CalMan 5 Release Notes and Discussion - Page 16

So I can raise these values in my display, but I cannot raise these values in the Duo...is that what you're saying? That just doesn't sound right at all.

If the internal default Lightness setting for a particular color is set low in the service menu for example, I should still be able to and can raise the lightness of that particular color with the CMS lightness control since the display is capable of handling it. In fact, even if I leave the display alone, I should still be able to raise the Lightness setting in the Duo

I can work this exactly the way I want in ChromaPure and get a perfectly artifact free image with a flat grayscale from 10%-100% IRE with a gamma of 2.22, and with RGBCYM all calibrated with a DeltaE error of under 1.0 for each, all while leaving my display grayscale and CMS controls at their default 0 settings, only adjusting display's Contrast and Brightness with a Pluge pattern, and calibrating only with the Duo's grayscale and CMS controls.

In ChromaPure, I have a choice in how I want the CMS to be controlled by either HSL or xyY, or whatever. When working with the Duo, I use the xyY setting in ChromaPure, and then use the AVS user created DVDO iScan Duo Control program to change the values in the Duo to perform the calibration. I have to use the AVSHD disk to provide the patterns, which I play with my OPPO BDP-93 which I have set to Source Direct mode so it bypasses any of the player's internal image processing and passes the digital information directly from the Blu-ray disk to the Duo. This works great and allows me to easily calibrate my system and I have been pleased with the results.

My interest in CalMan had to do with CalMan's ability to use the pattern generator in the Duo to create the patterns I need to calibrate my system that ChromaPure simply isn't capable of doing with the Duo. Full field patterns for both grayscale and color, and color patterns of various saturation levels. I was also interested in CalMan's DDC controls that allow me to control my Duo from my computer without having to resort to a remote or any other external program.

If I can duplicate or even improve on the results I get in ChromaPure by using CalMan, I would be absolutely delighted.

Are you telling me that it is not possible for me to accomplish what I want using CalMan because of a limitation in how the DDC controls are implemented? Honestly, this makes no sense to me.

Yes there is. I replied the same to the post at the SpectraCal forum.[/quote]

you are misunderstading me, I want the prompt, just not when its asking for the same pattern

Yes that is something we intend on adding with prompt's enabled but not for the repeat of the same pattern.
Edited by derekjsmith - 10/27/12 at 1:11pm

Not impossible just not the way it was originally intended to work. The AutoCal code including the DDC controls were designed around making HSL adjustments at 100%. But now that we also support other luminance and saturation levels we just need to rework some of the DDC code to allow for headroom when not at 100%.

That would be a welcome adjustment for me. As you are no doubt aware, some displays do not calibrate well at 100% Saturation, and Epsons like mine fall in that category. If you calibrate the color gamut using 100% Sat. values, then then projected images look washed out since 75% Saturation levels and below are well below where they should be. Calibrating at 75% oversaturates at 100%, but under normal viewing conditions, this is not an issue at all, and everything looks MUCH better.

As I mentioned earlier, the Epson CMS controls for each of RGBCYM go from -64 to +64, and the default pre-calibration values are all set to 0. I think if the DDC reflected this by having Saturation and Lightness controls default to 50% like the Hue control does, it would be exactly what I need.

Perhaps it could be an available option for the DDC controls. The default could be as it is now (H=50, S=100, L=100), but a workflow option could allow for users like myself to change this to H=50, S=50, L=50.

BTW, the grayscale Auto-Cal works great. I still went in afterwards and did some minor tweaking with the DDC, but it worked quite well overall, and was very fast. Now if I could Auto Cal the color gamut at 75% Saturation, that would be terrific. Even so, I would have no problem with doing it manually if the DDC controls worked the way I wanted.

Had the same problem with my LCD Panel where I know it calibrates better at 75% saturation patterns.

I'm sure our particular problem will be addressed soon but until then I use the x,y adjusters of the Duo to get final tweaking accuracy or to use if 100 upper limit reached on either saturation or luminance..

Don't have to remember which way saturation or hue is, just x for horizontal and y for vertical movement of the round bit into the square box on all colours.

The associated HSL bar charts are great for getting colours somewhere near via DDC before 'tweaking'.

Did you see sotti's response?

The first time I used v4 I got some pretty wild fluctuations. I rolled back to v3 because it seemed more stable and I was in a rush. Lately I've tried v4 and now v5 with better results. There is still some fluctuation but it appears to be within spec of the hardware (3-year old Chroma 5 colorimeter with CRT & Plasma displays).
Edited by AVfile - 10/30/12 at 11:09am

Just bought a Calman basic package with i1 colorimeter.

