The Great Daylight Monitor Shootout

[Jess Haas SOC]

Interestingly that was happening with their 7" non high brightness monitor. The 6.5" actually seemed to be one of the cooler monitors there and didn't seem to exhibit those problems. I agree that that is a serious concern. I would also like to note that theirs weren't the only ones that seemed to be experiencing some problems from the heat. Being left in the direct sun all day is not nice for equipment but I do want a monitor that can survive it.

 

As far as the transvideo goes it definitely is not too expensive for what you get. I was simply impressed by how well the lower cost monitors performed as I actually felt that they had a slight edge in daylight viewability.

 

From what I was told yesterday the Nebtek will ship with user adjustable framelines. Both it and the Marshall already have framelines but on the Marshall you can't change their position so while useful for HD shoots they aren't useful for film shoots.

 

As far as digital levels go I currently am not very reliant on one but use one of those little $50 guys on top of my monitor. If I was used to an onscreen one I might feel differently but while it would be nice to have not having one isn't really ad eal breaker for me.

 

I was dissapointed by the 2 OLED prototypes that were there. They both seemed to have far too reflective of screens making them not as good as the LCDs there. Hopefully that will change by the time they make it into production.

 

~Jess

[Marianne Exbrayat]

Congratulations to Charles for the work to organize, as well as to Camera Support for being such great hosts. Finally thanks to all the volunteers who helped.

 

3 points:

1/ The signal fed into the HD monitors was an SD signal up-converted to HD. The quality was really poor with muddy blacks and lack of resolution throughout the image. The Transvideo HD/SD monitors accept each signals on a different connector. Transvideo processes HD and SD completely differently. One would never on a film camera use an HD up-converter to feed HD to the Transvideo monitor. You would just take the NTSC/PAL from the film camera and put it in the NTSC/PAL input of the monitor. An HD camera will never output an HD signal as bad as the one we had out of the up-converter. I know in theory some rig operators only want to see framing, but the quality of the image will indeed affect our ability to recognize the content, and thus the framing.

Despite all this, one could see a difference in image quality on the various LCDs.

2/ The images fed into the monitors were mostly pre-recorded. The video level was constant as well as the speed. This is quite different than having a camera hooked up and checking at various camera speeds and lens iris settings. There was actually a camera (standard def), but it was 10 ft away so that no-one could operate the camera and look at the monitors at the same time- The only true test I think, but it was never performed.

3/ Monitors flat: Operators throughout the years have set up he CRTs fairly flat, with the housing parallel to their legs . The reason being that CRTs are so deep that if set up differently, they will smack into things. There is no need to set up a 2" deep LCD parallel to the sky. The envelope of the LCD is so much smaller for a much bigger image. The operator will usually turn the LCD so that the screen faces him, not the sky.

Overall we are glad to have taken part in this event, but feel it should be attempted again, with an HD camera as well a film camera set up side by side with equivalent lenses.

[Marianne Exbrayat]

This is just a general question not a reply to any specific posting:

 

If Transvideo's competitors could make a monitor that is as good in the sun, with an image as good, a power consumption as low (1.1Amp at 12v), a machined aluminum housing with no holes and no fan, have their monitor with no delay like the Transvideo, have the monitor run frame sync with the camera like the Transvideo, have all the features of the Transvideo (Digital Horizon, adjustable color framelines and matting, exposure control, waveform, histogram, vectorscope), and with a service as good as Transvideo's, you would buy one. Then why not buy a Transvideo?

If the only answer is the price, then consider this: you cannot get an ASC DP for the rate of a wedding photographer.

[Kris Torch Wilson]

Marianne,

 

Thanks for participating. It was great and gutsy for all involved to show up and put their products side by side. Transvideo makes a great product and will be on the short list when I need to replace mine. I'm NOT trying to pick a fight here but a couple of things.

 

The camera was HD. If anyone had felt it was necessary to operate it, they could have.

 

I felt the variety of images fed to the monitors was more than enough to see the difference from one monitor to the next.

 

I also find it curious that you are making comments about how we (operators) do our job.My monitor is NEVER flat. Rarely if ever is my screen at eye level. In fact it is almost always pointed upwards. At 6'1'' my eyes are at the same angle as the sky. Never have I pointed the monitor at my belly and been able to see it. Not sure I agree with your comment "in theory some rig operators only want to see framing." This isn't theory but practice. I GET what you're saying about quality, but a little put out by what I'm perceiving as a lecture.

 

Price CANNOT be ignored. Our business is changing every day. Budgets slashed, rates threatened. ASC DP's may very well be shooting weddings before all is said and done. I don't think you would be quite so defensive if we had not all seen monitors yesterday that we COULD live with for less than $3000.

