A proper hardware device by Blackmagic Design (BM for short) and a calibrated screen has been the iron law for any professional user of DaVinci Resolve (DR for short). But for all those working under MacOS, this may have been valid for the longest time. We are looking at recent changes in DR for those without one. Spoiler: calibration still matters!

How to check

To see what’s going on when playing your movie on other devices and players you can compare your own footage, for sure. At least, if you were the colorist, you should know how it should look like. But if you are unsure (and our memory for colors can be tricked easily), there is the classic SMPTE chart in DR, which has the so-called PLUGE pulse (short for picture line-up generation equipment) in the lower right. In the wider black bar there are two narrow zones with a value just above black, the left one being the darker one (check your waveform).

If your blacks are not crushed by a false gamma interpretation, you should be able to see the right bar just faintly inside the black stripe. The middle one may only become visible if the shadows are lifted too much. Of course, it all depends on your screen too. If it’s not capable of showing black or at least near black, the rest of that whole area will not be pitch black, making it harder to judge the subtle differences. Actually, there is a third bar to the left of the two, but that is reaching down into the sub-black area and only visible if you have exported the file with “Retain sub-black and super-white data” activated. Normally it is just cut off.

Calibration options

DisplayCal is plugging into DR and sending its test patches through the grading software over any compatible I/O device to the screen you need to calibrate. The resulting LUT can be copied into DR and used as a monitoring LUT to correct deviations of the connected screen. This approach works absolutely correctly with the right settings in DisplayCal, being able to avoid any interference of the operating system, be it MacOS, Windows or Linux. Final precision is limited only by shortcomings of your monitor, like weak shadow areas, as visible below. BTW, those small spikes and minor shifts in the waveform are caused by compression in our recorder.

In our series of articles for those not able to spend a fortune on high-end solutions, we have shown how to get a proper LUT with the help of free software and second-hand hardware for Apple silicon. But now we have two solutions pretty much on par regarding calibration in the operating system by an ICC profile. So, we wanted to know if one can live without such an I/O device and that perfect calibration over the whole chain. Actually, BM has recently changed how preview windows and full screen display color and contrast. So, ICC profiles may not be insufficient any more for DR on a Mac with a screen adhering to standard!

Direct monitoring

BM has supported the use of Mac display profiles in DR’s viewers under MacOS for quite some time, even in 10-bit. But due to peculiarities carried over from older systems, they needed to use a non-standard version of Rec. 709, called 709-A. That was nothing but a crutch, and it was not only Apple’s fault that contrast and brightness were inconsistent between many players and other devices. If you are seriously bored, you can read this thread, with over 20 pages, the longest one ever in the DR user forum. You can follow some true experts and many wannabes there, discussing a ‘final’ solution. So, what’s our take on it?

The Never Ending Story: Are Apple XDR devices suitable for reference use in colour grading?

The main problem is lack of timely standardization when everything went from tubes to digital cameras and screens. The Rec. 709 standard for HDTV was defined based on analog technology, which behaved differently from modern cameras and screens. The newer addition to that standard is called BT. 1886, but it was only published by the ITU in 2011.

At that time there were already too many digital technologies in use, and most manufacturers didn’t really care much about adherence to a standard coming so late. BT.1886 defines a gamma (a contrast curve) of 2.4, which is fine for viewing TV in a rather dimly lit living room. Adjusting that curve is not really adhering to the standard, but on this model of a TV, for example, a value of +2 will get it to 2.2.

This slightly older Samsung TV, as a typical example, is offering modes like Movie, Natural, Standard, and Dynamic. Nothing says “Rec. 709” or “BT. 1886” right away, but „Natural“ is actually adhering to BT.1886, even fixed to it. „Standard“ is BT. 1886 too by default, but allows you to override that gamma in the expert settings – go figure. “Movie” is also adhering to BT.1886, but with a very warm tint – which again can be overridden, just like gamma. Recent ones have the “Filmmaker” setting, which is supposed not to change anything, and “Dynamic” is for bright rooms. Have fun with all the creative names and options of other manufacturers!

