Viewsonic Pro8200 Calibrations

Started this thread for calibrating the Viewsonic Pro8200.
Farthest Throw Native On/Off 2,304:1

Native On/Off maxes out around 2000:1 to 2500:1 at best case, but generally is in the ranges of 1500:1 to 2000:1 in most peoples' setups.
 

FACTORY DEFAULTS - PRE-CALIBRATION MEASUREMENTS (2600 Hours on Lamp, only changed saturation, brightness, and contrast)

By looking at the PRE-CALIBRATION charts above, we can see by default that the image is too cool but the reason it is has gotten this cool is because of my LAMP wear (2600 hours on a lamp is a lot different than a new lamp). However, it's not as bad as the graphs make it appear to be. Too cool of an image is easily the most bearable compared to say too warm. Furthermore, the gamut is not bad at all, because the three primary colors (Red, Green, Blue) are very close by default. The secondaries (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) are a bit farther off. The white point error is off because the gray-scale is off. The default GAMMA is still impressive, even with 2600 hours on the lamp, the Gamma Preset 1 measures almost exactly 2.22, with a slight bump up between 70-95 IRE (which many would argue is beneficial anyhow). Only Magenta and Cyan are off enough on the Gamut to really worry about calibrating the gamut (well yellow as well a tiny bit). Even though the image is too cool, it still doesn't look bad at all in the default mode overall when watching it (given that the luminance, gamma, and gamut is pretty good, though gray-scale is too blue).

 

Now let's look at the POST-CALIBRATION (editing, adding in one sec)...

Pretty Close to Perfect even after 2600 hours on the lamp. Post-calibration the gamma has a couple bumps in it, but as long as it does not drop below 2.1 (which it does not), then it is fine. Keep in mind these charts are showing only TINY errors overall because the range of error it shows is very small. Some of you may need to calibrate to an image with a bit more blue in it to overcome Red/Green. I took my time with this one and the GAMUT is really good (most colors are perfect).

Edited by coderguy - 10/6/12 at 7:14am

For the lurkers, check out BSE's calibration as his may work better given he has a newer lamp.
Just whichever one looks best is the one I'd use.

BSE's Calibration # 1
Brightness 39 / Contrast 41 / Saturation 40 / Sharpness 5

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post21567922

The CMS does work very well, but it's not going to be fun. There are 2 bugs in the CMS, both have workarounds, but the workarounds are tedious. Keep in mind that I have the earliest firmware so I cannot say if these 2 bugs exist in all firmware.

CMS BUG # 1 = Locked State, changing Hue/Sat/Gain suddenly has no affect, WORKAROUND = play around with the three back in forth or go to another part of the menu and change modes then come back

CMS BUG # 2 = Changing Sat often has too large a affect on Hue or Gain, and vice versa, WORKAROUND = Try many combos of changes and take tons of measurements, it is maddening, but it does eventually work

The VERY GOOD NEWS:
The CMS works fine but it is just hard to use. Standard Mode calibrates the best, by setting Gamma to 1, you are literally getting a perfect gamma curve, right at 2.2 up until 70 IRE then it bumps, which is what it should do for a projector at this contrast level.

OK just watched the DVE demo content after calibrating, it definitely looks far better than the default modes, but it could still be improved by quite a bit.

Anyhow, will post again another day, all worn out after this maddening CMS.

Measuring on my old meter, my projector is a bit off from BSE's settings since I have more hours on the lamp. The color temp was about 6900k so not too bad, but the DE's were all over 10 for the most part. The CIE chart still looked the same pretty much.

Now that I look at Dark Room mode, it may actually calibrate better than User Mode 1, not sure. Will calibrate it later and keep these two modes going and see. I think the CMS settings / CIE doesn't drift very much or vary much between projectors, but the gray-scale likely does.

After viewing both settings, I think it is better to make minimal changes to the CMS, because I am thinking the original WIDE GAMUT looked better than the NARROW one I created, hard to say for sure though.

The narrow gamut I calibrated to is technically closer to Rec 709, but I don't think it's better.

The tools Viewsonic gives us are actually fairly complete if they all worked perfectly, except for there are NO custom gamma adjustments. Dark Theater mode might have issues with trying to get flat gamma, not sure.

The main issue is the CMS is "skippy" and "buggy", do you have the CMS bugs in your firmware version as well?