 

Kris

[Alec Jarnagin SOC]

"The reason being that CRTs are so deep that if set up differently, they will smack into things."

 

Actually, I usually leave my TB-6 flat because it helps lower the CG of the sled and thus keeps the post shorter by virtue of its elongated mass. Oh, and it survives the sunlight very nicely in this position because it can - to me I'd only tilt the monitor if it was not sufficient enough to handle direct sunlight. Tilting a monitor can severely limit the visibility as you boom - especially on an LCD with limited viewing angle.

 

Now, I'm not taking sides here or saying anything about the Transvideo monitor as they seem very good for LCDs (no secret that I'm a die-hard green screen fan). That said, can we please let some seasoned operators speak? I was SO thrilled that Charles was doing this test because I know he is every bit the snob I am. While I'm deeply glad that Transvideo and other manufactures participated in this test and I am equally glad that young and bright operators like Jess will inherit the torch, right now I'm particularly interested in what the old jaded vets of the green screen have to say about this whole thing! Pros & Cons of each? Don't care what they cost. Can anything compete with a green screen? Thanks for the answers thus far guys!

[Eric Fletcher S.O.C.]

3/ Monitors flat: Operators throughout the years have set up he CRTs fairly flat, with the housing parallel to their legs . The reason being that CRTs are so deep that if set up differently, they will smack into things. There is no need to set up a 2" deep LCD parallel to the sky. The envelope of the LCD is so much smaller for a much bigger image. The operator will usually turn the LCD so that the screen faces him, not the sky.

 

 

Marianne,

 

Thanks for coming out to the shoot out and showing your product. a comment or two.

 

I think that what we saw yesterday was very typical of a real world situation. I also know that the video feed WAS HD and they were shots that Charles asked several operators about. what you saw on the monitors was very representative of what we shoot day in and day. In the end I think it was a fair comparison.

 

now the more important comment for me.

 

I have never nor will I ever operate with the monitor "pointed" at me, I prefer to operate with the monitor "Tabled". The reason why is that I can see it regardless of the position of the rig. There is also a balance consideration regardless of the monitors type. Tilted up you make the center post longer, tabled and you get a shorter and easier to dynamically balance rig.

 

I was excited to see Charles get this done, it's something that has been talked about for the last few years and he finally made it happen and thankfully finally allowed me to compare LCD's, the not ready for prime time OLED (I truly believe that is the future) and the old standard of the green screen in one place at the same time with the same source images. I was able to answer the question of should I or should I not purchase a LCD.

 

The answer for me is no, my TB-6 is still a far superior monitor. I do a HD show shooting with the F23, my rig (the XCS Ultimate) is wired for HD-SDI and the quality and view-ability of the LCD is not on par with my TB-6, especially when you factor in the lack of frameliners and on screen levels when in HD mode. Yes color is nice but what I give up to have it is not worth it to me.

 

I'm sure that there are people like you out there that are going to disagree with me, but for the work I do (Film and HD) Green works better for me.

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

first and foremost:

 

The green screen crt's were as expected fully daylight viewable, their viewing angle is second to none. cons: lack of color, price

 

HD and SD LCD's

 

on the plus side: color, HD capable if needed, cheaper

 

on the down side: viewing angle issues with some, sunlight viewability,

 

Ranking:

 

HD LCD's from the my biased perspective

 

tie:

 

Transvideo HD6SBL and Tiffen Ultrabright II, reason

 

Transvideo is fully featured in HD, rugged, good customer service, negative: I don't like the fact that you need to mount the monitor upside down to have the best viewing angle.

 

Tiffen Ultrabright II was in my opinion very good visible in full sun, but lacks HD framelines or HD bubble level

 

SD LCD:

 

Lumavec / IMP Blackbird (Hummingbird)

 

very visible, even in full sun, closet to CRT. uses transflective display

 

has build in framelines, rotate, flip, custom height, .....

 

cons: not HD capable

 

 

biggest disappointment of the day:

 

Boland: flat out unusable in full sun

 

my 3 cents

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

the first images, more to come.....

 

webalbum

 

Jens,

 

Since you have already logged here today, I was expecting to first read the retraction you said you would post about the Transvideo 6" HD SuperBright being like a mirror. As everyone could see at the rotisserie, there is no reflections issue when the monitor is turned on with a video image.

I have checked with the person with who you looked at the monitor at Cine Gear. For your information, you looked at a privately owned monitor, where the private owner decided to put an after market film on top of the Transvideo glass to prevent people from scratching the glass at the show. This film is not installed nor recommended by Transvideo as it is very reflective indeed. The Transvideo monitors are already protected by a glass, there is no need o protect the protection as it will affect the monitor's performance. The HD monitors have been out for 2 years, we have never had to change a glass because of scratches.