A lighter and less contrasty gamma of 2.2 might be better in a brighter environment. Mobile devices in particular are watched wherever you go. Even if some can reach very high brightness values these days, details in darker areas of the image can get lost if the content was graded as 2.4. Encoding clips for social media instead of movies for cinema buffs may profit from a gamma of 2.2, which is correctly flagged as 1-4-1 by DR. It even adheres to a standard, called BT.470 System M, as shown by MediaInfo (free). But this was a standard for analog television in some parts of the world only, and is now considered historical.

But do TVs and other devices really check such flags, which contain the information about encoding in your digital video files? They should tell the playback device which colour primaries, which colour matrix, and which gamma (called transfer characteristics here) were used. If you check with the info function for a video file on a Mac, the ones for Rec. 709 BT. 1886 are code points 1-1-1 or flags (I’ll use flag from here). They will be listed by cross-platform software such as MediaInfo as Rec. 709 for all three parameters.

In a perfect world, all playback devices and software players should respect such flags and show your video accordingly. Well, at least most of them assume your sources are 1-1-1, but often don’t care if it’s flagged as anything else, like 1-4-1 or 1-2-1. Some even force 1-1-1 on your clips, whatever they are. As we all know, YouTube is recompressing your sources, which is acceptable if the quality is good enough. But what’s absolutely unacceptable: whatever your original flagging was, YouTube will set it to 1-1-1 without even asking you! Just try to send one of your clips to YT and read it back. The free video patcher AMCDX by Alex Mogurenko will help you to correct wrong flags, but you need to remember the original encoding.

What to do?

In consequence, your results, which you encoded as gamma 2.2 for viewing in brighter environments, will actually be displayed darker and loose detail in the shadows. And if you encode from DR as Rec.709 gamma 2.4, which is offered as another option, it may too bright and lack contrast and saturation on players or a browser not respecting the flags. So, always encode as Rec. 709 (Scene) and hope for the best. It should look right on a TV with the correct settings. These can normally be found on most modern TVs or monitors if you dig deep enough into the menus, either as Rec. 709 or BT. 1886. Out of the box, many TVs are set to a very contrasty and saturated look, shouting out “Buy Me!” to the visitors of a mall for electronics.

The very popular VLC player is another example of ignoring flags, while we can recommend mpv player or its descendants for observance of flags. Of course, this says nothing yet about the quality of the screen attached to it. If that one is not calibrated, or at least set correctly in its menus, the image may still be far off. And then, there are all those image ‘enhancements’ imposed by digital TVs for viewing conditions, like bright environments or late hours. Or think of a projector meant to be visible in a not so dimly lit boardroom and optimized for (visual!) clarity of business charts.

Recommendations

Recent MacBooks and iPad Pro models have excellent blacks and offer reference modes for several standards, including HDTV (BT.709-BT. 1886). These are factory-calibrated and deactivate any image adjustments, assuming an environment properly lit for grading. Now, there is some sample variation and according to our own measurements, the nit value for white can be a tad low, like around 90 instead of 100 (some experts even suggest 120). Nevertheless, such screens come pretty close to a properly calibrated screen in the lower price range and offer much better blacks than conventional IPS panels.

If you are working for TV, we would still advise a professional, calibrated monitor via an I/O device. But, at least with the settings explained above, your viewers in DR will not look completely off when a client is looking over your shoulder. For all those working for social media, where your audience will have devices that you can’t control anyway, we suggest sticking to the only widespread norm: Rec. 709 with a gamma of 2.4. If you are concerned about visibility in bright environments, change the lighting in your room and check with an average smartphone, but avoid the setting for gamma 2.2 when rendering.

If you work for clients who want your results for social media, but are picky about how their movies look, you may need to supply them with an iPad Pro for presentations. Set it to a reference mode, block that, and try to explain to them why their average boardroom projector may look different. You may even want to take a photograph of TVs in an electronics market showing the same content next to each other.

