LCD screens for DV editing ?

[Richard Brown]

Their is no question the LCD will be brighter, more colorful, and 
crisper than any CRT... however, for video, the LCD is still useless 
for color grading NTSC. RGB, on CRT's or LCD's, is a far cry from 
accurate color when NTSC video is concerned. Again, a broadcast monitor 
(which will look dull next to an uncalibrated LCD as well) is the only 
sure way to get accurate color in video. As to the LCD and doing 
photographic and pre press work, the display still has to be 
calibrated, and when it is calibrated, the tonality will not be that of 
a screaming full contrast, full brightness LCD... the color and 
brightness will appear somewhat diminished. The problem is, to 
calibrate a 23 inch Apple LCD requires an LCD calibration device, which 
will set you back about the same as the display itself. We have many 20 
and 23 inch Apple displays in our pre press and fine art offices (with 
a calibrator), and none look like the ones you might see at the Apple 
Store. Intense brightness and color are for things other than color 
accurate work. Are the big LCD's enjoyable? Of course. Useful for color 
correcting video? Not in the least. This reminds me of the good ol' 
days of analog, when video production houses lamented what they saw on 
their primordial computer workstations never translated well to a video 
edit - until everyone got used to the limitations of NTSC, and worked 
toward that peculiar color space.

I think a 23 inch display for Final Cut teamed with a Sony broadcast 
monitor to preview and grade the video would be a great combination, 
but the $1,300 pragmatic (extra) cost of using LCD over similar 
resolution, and more cheaply calibrated (for print, NOT video) CRT 
displays is a matter of your pocketbook. Do people with the dimmer, 
less sharp CRT's put out perfect pre press work? Every day. Just not as 
sexy as the LCD crowd. But neither the CRT nor LCD crowds color grade 
video on their computer monitors with accuracy, else there'd be little 
use for broadcast monitors, which populate, to this day, all serious 
video post establishments.

I'd suggest anyone who can afford to own and calibrate LCD screen(s) 
should take the plunge. We love them, but with the caveat: calibration 
yields a different picture than you might expect. With CRT's, 
calibration leads to many darkened workspaces in the world of 
pre-press. Even CRT's have to be "brought down" to accurately display 
pre-press work.

Richard Brown



On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 05:12 PM, ShirleyK wrote:

> Just a comment about CRT vs LCD for photo work. I had heard this too 
> and when I first compared an image on the flat-screen iMac to that on 
> my Mitsubishi Diamond Pro, I thought some photos looked better on the 
> CRT. But I'm changing my mind. I added a 20" Cinema to the Mitsubishi 
> specifically to put the palettes and text on the LCD and photos/movie 
> window on the CRT. But I've reversed that. The image is so much 
> brighter, more colorful, and crisper on the LCD that I use it first 
> and leave the CRT powered off unless I need the space for palattes. 
> Diagonal lines show the stairsteps much more prominently on the LCD. 
> So now I think the CRTs supposedly look better because they are 
> fuzzier compared to the crispness of the LCD. (I'm talking about 
> Apple's displays here; not cheap LCDs.) Dragging an image or text from 
> one monitor to the other shows dramatic differences.
>
> I had to laugh at a photographer who was working on my system. She 
> wanted images on three monitors for another photo and when she dragged 
> one of them over to the CRT her face just fell at the way it washed 
> out.
>
> Shirley