Disney WOW Calibration And Clipping

Not sure since I do not have that disk, but I would have just bypassed the receiver and run the disk. Once complete put the receiver bad in. The contrast and brightness will be set correctly and you will see the levels that the receiver pass. I am sure I will stand corrected if this is not the proper method.

As Doug mentioned, you should calibrate with it connected straight to the display, then run it through the receiver and look at the patterns again to verify. It should look the same (though I don't know the WOW patterns that well) as the patterns should have had you hide the WTW and BTB information, so you won't notice it's missing. If it looks very different, then I'd calibrate going through the receiver since that's how you'll be using the system.

That sucks! Sounds like you got things as good as can be considering.
Not sure how many inputs you have but you could put an HDMI matrix in with HDMI out going to your displays and your receive to eliminate the problem and not replace the receiver. A little clunky but a lot less than a new receiver.

Blacker-than-black is inconsequential. You won't see any difference at all with or without it.

Whiter-than-white... these levels show up in spectral highlights... reflections off chrome, sparkles from a chandelier, reflections off of water... those sorts of things. There's no real "detail" lost by having whiter-than-white clipped. You don't lose resolution or detail that has any real meaning. It's NICE to have whiter-than-white information, but it's not the end of the world if video is clipped at 235 but you definitely don't want to lose steps below 235, that really does get problematic.

The reason that it clips and or curshes is that you are going through a Yamaha receiver. Yamahas are known for doing this. The easy workaround would be just run the HDMI straight to your display. Although you aren't getting the "most accurate" setting because you are eliminating the receiver from the equation, you are getting relatively close

J

ISF Cerftified Calibrator
Austin, TX
"Video without audio is just surveillance"

The newer Yamahas (last 3 years) don't do this and some of the older ones had firmware updates that corrected it. That is an older model and doesn't have a firmware update for it.

Remember, you don't need to be able to see whiter then white, and blacker then black to set contrast and black level...

It can be helpful, but adjusting these levels using the 1% visible stars works fine. If they disapear in the contrast pattern, contrast is too high and your clipping detail. Lower it down until its visible AND there is no discoloration. That's all there is too it.

I actually find it easier to adjust the ps3 when it has "super white" disabled... the Contrast pattern becomes useless with superwhite on, nothing will ever clip.

Regardless, a direct link to the tv, and sending the receiver unit a toslink cable (so it works passively) would be the best bet in this situation. Unless of course you are one of those loss less audio nuts.

Can you cite any examples for this? I've been searching for a while and have yet to find any commercial material that has information encoded above white, even specular highlights.


If anything, I would say it's actually preferable to clip above white information with videos if your source plays mixed content such as a PS3 which plays games & Blu-ray, if your display does not have separate options for calibrating RGB & YCC on the same input.

If you don't do that, you have to either compress the RGB levels (which has a noticeable impact on image quality) or video is going to look rather dull compared to other content.

I've seen Charles Poynton make a similar statement, but I haven't ran across any clear proof that such a comment is generally valid. Certainly some of the over the air broadcasts I looked at did exceed reference white, yet it was difficult to say if it was likely due to the encoding/decoding process. As far as DVD or Blu-ray go I haven't seen any mainstream material that clearly intends to exceed reference white near gray, and typically near-gray items that do exceed reference white don't clearly seem to result from actual encoded information. There was a report that two Blu-rays exceed reference white at the following link, but I didn't care to rent either movie just to check video information.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5#post20519945


I only use my Xbox for games, so I have it set to full-range, but honestly I can't say that in a blind test I'd be able to differentiate between full-range and typical video levels for games.

I made a trip up to visit Stacey Spears last year, and he was showing examples of content that had information encoded that was above the 235 level for video. I can't recall exact titles that had it (I believe Dreamgirls might have been in there actually), but there were a lot of titles shown that did. We were more concerned with making sure to test that Blu-ray players handle this content correctly instead of clipping it than the exact titles that had it, however.

Yes, I have read this as well...in several threads on several forums.

When you are ready to upgrade or change, I recommend looking at these:


Denon AVR-1913 - - (Best sounding Receiver in the line if you do NOT need RS232 Control)

Denon AVR-2112CI - (Best sounding Receiver in the line if you DO need RS232 Control)

Denon AVR-1312 - (Just picked up a few on Amazon for $139.95. Cannot beat this Reciever for the money. I am keeping them in stock at this price for friends & family.)

True...which is why my HD Panels are typically calibrated to take advantage of whatever dynamic range they have to offer. Typically, I find setting the HD Panel to 241 to 242 works best.

I have found this to be the case on my LCDs and Plasma. As long as there is no clipping below 235 or discoloration, I am fine with using the highest contrast setting that doesn't violate those two conditions. In a perfect world, I would set contrast to show white all the way to 254; however, on displays like my IPS panel LG CCFL-LCD, I want to hold on to every last bit of contrast my flat-panel has.
Edited by PlasmaPZ80U - 7/1/12 at 4:26pm

FWIW, I don't think that being able to see the above-reference values (235-254) is absolutely essential to enjoy a movie, but every disc we've ever looked at has had above-reference values in RGB, though for some of them it was just a few stray values here and there. Not all of them have had above-reference Y, Cb, or Cr, though many do. For this reason, clipping in RGB is slightly less problematic than clipping in YCbCr.

It's very easy to generate a "legal" YCbCr triple that produces an RGB triple that's outside 16-235 in one or two channels. And while a lot of video is run through a "legalizer", not all of it is, and some legalizers are more aggressive than others. Some films are "legal" in YCbCr but have not been clipped at all in RGB. And even when clipping is applied during mastering it's pretty common to do a "soft clip" that allows for peaks above reference in small patches.

It's very rare for a film to have highly visible picture content in the above-reference range, where you'd really notice the difference between clipped and not clipped in an obvious way. But then a lot of tweaks we do as enthusiasts are designed to make very minor differences in the image. I've never quite understood someone who will tweak every last little bit of their system for maximum picture quality and then deliberately clip the above-reference material. On the other hand, if you can't get the above-reference to show on your system, it's not a reason to junk the system.

For me, it comes down to first principles: no director, cinematographer, or mastering technician looks at the movie on a monitor that clips above-reference material. No BVM clips above-reference. If you want your display to be as close as possible to the displays they use for mastering, you will try to retain the above-reference values.

Below-black is a more controversial. Pretty much all discs have some below-black pixels here and there. Whether it matters to the final image is a matter of intense debate. As with above-reference, it is easy to generate "legal" YCbCr triples that generate RGB values where one channel or another strays below black. And it's easy to show that the data encoded on discs does in fact undershoot in places in one channel or more. To be honest, for me the main reason to want below-black to be passed to the display is that it shows that the engineers cared about these issues enough to do the right thing. Clipping below-black seems sloppy to me. If they can't be bothered to pass all the data that's on the disc, what else did they get wrong?

Don
Edited by dmunsil - 7/15/12 at 10:18am

Hi,

I have a Benq W1070 projector. I am not able to see any stars with the contrast level settings from 0 to 100. What could be the problem.


thanks
iafpups

I have the same problem with benq 1070...

Using "PC signal" as HDMI setting to avoid clipping on the projector.

Using S&M calibration disc, I cannot see white above 234 with PS3.... Replacing PS3 by Oppo BDP-80, I only can see WTW with minimum contrast in Oppo AND benq!!!