Let’s do it on a Mac

So you’ve got a MacBook Pro (MBP for short) with Apple silicon and you’ve got a calibration probe, be it by Datacolor or Calibrite. But working just for the internet, you didn’t invest in an I/O device. We don’t care which generation of that laptop, as long as it has the nice XDR screen and reference modes. But who likes to work with DaVinci Resolve on such a small screen (even the menu bar is too short for all the little extras)? Let’s say you have a larger screen with decent color quality attached when you start grading at your home base. After all, not only Apple says that you should be grading to standards in a controlled environment – something hard to find in a hotel room or on the road. Now calibrate that external screen with your probe, and you’ll be generating just an ICC profile for the Mac in this case. More than one profile can be prepared for the correction of different monitors, which will be managed by the system.

Brightness according to BT. 1886 would be 100 nit, but 120 fits modern screens better. The steps needed for calibration are fully self-explanatory with the Spyder Pro software, and the result on a decent screen is very close to what we see on the MBP when set to reference mode. OK, DisplayCal may be a tad more precise. But it’s more complicated and taking many more measurements, resulting in excessively long lunch breaks.

You need to set the system preferences of DR to use the Mac profiles, as already shown above, and now you have to stick to Rec. 709 (Scene) on the Deliver page to get your output and its flags right. Do not use Rec. 709 Gamma 2.4, even if theoretically it should be the same!

Your timeline can be whatever you prefer: Rec. 709, ACES, or DaVinci Wide Gamut Intermediate (DWG). Of course, with manual settings your first node should get a CST (Color Space Transform) to adapt the incoming camera sources to DWG. Resolve’s automatic setting, called DaVinci YRGB Color Managed (aka RCM) set to SDR would also deliver the flags as 1-1-1, by the way. But you may need to check if the incoming footage’s color and gamma is identified correctly or needs to be set manually. That’s often the case if some difficult source has been transcoded into an intermediate codec, like ProRes, DNxHR, or Cineform.

Conclusion

In the end, you need to understand that rendering into a specific colour space and gamma is actually changing the visual content of your results. 
Tags are just metadata, which should trigger the right interpretation in players. That’s the point where chaos breaks loose, because manufacturers often don’t care for the tags and display your video based on assumptions. The only reliable approach is encoding to Rec. 709 with a gamma of 2.4 and having the tags set to 1-1-1, which is automatically done if you render into Rec.709 (scene).

The post LUTs, Tags, or ICC: Getting Colours Right in Resolve on a Mac first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Uli Plank.

Datacolor has launched its latest monitor calibration solutions: Spyder and SpyderPro. These new tools enhance color precision on modern displays and offer features like smartphone display previews and advanced video targets.

Monitor Calibration for New Display Technologies

Datacolor’s new Spyder and SpyderPro models extend their well-known color calibration precision to support cutting-edge display technologies, such as OLED, Mini-LED, and Apple Liquid Retina XDR. These displays offer advanced color depth and detailed contrast that can now be fully utilized with proper calibration.

The new SpyderPro model introduces additional features for professional users. It allows for fully customizable calibration workflows and comprehensive display analysis. In particular, this includes calibration for high-brightness monitors and video/cinema targets, ensuring consistent colors throughout the production workflow.

Both models, Spyder and SpyderPro, feature Datacolor’s intuitive interface, guiding you through the calibration process efficiently, whether you’re new to color calibration or have years of experience. The SpyderPro further includes unlimited calibration settings and tools like StudioMatch, which ensures consistent colors across multiple monitors.

Device Preview Feature

One of the standout features is the new Device Preview function, still in its beta phase. This allows you to simulate how your images will appear on different devices, like smartphones or tablets. Datacolor has integrated popular device color profiles into their software, making it easier for you to see how your content will look to your audience across different screens. This is particularly useful for content creators who rely on precise color correction before publishing images or videos. Additionally, the software includes a soft proofing tool for simulating printed outputs. You can preview how your images will appear in print, ensuring the final result meets your expectations before the printing process begins.

Video and Cinema Targets

SpyderPro also supports specific workflows for video production, with video and cinema targets enabling color calibration for cinema production pipelines. This tool helps you standardize color across the entire video production process, ensuring consistency in color grading and final output.

Spyder is available for €189, while SpyderPro is priced at €289, both including VAT. Both models are available immediately from photography retailers, Amazon, and Datacolor’s online store.

