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The Great Daylight Monitor Shootout


Charles Papert

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Words of wisedom Brant.

 

My 2 cents about green versus color. My shoots are mainly HD, and becose i work as a dp too, the screen has a dubble function for me. On the steadicam its great to have color and HD. On sticks, its great to have an good screen for myself, or the ac.

 

Direct sunlight never has been a problem with this transvideo. And man, its solid as a rock. ( As i had my first fall this week, it proved itself )

 

Curios to see the other monitors, but i still prefer comments out of the field where the monitors really have to work in different conditions.

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Before this fades off into the sunset, I wanted to publicly acknowledge the folks from our community that helped out to make this event happen.

 

Randy Gomez from Camera Support opened up his shop and gave us personnel to host this event and was wonderful to work with. Had never met him before Rob Vuona put us together on this and I couldn't have been happier. Thank you Randy and your staff (especially Laurie, Gary and Armen).

 

Turning my mad concept of the Rotisserie into a reality was all Ric Griffith's doing; he reached back into his pre-Steadicam days to his grip expertise and made it all look easy. Gary Taillon and Armen Allen from Camera Support oversaw the cabling of the beast.

 

Helping on the day with the setup and breakdown as well as manning the Rotisserie and playback were Josh Harrison, Rick Davidson, Brad Grimmett, Rich Davis and Jens Piotrowski.

 

For their generous donations, cheers to Nicholas Davidoff, Rich Davis, Rob Vuona, Aiken Weiss, Michael Stumpf and Steve Fracol. I managed to keep costs fairly low on this but I wanted to make sure that everyone was comfortable and well-fed. Along those lines, thanks Amy Jo for the delicious food, and to everyone who brought beer and lisigav.

 

And of course to the manufacturers for participating, as well as Fast Forward Video, Marketec and Tecads who donated gear along with Camera Support.

 

Kate Johnson took the pictures which will be up soon, I promise...

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great job Charles and gang! It was great to see everyone and all these monitors together in (as the title says) the daylight. We had clouds, direct sun and a mix of footage to compare. Very cool.

 

The only thing that was truly surprising (and disappointing) was how bad the Boland's were -- could anyone see anything on those two monitors? The Blackbird and ginormous Tiffen UB did well, the Transvideo 6"HD did ok too. The relatively inexpensive Marshall 6.5" HD and Nebtek 7" HD did well too (as others have said).

 

Marianne, don't panic -- we all liked your monitor and know it's packed full of cool features with a good company behind it. Drop by an day-ext set sometime and watch the poor op occasionally struggle to see the frame with even the brightest green screen and you'll realize why we are so critical of monitors. As far as your explanation about why we position our crt's a certain way, I'll have to agree with the rest here (and the world) on that one. Thanks for bringing your monitors and being there to answer questions.

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The only thing that was truly surprising (and disappointing) was how bad the Boland's were -- could anyone see anything on those two monitors?

 

I spoke to Darrick at Boland today about this, he had already heard whispers. The unfortunate fact was that they weren't able to send anyone out on the day to make sure that the monitors were properly set up, and to keep them thus after people might have gone a'twiddlin' on the rotisserie. I gave both monitors a quick tune while we were still inside and they looked fine with bars up, but as we all saw they looked sickly outside.

 

Darick is going to take note of the settings that we had today and see if anything was way off track. I have asked them that if this is the case, that they take some pictures of both panels in direct sun with both our settings and their recommended and I will make that an addendum to the gallery. Obviously there are satisfied Boland users out there so something may have been amiss. I'll report back when I hear from them on this.

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as those who weren't there will soon see in your photos, the glare on the Boland's screen was horrendous (it was frosted/matte). I'm sure they now wish that they were there...oops. You are probably right, perhaps something was amiss as there are many happy owners out there.

 

rb

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Kris,

 

First of all there is no doubt Charles did a lot of work to organize this, and I am very glad we supported his initiative. This test had never been done before. I think we should all learn from it and I hope it will get done again. But I also think it would reflect more what happens on set with a camera line-up.