Like I noticed the saturation control often peaks out at 127, when you go to 128 there is no change, I can increase saturation from 127 to 200 and it does generally nothing, then when I go back to 127 again all of a sudden resets. There are bugs like this that make it basically impossible for me to fix the green. However, I think I can get all the other controls in-line, and I can probably try to set the green over the gamut to be a bit wide.

SD from TV looks bad on every projector even if using expensive $5000 video processor upscaling, there just isn't enough resolution in the original image to watch it blown up like that. Some DVD's look ok up-scaled, but not great.

I haven't used the projector's scaling functionalities, but all projectors have some upconverting abilities, how good they are at it is another story however.

The eye one can take 5 seconds or so to get a reading in HCFR, with blue it will probably have the most trouble or take even longer. But yah, you can see by eye if 127 to 200 looks the same the bug is there.

BTW sometimes it lets me go to 140 on saturation but other controls will freeze up so I'll have to revert it all. Definitely makes for a hard calibration, Luckily the gray scale is easy to calibrate, only the gamut is hard.

Sharpness should generally be set to 5-8 regardless of the calibration, although there is no law that says you can't use 10-15, but there is some harshness and ringing at those settings. I sometimes use 6-10 in HTPC, but rarely ever go above that. It is more of a personal preference. I still need to figure out how to control the gamma better since there are no gamma controls like my JVC has.

Edited by coderguy - 8/10/12 at 8:29pm

Just change Gamma to how it looks best.
Try 0-1-2-3 while watching a few various shots (dark, almost bright, bright), this will depend on how bright your room is.

Saturation anywhere to around 37-45 I think, more of a personal preference really. 37-42 is probably closest to a true calibrated image, but depends on everyone's drift on their projector.
Brightness and contrast, you need to set those with a pluge pattern, generally keep brightness 5 lower than contrast for the most contrasty image (45/50, 40/45).

With the Viewsonic this is a trade-off, you will get some loss in detail by doing this, but you do get better contrast. These settings also depend on your bluray player or PS3 or other sources that you are using. You really need to use a PLUGE pattern to set contrast and brightness. I will try to explain this more later on, and show you where to get the simple patterns.

Edited by coderguy - 8/10/12 at 8:29pm

I updated the calibration at the top here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8#post21564628

After measuring with the new certified meter, I would say only Standard mode is worth calibrating due to the flatter GAMMA and easier to get a flat luminance. Really luminance and gamma are more important on this projector than the slight variances in the color gamut / CIE chart.

If you look at my calibration, it's almost perfect, a tiny bit of green error in the gray-scale, but the other stuff is so spot-on that this gray-scale error is miniscule.

On a new lamp, I think you would probably need to try something closer to the reviewer's settings: Red 60, Green, 50, Blue 40 would probably get you semi-close since some reviewers measured on a new lamp, but maybe too much RED still. You could also try BSE's settings and use those for STD mode (55/38/28) or thereabouts. You could also try dropping the RED GAIN in the custom CMS down to around 60 or lower and changing the hue to 10 or so, that should help with the initial RED tint on skin tones. I also think when not calibrating with equipment, running a COOLER rather than WARMER image is your best bet as it hides some of the gray-scale error to your eyes (more blue and less red in otherwords).

I would say you REALLY should go buy an eye-one LT for $120 if you can budget it, there is free HCFR software you can download and it's very simple to use, not complicated at all. Calibrating is not really as hard as it looks, all those funny looking numbers mean are just deviations from the norm, you don't need to know them all, you just follow software and get things flat by moving controls around (that's all basic calibrating is). Anyone can do it to be honest, it doesn't take much. The old meter was off quite a bit, but it still ahd the luminance right and the color gamut was fairly close, mainly it had just drifted on the gray-scale with a BLUE error (but blue is the best error to have out of the three). So I'd say even though the old meter had a significant blue error, it was still far better than not having a meter.

I don't have any special formulas, all lamps will vary. Remember that at least in the older firmware like I have, when moving the 3 color controls (Red, Green, Blue), they often work backwards except blue I think. Lowering red is actually increasing RED, and raising RED is decreasing it (bug). Blue works as it should, lowering blue decreases, and raising increases.

The color gamut error is probably the same or similar, just use my CMS settings and then use your own R/G/B settings. Standard mode should look fine even on a new lamp, but you may need to lower both brightness and contrast down more to compensate for it being too bright. Also try a gamma of 2 maybe or even 3 if it is still too bright. I don't know.