Conclusion

The Spyder and SpyderPro offer tools for color calibration across a wide range of monitors and devices. However, it’s recommended to test each feature carefully before integrating them into active workflows, as they may still undergo further refinement, especially the Device Preview feature. For more details on the product specifications, you can visit Datacolor’s website and explore the Spyder product documentation.

And a note: We have the product already in our hands, and a test of it’s features will follow soon!

For further details on pricing, licensing options, and the full documentation, visit the official Spyder product page.

The post Spyder and SpyderPro for Monitor Calibration Released first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The “Video” set contains five interchangeable, high-gloss video colour cards, including a patent-pending colour sample card. The card was developed to enable more precise and nuanced colour accuracy in video processing. It has 12 colour patches in a unique configuration with a black, grey and white colour patch in the middle and six skin tone patches.

There is also a greyscale map with two 11-level grey gradients and three solid bars with white, black and 50% grey. This allows all details to be captured. There is also a standard colour map. This is practical for combined video and photo jobs. It contains 12 colour fields, 6 skin tone fields and one black, one white and one grey bar (50% grey). It also includes a neutral grey card for white balance and a focus star card. The set costs 100 euros. You can find all the information here.

There is also a “Photo” set with four ultra-matte reference cards and a comprehensive set of 62 colour and grey fields optimised for different tasks, for example extended skin tones for portraits, large cards for simple white/grey balance, as well as a 12-step grey scale for perfect exposure, finer detail adjustment and a quick check of the dynamic range. The ultra-matte cards deliver rich colours and deep blacks, ensuring accurate and true colour matching in all lighting conditions thanks to their low reflectance. The photo set costs 85 euros and is also available directly from Datacolor.

Oh yes, one more thing: if you contact support, you can also replace individual cards without having to order a complete new set. This is useful if the trainee has used the check as a coffee coaster or if something else has happened to the card.

The post Card game for colour fans! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The actual initial topic was the increasingly frequent question from colour grading colleagues, but also from production companies or post houses: How well suited are Apple’s latest iPads for colour grading acceptances that have the new “reference mode”? Reason enough to deal with both topics at once, as they inevitably belong together if you want to be able to answer the question of suitability. I looked at two current Apple devices: the iPad Gen 6 and the latest MacBook Pro – both with the Liquid Retina XDR.

Externals

What makes the reality even more complex is the question of whether to use the internal/own displays or other computer monitors. You could avoid the problems as far as possible if you used reference monitors on a video IO for colour grading control and not the internal graphics card output on internal or external displays.

However, using external monitors requires even more expertise: I was just called to a colour grading suite at ZDF where a colour grader was sitting in front of one of the most expensive reference monitors you can currently buy: a Sony BVM HX310. It was supposedly not calibrated. After all, the colourist noticed that the colours could not be correct (too saturated compared to the GUI monitor).

However, it turned out that the HX310 was not set correctly: instead of Rec709, the HX310 was on the P3 colour space. The Windows computer and Resolve with its GUI monitor were set to Rec709 output. Such a combination is normally less prone to errors compared to the Apple workflow, provided the users know what they are doing.

So what are the boring basics?

The studio standard, which is still the worldwide standard in colour grading and VFX workflows, is still Rec709 (identical to sRGB in terms of colours), only in cinema or HDR is P3 (the latter embedded and limited in BT2020/BT2100) common in delivery as a colour space, but by no means always used to its full potential.

It is not uncommon for Rec709 to simply be addressed and displayed in the P3 colour space or even embedded in BT2020. This can work well if you transform cleanly between these two colour spaces. This usually works in a colour-managed workflow, but the more settings that can be set, the higher the error rate. But this is the crux of the matter: users and colour management must both work well together ;-), especially if the monitor is set to P3, which has been the case with Apple’s Retina displays for many years and not just since the XDR generation.

Rec709

Let’s get back to the Rec709: The following decisive secondary conditions must be observed, which are often overlooked: The dear monitor gamma, which was unfortunately forgotten to be defined in the standard, but which was also more or less fixed in the days of CRT monitors: gamma 2.4. Only with cinema or today’s modern monitors has the gamma (become) variably adjustable to suit: in dark cinema 2.6 and in office light conditions (as preset on most computer monitors): Gamma 2.2.

