"High Definition Benchmark" BD Edition by Stacey Spears and Don Munsil - Page 34

Wow, Thanks Don for the quick responce. I took another look at it last night.

In RGB there is no difference in the rest of the settings. Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness and colour is all the same. The checkerboard is sooooo clear in RGB that I even noticed that the left hand side checker is slightly brighter than the right. Switching to Y,Cr,Cb 4.4.4 had the same brightness it just looked fuzzier. Interestingly when I switch my projectors Colourspace setting to only take RGB the colour setting is still available to adjust. Doesn't this mean that the projector is taking the RGB source converting to Y,Cr,Cb and then re-converting back to RGB. Maybe this extra processing is sharpening the signal up???

I will go with my gut. I threw on several low light scenes last night and I have never seen so much detail before. Bright and mid level scenes seem a little less blury, more refinded also.

I really like it. It has been a great discovery.

Sorry for asking. What is BVM?

Ta Dono

BVM stands for broadcast video monitor. When people say BVM they usually mean a Sony Pro CRT. They were the gold standard at one point.

Do you see a difference on the sharpness pattern when switching between RGB and YCbCr?

Hi Stacey,

No I don't. I carefully re checked all the settings to make sure something else was not out of whack. They are all the same.

It only makes a difference on the Checkerboard. These things are hard to explain. When I have it on Y,Cr,Cb the checkerboard is very, very faint. It actually takes me a good 5-7 seconds for my eyes to adjust and see it. The edges seem less defined.

When I set to RGB. I see the checkerboard instantly. Bamm. It is very clear. Not really brighter. The edges are clear and not blurring into the background black. It takes no time for my eyes to adjust to see it. So dark scenes have greatly improved (personal favourite "Dark Knight" Goodevening comissioner).

I always got a very few motion effects on normal scenes too. Like if someone was waving there arm quickly on a bright background it would result is slight ghosting. Most movies I wouldn't see it. Then some I could. I always thought it was inherent in DILA technology or the 24Hz Judder. Switching to RGB has cleaned it up a lot. For example your lighthouse scene with the bright white has a lot less judder motion (still there, but a lot less).

It's almost like it has engaged a frame intopolation without the side effects. Mine is always turned off. I checked. The info screen is also still showing 23.98Hz.

Thanks for your help guys.

Ta Dono

Becareful. Its not the settings need to be the same its that each color space may need to be re-calibrated, which may result in different settings to get the same visual results.

Are we talking about the checkerboard in the center of the image cropping pattern? If so, that is really a gamma check. From your seating position, if you can' see it, that means your gamma is 2.5. It will be 2.4 on the next disc. If you can clearly see it, from your viewing position, then its not at gamma 2.5.

This would also explain the shadow detail comment. 2.4/2.5 will come out of black slower than 2.2, which means you may see less shadow detail. This means that right now you are going to see more shadow detail than you are supposed to see. You may end up seeing something in the image that the creator had not intended.

Is there a gamma setting on your display, or player, that you can change to see what happens?

All the setting on RGB look bang on and yeild the same results as Y,Cr,Cb 4.4.4 no real adjustments needed.

I'm talking the very first test pattern. Brightness adjustment. The two above bars are visable. The two below black are not visable. The checkerboard to the left and right are now very noticable on RGB. I use a preset Gamma in my projector 2.4. with a slight bump on the White 5%. The same Gamma was used on both RGB and Y,Cr,Cb.

Do you think the RGB gamma has been adjusted at the low end?

Ta Dono

Oh, that checkerboard. That is a gamma difference you are seeing and YCbCr is correct. You should barely be able to see that from your seating position. That is why it is. If you can clearly see it in RGB, then gamma is way off.

Is there anything wrong with it like that? I kinda like it.
I have full gamma adjustments on my projector. Its a Gem, Cineversum Blackwing 3 2011 (based on the JVC DLA-X9).
If I re-adjust what Gamma should I be going for?

Ta Dono

You are seeing stuff that you were never intended to see is the main thing. 2.4 is the official display gamma standard.