 

 

Marianne,

 

thanks for the clarification and please read my post here:

 

http://www.steadicamforum.com/index.php?showtopic=7860

 

JP

[Charles Papert]

Having put a lot of thought and research into the setup of the shootout, I’d like to further clarify the issues that Marianne has brought up.

 

The signal fed into the HD monitors was an SD signal up-converted to HD.

 

You asked me why a specific shot that was running on the monitors looked so “bad” and I told you it was an SD clip (taken from a black and white Arri LT film tap) that I had upconverted to HD. You replied that the upconversion was "terrible". As a matter of fact, the upconversion was perfectly good as the HD version of the clip looked functionally identical to the SD original—which is to say that the original looked as crappy as one would expect an older film tap to look. This was by design. Sometimes we have to work with less-than-ideal sources. I stood with Chris Haarhoff at the rotisserie looking at one of the clean HD clips and he said, “yes, but what about when it’s a day exterior on film and there’s a lot of ND on the camera and you have to crank up the tap and it’s all contrasty, that’s what I’d like to see”. I called over to Josh Harrison who was manning playback at the time to punch up that black and white clip, and that was exactly what he was looking for.

 

Outside of the two film tap clips which were upconverted from SD, the other 12 clips were all 1080i originated. The Omega HD playback unit required all sources to be the same resolution, hence my upconverting the SD to match.

 

The quality was really poor with muddy blacks and lack of resolution throughout the image.

 

At the following site I have posted frame grabs from each of these clips that I had pulled to make up the big board in front of the rotisserie: http://gallery.me.com/chupap#100283

 

These are JPEG’s exported from Final Cut Pro, captured directly from the Omega HD as played at the event. They are exactly the same as the video that was distributed to the monitors through a broadcast rack-mounted distribution amp; no color correction or adjustments. Remember these are video stills, if you look at them on your computer monitor they will not reproduce properly. I invite anyone to drop them into Final Cut Pro or the NLE of your choice and examine them on a good broadcast monitor, or on scopes. You will see that the first 6 clips have full dynamic range and plenty of resolution (certainly for the size monitors that we were looking at on Sunday) as they were shot on a broadcast 2/3” Panasonic HD camera at 1080i. They were stock images provided by Camera Support that I handpicked for their variance in contrast and detail level that I thought would represent specific challenges for the monitors.

 

Clips 7 through 9 were from footage I shot two days before the event on my Canon XH-A1, a 1080i HDV camera. (Clips 7 and 8 were all about the motion, I picked blurred frames to illustrate this on the big board). Thanks to the grey weather and the Cinegamma setting on the camera, they were quite low-contrast in appearance, but I decided to leave them as such rather than crank the gamma in post. This was to supply a different look than the higher-contrast, saturated stock footage images. Often a lower contrast image will present its own kind of viewing challenges for a daylight monitor, as Eric pointed out to me the day before I shot these. The setup looks to be around 5 IRE, a bit high and thus the image could be described as having "muddy blacks" but again, these were intended to be in contrast to the crisp broadcast HD look of the previous clips.

 

The charts were shot on an F900 at 1080i, captured straight to the hard drive recorder.

 

Honestly I find it a bit surprising that for someone who is obviously so detail oriented, you were apparently unable to identify that the majority of the clips and the live camera were HD, not SD, especially since they were playing at your booth on larger monitors where the difference in resolution would have been unmistakeable. If you were under the impression that they were all upconverted, that would have been one hell of an upconverter to create that level of detail out of SD video, however you described it as "bad".

 

The images fed into the monitors were mostly pre-recorded. The video level was constant as well as the speed. This is quite different than having a camera hooked up and checking at various camera speeds and lens iris settings. There was actually a camera (standard def), but it was 10 ft away so that no-one could operate the camera and look at the monitors at the same time- The only true test I think, but it was never performed.

.