It is important to note that the gamma is only and exclusively set on the monitor to match the ambient light and is never changed or adjusted during export. This is where the first application errors occur. Because theoretically an adjustment is possible and is therefore all too often done due to a lack of expertise and voilà: The export looks different for this reason alone.

If this is not noticeable, it is due to incorrect monitor settings and/or incorrect ambient light conditions. The latter are defined for Studio Gamma 2.4 = 10 per cent of the peak white level, which is 100 nits (nits = cd/m²). This is achieved by completely banning daylight from the room and using some D65 (6500 Kelvin) compliant white light (bias light), i.e. not using the usual warm light sources.

And now iPad?

If I want to use an iPad as a reference device, I have to create studio lighting conditions, because it is set to gamma 2.4 in reference mode. Using it in an office/daylight environment is therefore pointless. I’d rather use a better TV or graphics monitor that can be set to gamma 2.2, but also at least provides an sRGB or Rec709 preset.

At least you can’t set anything wrong on the iPad in reference mode. This could be categorised as Apple-typical “user-friendly”. It is more complicated on MacBooks, there is no “reference mode”, I can and should set and adjust the colour spaces correctly via the monitor settings as on a reference monitor, and at best also calibrate them.

The 6th generation iPad Pro is absolutely “reference-capable” when calibrated – because you can at least calibrate the white point on the iPad, as with any “professional” reference monitor. If the display has been well constructed and well calibrated, no more is necessary. However, this process is complicated and not really interactive. You need a calibration probe with an x,y output or display, ideally something like a Jeti 1511 spectroradiometer, which provides exactly that.

It’s a bit strange that you can’t enter 100 nits for the brightness, the setup only accepts values below that – but this is hard to tell visually if you only get 93 nits instead of 100. It took me several attempts to get the calibration to a good value. The software does not deliver the value that you set and that was measured. If you measure again after the accepted setting, you realise that the final value is slightly off. You then have to “shoot” just right to achieve a precision landing. After a few times back and forth, it worked. In my case, a reset to default improved things even more.

The background

So far it looks good, but here’s the thing: For a P3 display to show Rec709, a functioning colour management system is required. This presupposes that both the OS and the respective software are capable of communicating with the colour management. DaVinci Resolve and Apple’s own Quicktime Player are capable of this. However, for the Quicktime Player, certain flags (metadata) in the video files are also responsible for whether or not certain standards are used. And here Apple has (historically caused) a system design deficiency in colour management: they use an outdated gamma. To “correct” this, a special flag is required in the .mov/.mp4 file if it is to be played back correctly on Apple devices: NCLC does not have a transfer function specified in meta tags for Gamma 2.4 – so tagging “1-2-1” tagged for Rec709 Gamma 2.4 reads the “2” in the 1-2-1 tag as “unspecified”, so Apple Colorsync (the operating system) ignores it and applies the internal incorrect gamma.

The result

And (almost) every player on a Mac displays the file with gamma 1.96, which is a far cry from gamma 2.4. So people check their files on a Mac (which by default uses Quicktime, a colour managed player) and the files are displayed washed out with too flat gamma. However, this can be torpedoed and obscured if Fullrange vs Legalrange is used, which depends on the colour management/codecs and export setting. However, the standard is legal range (video level measured externally = 0-100 per cent – but be careful, the display of the internal waveforms in Resolve or other programs show what is processed internally, which is usually 0-100 per cent full range and not legal range, which is what is to be exported. So Rec709 is actually exactly Rec709, gamma 2.4, for 100 nits at 10 nits ambient light in D65 and white point D65 at legal range (note: legal range is at 8 bit = 16-235 or 10 bit = 64-940) When exporting from Resolve, the Rec709A setting can now be used instead of Rec709 – Gamma 2.4.