 

There might be a misunderstanding but I actually completely agree with you about the monitor angle and the CG.

 

I think it is wonderful one can buy a $200 LCD or a $20000 green screen and anything in between. All Operators do not work in the same way, and each person will have different purchase criteria. And there are even trends per countries.

 

Most people who will read this forum were not at the rotisserie. I think it is important for them to know the conditions of the test.

If I remember correctly, the live feed was almost never turned on. There was a single SD player. Of course this allowed to see the same content (but the video level was constant and the speed fixed). The SD signal from the player went through an up-converter to the HD monitors. I just feel it is not relevant to judge a monitor that takes HD and SD signals by putting on it a std def up-converted signal.

One can actually send a std def signal to the std def connector on the Transvideo monitor, then select STD DEF input with the press of 1 key on the front. If one views a B&W film tap, the monitor can be set to Std Def + B&W - one of the forum reader was writing it would be nice if the monitor did that - it does. With an HD camera, we feed the HD signal into the HD connector.

Just like it is perfectly OK for operators to talk about how our monitors are, I see no harm in monitor manufacturers talking about the feed back we get from operators at large (in our case for the past 20 years).

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Charles,

 

The HD monitors on our table were fed with our HD generator and the SD monitors were fed with a small NTSC camera. NOT with the rotisserie. One could actually see the difference.

The resolution charts on the HD monitors did look like HD and I commented about their quality to you.

If we want to check footage from a film tap on the Transvideo HD monitor, let set the monitor to STD def and to B&W if it is a B&W film tap.

I will not answer personal attacks. I think my comments are perfectly respectful of the work you put into this, I wish I would get the same.

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I spoke to Darrick at Boland today about this, he had already heard whispers.

Yeah, I sent him an email concerning it... After the tests, I went home and did my own testing, (I have the 8.4") and it really just comes down to whatever that filter is they put on the lcd panel's surface... There's no doubt. I can't get all scientificky up in here cause I'm not an LCD expert nor do I hope to be one, but if you compare this monitor to non-daylight bright monitors indoors, it is noticeably much brighter. I can use it in sunlight, but the reflection/refraction filtering method used by most of the other manufacturers seems to be much more useful in direct sunlight...

And to the Transvideo reps, I'm not understanding why you're getting so (Seemingly) angry about all of this, as far as LCD monitors go, yours is a clear winner overall as a field monitor in general. The multiple capabilities built into the monitor have no rival from what I've seen... The interface and usability is excellent, but this being a very narrowly focused test, only one element mattered, and that one particular element has some competition. Come hang out at the beach... It'll be alright.

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The HD monitors on our table were fed with our HD generator and the SD monitors were fed with a small NTSC camera. NOT with the rotisserie. One could actually see the difference.

 

Marianne, are you saying that the monitors at your table were brighter than the one on the rotisserie? You should have brought it over for comparison. If you could have made the hd monitor brighter by changing format or other settings I'm sure we all wish you had. None here wish any ill on any product -- we just want to see a picture outside so we can do our jobs.

 

We should be really doing stuff like this more often.

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Marianne,

 

please let's get the facts straight:

 

The player used was a Fast Forward Video OMEGA HD player.

 

OMEGA HD

 

The camera used for the live was a Sony F900, also HD

 

Distribution amp was an Evertz HD with SD down-converter for SD monitors like the Cinemonitor III and the Hummingbird/Blackbird. All others got the HD-SDI signal.

 

The only two upconverted SD signals were the SD video tab sequences, since videotabs only became HD (ARRI) as of last month. All others were native HD clips.

 

please read Charles' post above for more details.

 

and here's the most important point:

ALL HD MONITORS GOT THE SAME HD FEED, GOOD OR BAD. That means you can compare them at that point and again this was an event to compare different monitors and technologies for their daylight/sunlight view ability, nothing more nothing less.

