Video Essentials aggravation  

Don't feel bad. I went to a training with Joe Kane, and HE was having trouble navigating it too!! The best advice I can give you is to buy the Widescreen Review large issue (on video technologies, etc) which has a full listing of the tests, and how to get to them directly, and what they are used for.

Brian

Consider supplanting the VE disc with our AVIA disc. AVIA has more updated and higher accuracy test patterns and navigation is via on screen menus. It's much more like surfing the web. Just point and click to get to what you want. I've always found the chapter/title list of navigation like a program where you would have a full keyboard in front of you and still have to...

Press 7 for Yes.

Press 5 for No.



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Guy Kuo
www.ovationsw.com
Ovation Software, the Home of AVIA DVD

I think the odd key to navigating VE is that you need to use the TITLE selection on your DVD player to get to specific areas of the VE disc. When you play the disc from the start you move progressively from each TITLE section to the next. Once you are "in" a TITLE, the menu allows you to choose a specific CHAPTER but won't indicate TITLE information. Most discs just require CHAPTER navigation so we are not accustomed to this kind of navigation.

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Jerry

The VE website lists the direct access (Title:Chapter) locations for various tests.

You can check it out at.. http://www.videoessentials.com/dvd_index.htm

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Jerry

I second the vote on the Avia Guide to Home Theater DVD, it's excellent. I haven't tried the VE DVD yet but the reviews I've read have all touted that the Avia DVD is several steps above.

I picked my copy up at Amazon.com for $34.99, a steal! Here is the URL:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...snodgrassautA/

I'd third the vote on Avia!

I have 2 gripes re. VE. One is that the pluge pattern is too easy to interpret subjectively, causing far too many viewers to come out with too dark a picture after following VE's verbal directions to the letter. You have to use your own eye to settle on the ideal Brightness/Black Level setting, determined by how much dark detail fill is enough, and how much is too much. I've all but given up on the pluge pattern for this purpose, aside from looking at it AFTER I have attained the ideal Br./Bl. L. setting with various light and dark scenes, just to see how the pattern is SUPPOSED to look.


The other thing is that every time I put up the 4x3 crosshatch grid on a 4x3 RPTV, I have to space out the width a bit to get a true circle out of it. With the width brackets ID in spacing to the height brackets--right next to the edges of the screen, ID at all points--the circle is oval-shaped, longer vertically.

So I make the pic wider, as having a correct circle is more important than having the side to side brackets be ID in spacing to the top and bottom brackets.

But I really don't know which is correct. Maybe I should be going with the side brackets instead. Maybe the circle is what is off.

All I know is that they do not match up correctly with 4x3 screens out there in the field.

Mr Bob



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Robert P. Jones
Image Perfection
SF Bay Area, Ca. USA
650-595-3797
bob@imageperfection.com www.imageperfection.com


[This message has been edited by Mr Bob (edited January 10, 2000).]