The NCLC tag

And now this leads us to NCLC tag 1-1-1. This flag does not lead to any burn-in of other gamma, but only to a correct display of gamma 2.4 on Apple OS operated colour-managed applications, if this has been set on the display – which is the case by activating the reference mode on the iPad Pro. A preset must be created for this on the MacBook. Minimum settings in DaVinci Resolve: Only amateurs use CSTs in Resolve, the professional who works as efficiently as possible uses DaVinci’s YRGB Colourmanaged CM. This allows you to define the target for the subsequent export and correctly address the metadata for the send files, especially if different colour space targets are required. This often occurs with Rec709&HDR in combination with today’s streaming platforms… So first set the white point and colour space optimally and then calibrate the white point. If everything is set and calibrated correctly, an optimised display preset must also be set in the OS. Here it is still set to P3-1600 nits: reduced to 45 per cent brightness:

Conclusion

This may come as a surprise, but Apple’s current colour management actually works – if it weren’t for the Quicktime flag problem, which Resolve solves with the Rec709A (the A stands for Apple) export flag (1-1-1). As this flag can ensure correct playback on Mac OS and has no effect on Windows, you should always export with it even in Resolve on Windows, then the files will also look correct on a Mac, even if the Mac laptop display is “incorrectly” set to P3 1600 nits. But you can achieve real perfection with a Rec709 display preset. Both the Macbook and the iPad Pro with the XDR displays are absolutely suitable for reference if the listed conditions are observed. However, if you use an external reference monitor with a Windows system or Mac system that is incorrectly set to P3, then the user loses out and an expert is unnecessarily called in to calibrate. In this respect, self-contained systems such as the current Apple devices are one level less error-prone. But as the social media forums impressively demonstrate: This doesn’t really help. “KnowHow is king” and that is here and not on social media ;-)

The post The Never Ending Story: Are Apple XDR devices suitable for reference use in colour grading? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Michael Radeck.

The new Asus ProArt PA279CRV is a relatively affordable monitor (€550) that aims to give the impression of a premium professional panel. If you ask Co-Pilot of Windows 11, you get the following info: “The Asus ProArt PA279CRV is a monitor that is making waves in the tech industry due to its impressive features and affordable price. This 27-inch 4K monitor is part of ASUS’ ProArt range, designed for video editing and content creation.” It’s not just adverts that like to exaggerate, AI language models also get exuberant from time to time: “…making waves in the tech industry”

What interests us now about the Asus ProArt Display PA279CRV and also the Asus ProArt Display PA169CDV is precisely the topic: How much “pro” do you get for the money?

There are two stand variants on the back, one for a “Wacom-like” tilt, as a pen tablet, and one for a “high tilt”, as known from external monitors. In the high stand version, you can also work comfortably in portrait mode – or simply read the DP-Epaper in the correct format. I’m just saying.

What are these classes?

Our definition comes from colour grading. Here, anything that achieves a so-called class 1 (as far as possible) is considered professional. For example, a Sony BVM HX3110 (dual LCD) or an EIZO CG3146 or a Sony BVM X300 (OLED). There would certainly be more devices, but these are the most common and cost between 20,000 and 30,000 euros. Mid-range for me so far has tended to be an EIZO CG series. They are around 2000-4000 euros. Classic class two broadcast monitors are similarly priced or around double or triple the price – depending on the manufacturer, dealer and age. Anything under 1,000 euros would therefore not be mid-range. A good 4K/27-inch office monitor from Eizo already costs 600-1,500 euros. In this respect, the Asus is almost in the low-end price range. For the sake of completeness: A favourable
Office monitor in this size and resolution is around 200-300 euros, i.e. about half the price.

The claim

Anyone who edits images (as a rule) also wants to see colours that are as correct as possible. In recent years in particular, the problem has arisen that different colours have to be constantly discussed. Not infrequently with the customer complaining that the colours are too bright or usually “too red”. The cause is often the same: many monitors can now display so-called wide gamuts and are preset at the factory with these natively very saturated colours. If the operating systems or programs do not use colour management, the colours are often seen incorrectly because they were usually produced in sRGB/Rec.709 but are now displayed in P3 or higher. Skin tones in particular look too red. We will cover this topic in detail in the next DP, especially in the comparison between Windows and Mac.

The PA169CDV – how much colour do you need on the move?

