That reference was awesome... so far I've noticed that the calibration does seem to help... still falls a bit short, but much closer to the real thing.