Cool. Thanks for all the info. As per usual. I will keep it in RGB as I think the motion is a lot better. However I will take another look at the Gamma and just tone it down a little.

Ta Dono

I just got a Nuvision NVU55FX10LS.

I notice with the active back lighting turned on, the image "pumps" when going from dark to light or light to dark. it's very distracting. Do you have any suggestions to reduce this while keeping the deeper black levels?

Thanks for your time!

I turned off the local dimming, and all is well, I'd rather live with some led bleed then the pumping!

Thank you again for your BD! Just set up my new tv (the Pany gave up the ghost) and I couldn't be happier!

I noticed that RGB looked better on several patterns too, but when I checked the clipping pattern, white looked fine, but the red, green and blue squares were all a solid color. There were no steps in color intensity whatsoever.........Just single colored squares. So I just turned it back to 4:4:4

Rarely is RGB the best choice. The reason is that the display will convert incoming RGB back into YCbCr for processing and then back into RGB again. Its best to avoid the two extra conversions if you can.

Thanks for that, and also thanks for a great tool that helps us amateurs better our displays. My display settings are probably not where a professional calibrator would set them, but I know that they aren't that far off either.

That is interesting... I have seen on several forums that Pioneer KURO owners seem to find RGB works better into their KURO's (atleast with regard to the chroma resolution tests). Weird.

I have an OPPO BDP-95 and a DENON A1UD and they both resolve more detail (all the pattern) in the RGB STANDARD mode than they do in Component (on my Pioneer set).

Why is this????

You can search this thread for Kuro/Pioneer but the take-away is that you have carefully assess all the patterns (particularly the clipping patterns as well as the Chroma Multi-Burst), consider your sources (some are RGB only) and decide what compromises to make.

The more I use your disc, the more I learn from it. Only since seeing it described here did I learn about the tools to figure out how best to configure the output from my Panasonic BR player to my Samsung plasma.

That said, after going through all the patterns and all the directions on how to use them I could only find a subtle advantage in favor of YCbCr over RGB with the Chroma Zone Plate, Minimal Moire pattern. Further, 4:2:2 showed very slight difference in symmetry vs 4:4:4, favoring 4:4:4.

That's all the differences aside from the difference in clipping between white and the colors with further differences between the colors. However, these differences were unrelated to the output RGB vs YCbCr. Lowering contrast to extremely low levels still does not make the little boxes all show their inner boxes equally.

Any tips on what to look at to get this figured out? (Especially considering that I do have a D3 probe and according to my calibration results my gamma is flat.)

I see. What have been your findings and what equipment / connections do you use? Thank you.

This is not a simple question. I suggest you undertake your own investigation.

Thanks bodosom. I have done my own investigation in my system. I found that from both my Oppo BDP-95 and Denon A1UD bluray players... into the Pioneer KRP-600A KURO display... that their best "test pattern" performance was by setting Colour Space to RGB Video Level in the Oppo 95 and RGB Standard in the Denon A1. The component settings into the Pioneer KRP 600A KURO seemed to give poorer results in the "colour burst patterns" etc. I could detect no difference in the using Deep Colour on or off. Therefore, I have left it on (36 bits).

Out of interest... what was your findings.

After settling the whole color spacing thing for my Mitsubishi 73738/Oppo 95 which turned out to be RGB video level 1080p 24 set to on, I decided to tackle deep color settings which are another beast unto itself. I assumed 36 bits (which in hindsight seemed to wash out the image more) would be best but after close a/b the various settings, it came down to two, 30(dithered) and 30 bits ( my pick of the two). These two in particular revealed more even color saturation and better luminescence with out compromising contrast/bright settings, there was also a perceived overall better texture to the image in fine details, more solid if you will. for certain your mileage may vary, but these settings where well worth the extra attention to find which works best

Hope this helps!

Many thanks audiofan1... will give that a go today. Cheers.