If you want to do something on the go, we recommended the excellent Asus ZenScreen OLED MQ16AH in the penultimate issue – which scored points with its low price and great colours. The PA169CDV (honestly, Asus, we need to talk about names!) is the “professional version”
which is not designed for productivity, but for graphic designers and image makers. What’s in the case?

It’s a portable 15.6-inch screen with 4K resolution (3840×2160 pixels), IPS panel and 10-point touch, which is Display HDR 400 certified. With the included ProArt pen, which uses Wacom EMR technology, you can draw or write directly on the display. Like the PA279CRV, it is also said to have been Calman verified and Pantone validated. Measurement reports are enclosed in each case.

According to Asus, we have 500 cd/m² in HDR mode, 450 cd/m² in typical mode, as well as HDR10 and colour spaces set to Standard, sRGB (100 percent), Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, Rec. 709, Scenery, Reading, HDR and two “User Modes”. In terms of connectivity, there are two USB-C ports on the left-hand side of the screen (one of which is in Display Port Alt Mode) and a full-size HDMI 2.0. Above these are the menu button, an On/Off button and a “rotary wheel”, which can be freely assigned to all kinds of tools. Power is also supplied via USB-C, namely 15 watts in operation and less than 0.3 watts in standby mode. As with the ZenScreen, there is a ¼ inch thread at the rear. Two speakers with one watt each are also installed. The whole thing weighs a little over a kilo, measures 37 by 23.7 by 1.2 cm and costs between €1,100 and €1,300 on Amazon.

However, the smaller PA169CDV costs more – about twice as much for about half the surface area, it is a pen tablet with “Wacom feel”. Otherwise, the screen specs look almost identical at first glance: The currently only supplier for the PA169CDV describes it as 4k OLED but in the same sentence as an IPS panel, which is an LCD monitor type. In fact, both displays are the same: IPS panel with 10 bit and LED backlight
Backlight. And here we are at the first weak point: LED backlights with too few LEDs cause various problems. An old problem with LCD/LED monitors is the lack of black level. This is easy to recognise from the supplied measurement report – it is clearly not an OLED.

The PA279CRV – ProArt for little money!

The second monitor in the test is the Asus ProArt Display PA279CRV Professional 27-inch monitor mentioned at the beginning. A 27-inch 4K (3840×2160) HDR display with LED backlighting, IPS panel and a wide viewing angle of 178 degrees. Asus reports 99 percent DCI-P3 and 99 percent Adobe RGB coverage as the colour space, and that this would be Calman-tested and pre-calibrated to Delta E<2 colour accuracy at the factory.

Everything is available in terms of connectivity, including DisplayPort via USB-C with 96 watts Power Delivery, DisplayPort, HDMI and a USB hub (3.2, and easily accessible at the bottom) plus a wall-mountable design (Vesa 100×100) for maximum desk space. Power consumption is 33.5 watts, the refresh rate is 60 Hz and, because it is currently being discussed: Asus guarantees 8 years of software and firmware updates as well as 7 years of spare parts availability. Very nice, that! But back to the colours…

Calibration right up to the edge…

If you calibrate such a display with the measurement sensor in the middle, the edges/corners will no longer reproduce correct colours. When I first calibrated the PA279CRV and placed it next to my office monitors, I was briefly confused. The monitor actually seemed to have a red cast in the white and I started to check whether I had done something wrong. However, I measured the edges with the measuring probe and measured a considerable red cast, which I also perceived “optically”.

If you place two monitors next to each other and compare them, you focus primarily on both edges and hardly notice that the image actually changes towards the centre of the image, if it actually does. As can be estimated from the amount of area above, the central area (blue-grey cross) is also smaller than the corner areas, which have a different colour. If you take a photo of the white area, it looks clear – I have edited the image for the print.

Incidentally, there is a cool online tool from EIZO for testing monitors: eizo.de/monitortest

I used this to create the white area, you can see the numbers to the left of the centre of the image, if you click on them you can select different test patterns and modify some of them at the bottom right of the window. Anyone familiar with Eizo monitors and their advertising will have seen this picture before. Eizo has developed a technique to eliminate precisely this problem. This is one reason why Eizo monitors are sometimes many times more expensive than the PA279CRV.

