Spears & Munsil Calibration Advice

greetings

You use the low pluge first ... set brightness

Then you go set contrast with the contrast pattern

Then back to pluge to double check brightness

then onto color and tint

then sharpness

Dynamic range is irrelevant to the calibration process. It is what it is when you set the TV up correctly.

regards

Thanks. That helped me too.

I'm thinking of buying this disc for Blu-ray. I assume it has instructions or tutorials on the disc or separate? Thanks.

Greetings

yes .....

regards

As Michael implied, the Brightness control sets the Black level (and should be done first). The Contrast control sets the White level (and should be set second). These are both interactive, which is why you may have to repeat these steps. before you get it right.

Don't worry if you don't get it right the first time you use it. The first time you are really just getting familiar with the adjustment process. The more you use it, the easier it will become.

It is unfortunate that the names of these controls (Brightness & Contrast) are not intuitive. This has caused a lot of confusion for people who are unfamiliar with video display calibration.

NOTE: They also have more help information on their web site: http://www.spearsandmunsil.com/ -- see the links on their home page (near the bottom of the page).

Yes, in addition their website has some very helpful articles for novices:

http://www.spearsandmunsil.com/articles.html

I can't seem to find the manual that is included with the disc in PDF format on the site at the moment, but I believe it was there or linked here on the forum at some point, perhaps someone else can chime in?

You say to set brightness first. Does that apply to all cal. discs? Because my Sound and Vision disc says to set contrast first, then brightness. Also, when you start, should contrast and brightness be set to zero(neutral)? Thanks.

As he pointed out it is iterative so in that sense it doesn't really matter that much. You'll go back and fort between them, so where you start and which one you start with doesn't really matter, as you go back and forth between them then you'll end up in the same place anyway in the end.

The User's Guide is almost the first link on the home/welcome page.

So in my case, Mits. HD1000 projector, I would just start with both set to zero? They both go fron -25 to +25. Zero I assume is neutral. When I start at zero, I come up with Contrast at 14, and Brightness -2. Does it matter that contrast is higher than brightness? Thanks.

Yeah, well then that's why I didn't find it. That's such an OBVIOUS place to put that link. Why would anyone do THAT!?

Doesn't matter in any way at all. No matter where you started from, if those are the correct settings then you'd end up at those same settings anyway.

The numbers or ranges of the controls are entirely arbitrary.

We have a semi-official thread here that we monitor: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1131344

User settings are kind of arbitrary. There may be a service menu with finer control and they set the defaults in the user UI. This does vary from display to display.

As mentioned above, the basic order is:

1. Brightness
2. Contrast
3. Color/Tint
4. Sharpness

Controls do interact. Usually brightness/contrast and color/tint.

Don't be afraid to experiment. Use the dynamic range low and high patterns and go through the entire range of brightness (low) and contrast (high) and see what happens.

From here you want to then look at each color space possible from your player. (4:2:2, 4:4:4 and RGB). You may need to re-adjust the picture controls above as you change color spaces. The most common mistake is not adjusting for each color space. This results in people assuming one color space has better blacks or more saturated colors, when in fact it is just not calibrated.

sspears,
Can you explain just how many levels should be visible in each square in the clipping levels screen?

If you are talking about the pattern called clipping, then all of them.

I know people are using this pattern to set contrast, that was not its original intention. It was designed to show the bug in the Silicon Image HDMI transmitter/recievers. The way the pattern works is like this:

1. If white is clipped and RGB is not, this is the HDMI bug. This works because the white values are above 235 in Y. The RGBs will not clip because they are all within 16-235 in Y'CbCr. They only fall outside of 16-235 when converted to RGB.
2. If the RGB are clipped and white is not, this is often caused by:
-a. Color set incorrectly. usually too high.
-b. Could also be caused by RGB gain controls being set too high.
3. If they are all clipped, it can be caused by contrast set too high or conversion to PC levels. e.g. 16-235 is expanded to 0-255.
4. If green is clipped, but white, red and blue are not, this is usually caused by incorrectly using the 601 matrix instead of the 709 matrix when converting to RGB. Here is an example of that:

I found the clipping pattern to be most useful. In my case everything looked good except for red. Lowering the contrast 2 notches made a significant improvement. Adjusting contrast while looking at the contrast pattern wasn't as useful but I did end up bouncing back and forth between the two patterns and found the best setting. I have tried many different "calibration" disks (a better name for some of these would be adjustment DVD's but I digress) and your's is by far the most useful. Well done!

PS: Your clipping pattern shows my monitor is clipping green. I guess I'll have to profile that now......

Its hard to tell if that is sarcasm or not. You do have the . The pattern displayed does have green clipped. This was to show the 601 CSC example.

I bounce back and fourth between clipping and contrast too. I start with contrast and find the top end for white. Then I look at clipping and ensure that all colors are visible. This defines the upper limit of where I set contrast. Then I go back to contrast and go through the range, below my upper limit, and look for the smoothest gradient on the ramp. Sometimes it is lower and sometimes it is not.

What I meant was how many concentric squares should appear within each large square if things are set correctly?

I know that when I adjust the gamma settings on my TV, that I can get 2 to 3 showing up. Just wanted to know what we're looking for as a goal.

Starting with the outer most square, there are six.

Thanks!

Here is a tip. If you are using a DVDO VP50 or 50Pro, you need to set contrast to -1 in the DVDO. Its levels are not correct by default, which causes two of the squares to blend on the red and blue. This shores it up. I have a Duo, but have not looked at this pattern through it yet.

sspears,

Where can I found information on who use the Silicon Image HDMI transmitter/recievers?

That bug could be a different place is it? Blu-ray player, receiver, projector?

Anyway around it?

It was an older version of their receiver. MANY products use them. After a while, companies stopped using the color conversion feature of the part becuase of this. Example, DVDO VP50/50Pro uses the part, but they perform their own color conversion, so they never had the problem.

The Toshiba HD DVD players all used the part. As long as you send 422 out, you avoid it. The problem occurs when converting 422 to 444. This is the stage the clipping occurs at.

The HDMI problem only clips white and leaves RGB alone.

Hi Stacey, When it comes to setting the contrast to -1 on the VP50pro I assume you mean the Input adjustment side of the VP50pro ?

Thanks for pointing this out BTW ...

Cheers

Yes, input adjust. Its the only picture control I use. The rest are done on the display side.

On the VP50, you also need to set sharpness to -1 to turn it off. The VP50Pro does not require this.

Thanks Stacey..

Cheers...

I just checked the DVDO Duo and it also requires that contrast be set to -1. If you use the clipping pattern, what you will see at 0 are two squares almost the same level in red and blue. When you set to -1, they become distinct squares.

Interesting fined Stacey,
I would of thought DVDO would of been aware of the Default contrast setting issue by now and rectified it with the release of the later Generation DVDO VP's EDGE and DUO..

Cheers...