Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/394837
www.postmagazine.com 30 POST SEPTEMBER 2014 COLOR CALIBRATION "When we got up and running, all three displays in each room needed to match," recalls Reed, "so Dave made sure the OLED was dead on and matched the others to it. He got the OLEDs as scientifi cally accurate as possible for Rec. 709 display then did the same for the plasmas and GUIs." Rodriguez points out that even the most sophisticated tools can't beat the human eye, though. "It's all about your experience and what you're accustomed to seeing," he says. "I can tell immediate- ly if something is off . Test patterns and things are great, but nothing rivals the trained human eye looking at real live source material." Reed concurs, "The scientifi c instru- ment can get you 80-90 percent of the way there, but then you have to use your eye to get the rest of the way. After the calibration, Dave puts away his test signals and takes the time to go through source material with us, and we always fi nd that there are still some fi ne ad- justments that can yield a better match between screens. A certain amount of creativity is involved in what otherwise seems like a purely-scientifi c activity." Rodriguez is pleased with Apache's choice of OLEDs and plasmas, but doubts that they'll still be using them two years from now. "There will be 4K displays all around," he says. "Our 4K GUI display looks fabulous." CINELICIOUS The core business of Cinelicious (www. cinelicious.tv) is color grading, and its broadcast color suites are outfi tted with Sony PVM Series and TVLogic XVM Series reference monitors and Panasonic Series 12 plasmas, the latter with HD-SDI input cards and HD-SDI LUT boxes. Displays are calibrated to Rec. 709 color space. Cine- licious also has Barco C-Series 4K and 2K projectors for theatrical color timing in one of the fi rst 4K DI theaters in Los Angeles. "The Sony and TV Logic monitors are very stable. We check these on a monthly basis," says Cinelicious founder and CEO, Paul Korver. "The plasmas drift more frequently, so we check these once a week." In-house engineering performs the calibration, which normally amounts to "just a small tweak." Their calibration tool of choice is the Photo Research PR-670 SpectraScan spectroradiometer. "It's really the fastest and most-accurate tool that can measure both refl ective displays for theatrical and emissive displays for broadcast," Korver says. "If you do not require calibration for D-cinema, then there are probably some less expensive options available, but we didn't explore them because theatrical is important for us. It's defi nitely the pre- mier tool for calibrating for the cinema and DI mastering." Korver notes that, "we are on the verge of a new high dynamic range specifi cation, Rec. 2020, that will take into account a broader color gamut and deeper blacks that are able to be displayed by newer display technologies. As OLED becomes more aff ordable and widely adopted, and as new digital cine- ma projectors come on the market that have much deeper blacks and dynamic range, individuals and companies respon- sible for mastering fi nal images will need to stay on top of their color science. It's an exciting time for people involved with creative imaging." A QUICK GUIDE TO CALIBRATION TOOLS PHOTO RESEARCH (www.photoresearch.com) PR-670 SpectraScan spectroradiometer PR-650 SpectraScan colorimeter PR-655 SpectraScan spectroradiometer KLEIN INSTRUMENTS (www.kleininstruments.com) K10 colorimeter SPECTRACAL (www.spectracal.com) CalMAN video calibration software X-RITE (www.xrite.com) i1Pro 2 DATACOLOR (www.datacolor.com) Spyder4PRO color calibration system Cinelicious's Paul Kover (inset) and the studio's 4K DI theater.