Comparison of measurement probe profiles

Here you can see some examples of the profiling problems of measurement probes – this should give you an idea of how important precise individual current profiling of measurement probes is:

Measurement, calibration and evaluation

First of all, it is always interesting to see how different the spectral light properties of monitors from the same manufacturer and of the same or very similar design are. If you use cheap colourimeters, you may have several spectral profiles (usually up to five different light source types such as LEDs or tubes etc.) to choose from, but these cannot be modified, e.g. for so-called phosphor-based LED backlights. However, there are different types such as RG_Phosphor or PFS Phosphor WLED LED backlights with different spectral properties and therefore different white points – if they have not been calibrated to a specific white point. So neither of them can be calibrated correctly with a “standard profile”.

Even if I use a 7,000 euro colourimeter, its stored profiles for perhaps ten specific monitor types such as an EIZO CG series profile are of no use to me at all, as these change with the wear and tear of the years, as with all monitors. This is why built-in measuring probes are more of a consumer gimmick, as they themselves drift and the monitors in which they are installed do too, albeit to varying degrees.

Colours on the PA279CRV

Now let’s take a look at what colours the PA279CRV monitor delivers ex works. Standard colour presets are often “native” and present the entire colour space, which is usually neither fish nor fowl – and always shows the maximum colours possible, i.e. all too often oversaturated.

Dynamic dimming should always be switched off, I had switched to Fast (Display HDR) to see contrast optimised for HDR, but this produces very creepy phenomena, especially in SDR.

Link to the video Dimming-Fail is.gd/dimming

Colour on the 169CDV

If you now start to calibrate the PA169CDV, the gamma unfortunately shifts and the midtones really drop off, a problem that tends to occur with inexpensive colour processing, more expensive devices such as Eizo, for example, have no gamma problems after a white point calibration.

Conclusion

As a long-time Wacom user, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the pen features of the PA169CDV, which is why I haven’t gone into it any further here. With the 16:9 display and the pen aspect ratio, it only fits 16:9 displays such as laptops and desktop monitors. For me personally, the surface is too large when you’re not looking at it and too small to draw on – and too expensive for everyday use due to the limitations. The 169CDV is interesting as a second monitor “to go” on a laptop – sturdily built and the size fits most mobile workstations.

In addition, unlike laptop displays, you can explicitly switch on sRGB or a wide gamut here and work with more usable colour conformity – many laptop displays show “any wide gamut” and you can never be sure what you are seeing. Who says that Apple laptops are very good when it comes to internal monitors? In the next issue, I will go into this topic in more depth and measure and compare an Apple laptop and tablet.

So much for the small one, now for the big one: The large PA279CRV monitor is supposedly great in terms of colour after calibration on the protocol, but you can’t calibrate away the colour casts towards the edge of the picture.

Alternatives!

It’s nice when you’re rummaging around in a range that you occasionally find the cream of the crop. The ROG Strix XG32AQ from Asus, which I bought myself (a quick fix because an office monitor had broken down), is similar in price and larger. This gaming monitor is on a par in terms of overall colour and doesn’t have anywhere near as much colour change towards the edges of the screen for me to recommend it.

Although it “only” has a resolution of 2560×1440, this is much better for working at 32 inches. In general, I find 27 inches with UHD resolution far too small, many menu fonts are barely legible and the accuracy of menu items or buttons with the mouse is drastically less efficient. Other people see it differently, Bela from the DP editorial team thinks 27-inch 4K is the “sweet spot” in terms of resolution and size. But he usually sits much closer to the screen, doesn’t have a tablet and doesn’t click as quickly as I do.

However, if I only want a VideoIO monitor, UHD is preferable – there are no reading problems. But as a video monitor, I would again recommend OLED, with the system’s inherent decent black levels and proper HDR. Because the HDR functions of the 169 and 279 are unfortunately only a “theoretical” feature and hardly usable in real life – 400 nits is only a pro-forma part of the VESA HDR standards, visually HDR 400 is a disappointment if you know what good HDR looks like.

The post ProArt: Big and small and gaming? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Michael Radeck.