I just put the Joe Kane DVE Blu-ray in, and it was fun watching the various set up patterns playing through perfectly. I didn't have to stop the disc once to make a single change. And then of course, I watched the montages. These discs work perfectly together! Thank you.

Which leads me to my question: Why did you choose to speed up some of the scenes on your montage? Was it artistic license, or for a specific reason?

Artistic license. The editor wanted some faster motion. Adding motion blur probably would have made it less stachotic.

Mr. Spears,

I own your disk and use it as part of calibration process.

The very hard items to me are Gamma and Sharpness.

My room is fully darker with no lights (except for the AVR, BD displays ).

I understand 2.2-2.4 range is the 'ideal' gamma for dim / brighter environments. Looks like some calibrators and companies aim for 2.5-2.6 when calibrating for a bat cave (dark room) environment. Which one should I target for?

My sharpness is 0 (lowest value). Default position (Panasonic 50GT30 brazilian model) is 50 (middle). I really can't look at any halos at 50 position except at the edges of subtitles (often use). So this is why I turn down the sharpness control until minimum. Subtitles look ok (soft but w/ no rings) but image suffers from softness/blur. Again, I still can't find a good balance between 0/25/50/75/100 Sharpness value even using the Sharpness pattern all the time.

Another comment/question is regarding the Color/Tint control. If I use a probe/meter I can leave the blue filter alone and adjust using the grayscale math for the primary/secondary adjustments, is that right?

My room is pretty enough confortable with 20 Ftl at 6-7 ft distance. Am I ok with that?

Sorry for all of these questions. Any clarification/comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance & Warmest regards,
Marcos

2.4 is the standard, so I would target that.


On some displays, setting sharpness too low will actually blur the image. Sometimes the halos on subtitles are actually artifacts in the content itself. Our shaprness pattern has no halos in it so it can be trusted. As I said, even with sharpness set correctly, there will be halos in some content and some content is softer than others.


In theory. Filters are difficult to trust and not all meters are accurate enough. Best technique is blue only mode, but your display probably does not have one. Sadly most don't. Some that do actually mess it up too.


That is really a pesonal call. If you don't experience in fatigue, then you are probably good to go. Standards have called for 15fl on a projection system and 30fl on a direct view / flat panel.

Thanks for the quick response!

You got the point. There will be halos in some content and some content is softer than others, better ones to use subtitles with no halos are the BD's with top notch quality, I can`t see anything wrong even with the subtitles edges.

Yep, 30 Ftl for my room is quite bright and I even I'd push my display to that value I wouldn't be able since GT30 is a very dim display IMO.

Thanks again.

Cheers.

Hi,

I have a problem with the Chroma Alignment pattern. This is best seen on the lower left, where there is a gray background. The problem is that it is not symmetrical in the horizontal plane. The left edge of the vertical red line is lighter than the right edge. It seems that there is a shift to the right a pixel or two of red or maybe some component of the gray background. I have seen Stacey mention half a pixel misalignment, and I'm not sure I can tell the difference. I'm viewing this up close to the screen.

I have tried all the HDMI output options from my bluray player; RGB, YCbCr (4:4:4 and 4:2:2) and they all look the same. I also tried adjusting sharpness extensively without any improvement. Based on some subtle asymmetry of the lesser burst patterns with YCbCr 422, YCbCr 444 is the setting I have settled on. On all patterns involving color, there is an asymmetry of the right and left vertical edges.

My BR player is a Panasonic DMP-BDT 310, and my TV is Samsung PN51D8000 if that information helps. Connection is HDMI.

The Samsung has the ability to use blue, red, and green filters, but I haven't tried looking at the pattern with the different filters.

Any idea whether this is a TV issue, a BR player issue, or how to figure it out?

Can you double check the red on yellow stripe and see how it looks? Sometimes the diamonds may look a little thicker on one side or the other because of the pixel layout in the display. The red should make this clear. If one side is dark and the other light, then there is delay. If both have the same lightness/darkness, you are OK.

Next time we will include a version of the pattern with error in both directions so you can compare.