Knowing what controls are available, and what they are used for is a critical step in gaining accurate final calibration.
The actual controls that will be used during manual display calibration will vary depending on what is provided by the specific display being calibrated.
It is imperative to understand that such a 'repetitive' and 'circular' approach to manual calibration is a requirement due to to the way just about all manual TV calibration controls work. For example, the Black & White levels will need to be re-verified after the best Picture Mode' has been found - but you really need to set the black and white levels before evaluating the display's different Picture Modes, as incorrect black & white levels will make a Picture Modes look wrong. While the above list is fairly simple, it will be necessary to re-visit most entries for a second, or even third time, after checking the other entries. With this acceptance, there are six major calibration steps to be taken: Often, these controls are next to useless, and the only real approach available for accurate calibration is to 'turn off' (or null) just about all the manual controls, and turn to an external 3D LUT box to provide the most accurate calibration possible.īut, for the sake of this guide, we will assume the display in question has good internal manual CMS controls, and provide a step-by-step overview to the 'best-practice' approach for manual display calibration. What can be manually calibrated actually depends on the manual controls provided by the display manufacturer. "An LCD monitor used for graphics should be calibrated at least once every 200–300 hours (in ordinary use, once per month)." We recommend at lest once a month, and manufacturers such as Eizo concur with this: Regardless of the initial state of any factory calibration, all displays drift over time, and should be recalibrated on a regular basis.
Unfortunately such settings should be considered as nothing more than 'marketing gimmicks', as rarely are they accurate at all.
'Showroom' settings are anything but 'accurate', and demand the TV be accurately calibrated before any images will look as intended.īeyond this, many TVs have what are claimed as 'professional' calibration pre-sets, such as ISF or THX.
Unfortunately, nearly all displays are provided with very poor 'factory' calibration out of the box, especially home TVs which tend to come with over saturated colours, widely inaccurate gamma and colour temperature, and incorrect black and white levels, with such settings aimed at 'looking pretty' in the TV show-room. Therefore, display calibration is required so that the viewed images match as closely as possible the colour standards expected by the images being viewed, as such video standards define how an image should look on any given screen when accurately matched to the given standard. This is true for both displays used on film and TV productions, as well as for the home consumer. The real requirement for display calibration is actually very obvious, as without it you will never be seeing images as the production team, specifically the DoP, intends. Instead, LightSpace CMS provides a tool-box of features that can be used in different ways to best perform accurate manual display calibration. LightSpace CMS takes a very open 'free-flow- approach to calibration, without the need to adhere to rigid pre-set structures or workflows.