 

I disagree that the video level was constant. These clips showed a wide range of video level and contrast. I don’t see why in the context of the shootout it would have helped any to have a dynamic shot that implements changes throughout versus a static frame that allowed the attendees to take their time and examine each image on each monitor, then change images and again move up and down the line. Because several people including yourself asked for it, I provided a live camera (an F900, which of course is HD). Yes, it was set up away from the rotisserie—it literally fell off the truck there--but since everyone at the event was a camera operator, if they had wanted to see something specific with the camera, I imagine they would have just done it (or asked one of the volunteers for help). You expressed annoyance that people were standing a few feet away from the monitors to look at them; how far back would they have had to stand to operate a camera and look at more than one monitor at once, with all of those people crowded around? And what kind of camera speed are we talking about, anyway–different speed camera moves? Those were covered pretty well in the motion shots, I think. Didn’t hear any complaints from the attendees. Overcranking/undercranking? What would that have to do with image quality on the monitors? And as far as different iris settings, again, the provided shots had over and underexposed areas in them, so I feel that this was covered. Remember that this was all about comparison. People needed to be able to move from one end of a 12 foot rack to the other and be assured that the image would remain consistent by the time they got to the end, or they would have been frustrated, I think. Having each clip on a continual loop was actually a pain in the arse for me to facilitate but I considered it absolutely essential. I will go a step further and say that if I had not provided pre-recorded clips and simply had a live camera there, it would have been far less useful. At any given moment, the camera might be left unattended on a generic shot of nothing, or someone might pan it at a moment when everyone else was looking at something specific. We had 100 people pass in front of that rotisserie that day; at any given moment there was generally at least 8 or 10 all with slightly different agendas...

 

On the issue of physical monitor positions on the sled: already several have weighed in with their preferences. I actually keep my green screen in an approximate 45 degree angle most of the time, because I often have to shoot with the rig positioned high on my body (that’s what 5’7” will do for you!) and this affords me a better view. With LCD’s, I am constantly tilting the screen to maximize the viewing angle for a given shot, which is why I why I insist on using a yoke with an LCD.

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

well put charles, thanks.

 

this event was not about pretty pictures or who makes the best control monitor, it was purely a worst case scenario test for steadicam usable monitors lcd's and crt's.

 

the clips represented various shooting conditions that we, the operators, have to deal with on daily basis. there is no perfect HD feed, no perfect video tap and certainly no time to complain about it on the set. We just have to live and work with it. the DP and director does not care what the monitor looks like, he just wants us to get shot done. period.

 

JP

[Eric Fletcher S.O.C.]

well put charles, thanks.

 

this event was not about pretty pictures or who makes the best control monitor, it was purely a worst case scenario test for steadicam usable monitors lcd's and crt's.

 

the clips represented various shooting conditions that we, the operators, have to deal with on daily basis. there is no perfect HD feed, no perfect video tap and certainly no time to complain about it on the set. We just have to live and work with it. the DP and director does not care what the monitor looks like, he just wants us to get shot done. period.

 

 

Jens,

 

You just nailed it. More and more often these days the operators have the worst view on set, it's insane how bad it can be at times, yet we HAVE to make it work

 

Like a friend told me long ago: You knew the dangers when you accepted the mission. Do or Do not there is no try.

[Charles Papert]

Wait, you are friends with Yoda? Cool!

 

Although I think he would have said "Knew the dangers you did when accepted the mission you have" or something like that.

[Eric Fletcher S.O.C.]

Wait, you are friends with Yoda? Cool!

 

Although I think he would have said "Knew the dangers you did when accepted the mission you have" or something like that.

 

 

LOL I should have separated out the yoda quote

[Ed Moore]

I've been working on a technological approach to this problem for some time now, and I'd like to demonstrate my results. I can achieve extreme daylight visibility in the harshest of direct sunlight for a bare minimum of cost.

 

 

Only kidding :) Thanks Charles et al for setting this up; it's a horrible feeling watching your monitor wash out right at a crucial point in a shot and I look forward to the point where I can afford an upgrade to one of the best performers on display here.

[Brant S. Fagan SOC]

Folks--

 

I have to take issue with the comments made about the Boland. First off, I own one and have had tremendous results with it in full sun with full snow cover to boot. When it comes down to it, I do change the angle of the screen but only if a particular shot demands it.

 

I still have several Panasonic 7" 16:9 LCDs and still marvel at their performance for only $489. The size and capabilities of the Boland far exceed the Panasonics but for many, cost is still a major factor in selecting a monitor.

 

I agree with Eric about tabling the monitor. Works for all the right reasons. If you haven't tried it, go there, you will be surprised how well it works.

 

When I started out, green was it. For many it still is. For me, the trade off by going LCD has been more flexibility and a better workflow since many shows now are HD and certainly the color film taps have improved things as well.

 

There still is no replacement for using your eyeballs to confirm the nature of items in or near the frame you are carrying. I believe that color helps solve potential problems before seeing them in playback.

 

What is compounding the problem is the relatively lower light levels being generated today thanks to new emulsions and new digital sensors.

 

Operators must make it happen, of that there is no argument. What we choose to help solve problems is as individual as each of us.