 

Could we have done a better job? - of course, but the sole purpose was to see these monitors in extreme daylight, they all perform fine on stage.

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Jens:

 

You are correct I did not see Charles post detailing the set-up from a day or 2 ago until last evening.

The reason why I was absolutely convinced we got an up-converted signal is- as discussed with Charles last evening- that at the very beginning of the event several monitors did not get a signal (some monitors displayed "NO SYNC") at all and one of the person standing next to me said: "It must be the downconverter" and then opened the fabric that covered all the wiring to fix the prob. Obviously, this was not correct.

I also discussed last evening some of the shots that made me think - totally in line with what I had just been told- that we were not looking at HD reso. And indeed Charles confirmed that these shots had "ultra-contrasty" video or "gamma were off". By the way there is a gamma adjustment on the Transvideo monitor.

I do realize all the monitors got the same feed, and I felt there was something off with the signal on all the monitors.

Again, I only saw the live camera for 3 or 4 seconds at my request, I never saw its feed again during the rest of the event.

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Ron Baldwin: Marianne, are you saying that the monitors at your table were brighter than the one on the rotisserie? You should have brought it over for comparison. If you could have made the hd monitor brighter by changing format or other settings I'm sure we all wish you had. None here wish any ill on any product -- we just want to see a picture outside so we can do our jobs.

 

We should be really doing stuff like this more often.

 

--------

 

Ron, I am saying that the monitors on our table looked better than on the rotisserie (which still completely mystifies me). I did not check on other vendors table. I know that 1 or 2 vendors actually did not have a video source of their own, and I think (not sure) the 3rd table was fed by the rotisserie.

The only reason why I brought our own video sources is that Charles had mentioned that we could most likely not pull video cables across the parking lot to the vendors table - for obvious safety concern.

In any case, people are always welcome to come look at the monitors, bring your rig + camera if you wish, our patio is in full sun all day after 11 am, and if you are not L.A based we always offer a 1-week trial at no charge except shipping cost.

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Since you keep using the word "better" I assume you aren't necessarily talking about brighter. It's hard to judge brightness/clarity unless they were side by side. I'm still amazed that you didn't bring it over to show at the rotisserie or drag us to your table one by one if it was so much better (not that yours did poorly at all, it's just your defensive posts in this thread gives the impression that it didn't perform well to those who weren't there).

 

I was at Transvideo a few weeks ago and saw the HD monitor side by side with your Cine-monitor using the camera you have for demo purposes. I didn't take pictures but they were close in daylight viewability, as they were at the shootout -- both good monitors that can be used outside (but like all "daylight viewable" LCD's, hard to see in certain situations). I will drop by again soon to play some more.

 

I will also like to get more info on the Marshall and Nebtek monitors, as they did very well for the price. With the addition of a flg they will be a decent alternative to a crt in most situations. Not being able to use the XCS level (bought it in '97 with my tb-6 so I've become dependent on it!) on HD is a real bummer so for now a down converted signal is the way to go for me.

 

rb

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I know that 1 or 2 vendors actually did not have a video source of their own, and I think (not sure) the 3rd table was fed by the rotisserie.

The only reason why I brought our own video sources is that Charles had mentioned that we could most likely not pull video cables across the parking lot to the vendors table - for obvious safety concern.

 

We were always scheduled to have the rotisserie feed sent to the vendor tables and this was indicated in correspondence to each vendor. Because of a miscommunication it wasn't set up at the beginning of the day but after we were notified of the fact, I had it strung. Of the four vendors, Tiffen declined the feed and we ran it to the other three (or at least I gave instructions to do so--after seeing the images up on the Marshall and Nebtek table, I assumed this had been done).

 

I had recommended that vendors bring their own sources solely because the source feed from the rotisserie would be constantly change as different clips were brought up and I thought that might have been frustrating for the vendors not be able to control their demos.

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