I have always used the cal disks like DVE for calibration. Is it a good idea to attend their calibration 101 webinar?

Any other suggestions on getting information and understanding this advanced calibration procedure before I give it a try on my Samsung PN60E6500EF Plasma?

Sv: CalMan 5 Release Notes and Discussion

Here is some good info..
http://store.spectracal.com/support/knowledge/information-base.html
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10457
Cheers!/H

GT-i9300 CM10

Hi al210, the best advice I can give you is for you to attend the webinar. Depending on your knowledge base I would recommend that you read the instructions guide first. found here ----> http://store.spectracal.com/support.html Look for the calman.help.1 & calman.help.2 and just download them.

It is a bit of a steep learning curve, but in time, with lots of reading and practise you will get the hang of it. Also, I believe Calman basic has the tutorials....go through those as many times as possible until you have a good grasp of all the individual calibration steps and what you are trying to achieve in each step.
Last I recommend downloading the AVS 709 HD patterns disk. It has patterns to be used with Calman & a video "how to" section. I found this disk in conjunction with Spears & Munsil disk very useful. http://www.spearsandmunsil.com/

Paul

Thanks, I'm signed up for the webinar for tomorrow Nov 1. I'll go through those instructions and tutorials tonight.
I just reviewed the information from "hrc4u" who liked me to http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10457
Even though that was different software than Calman it explained very well about gray scale calibration and gamma. I have a better understanding of this now.

How did the webinar go? What did you think of it?

Do media center software suites like TMT5, WinDVD, and PowerDVD12 support the Cal PC Client? I'm running TMT5 trial and when I load it up, windows (7 Home Premium) lets me know the software is no longer running Windows Gamut. Does this mean Cal PC Client calibration is not being used for video playback?




Edited by anikun07 - 11/5/12 at 6:14pm

No that just means that Aero got turned off. The client 1D LUTs are still working.

Thanks Joel, I added the window when I click the balloon. I'm posting some pictures I took between my Sony S580 and PC, with a higher gamma the picture should be darker right? I thought the pictures I took of the BDP playback were darker than those of the PC, but I may have mistaken which pictures were from which source.

The webinar was done very well. I think it's more beneficial for those that have no experience at all. I did pickup on a few things and am glad I didn't pay for it. It's not for those with an intermediate or higher knowledge level.

Thanks Al, I'm looking forward to signing up for it. I just need to schedule a time that will work. I've become fairly familiar with the process and software but definitely don't know all the ins and outs.

I did a check by manually doing a 10 pt white balance reading with my AVS Disc and my gamma returned a result of 2.14. That's what my TV produces, so I think I'm not saving my auto cal results. Is there something special I need to do, it seems to reset with I restart. I thought pressing the "Save Profile" under the "Hardware" tab of PC Client would save it.

Nevermind. I forgot to switch the color space to 0-255. That's why my reading were coming back low. When I turned off PC Client my gamma was 2.14 and when I re-enabled it gamma went down to 2.08; all in the 16-235 range. Changing to 0-255 boosted it back up to 2.28/2.29. So would it be better to auto cal to 16-235 for home video playback (DVD/BD) and keep another profile for 0-255 for other content? Or should I just increase target gamma further on the 0-255 so it matches a 2.28 gamma on a 16-235 reading?
Edited by anikun07 - 11/5/12 at 6:49pm

Are you interested in a webinar series for intermediate or higher knowledge levels? And if so, what are the topics you would be most interested in?

I would love to see a workflow that takes a quick baseline reading of a TV or PJ, performs calibration of the TV or PJ and then generates a report showing before and after readings graphically (in a way that a novice would understand). Also cater to the possibility of a session being interrupted and then resumed (ie. save then load data files).

I would leave using pattern generators and calibration of external video processors to a more advanced course.

If you are lucky enough to have equipment supporting AutoCal then there are videos on YouTube that show you how to push the button, so you can spare us that.

You don't feel the basic or advanced does this? Or do you mean something more automated? I felt the report generated in the HT version was a little lacking compared to the commercial version, but I just screenshot the pages and save them as jpegs.

Question for Joel...

When doing auto-cal for grayscale or CMS or LUT... if the very first measurement is below the dE threshold you set, why does CalMAN make more readings and sometimes end up with a higher dE for that step than the initial reading. I see this happen so often it really has me scratching my head.

Example:
- the dE "goal" is set to 2.0
- first reading for, say, 70% white has a dE of 0.5
- CalMAN then makes an adjustment, takes more readings, error goes higher, then comes down below 2 after several more readings and ends at dE=1.5.

Why the heck doesn't that first reading of dE=0.5 get interpreted as perfectly fine and CalMAN moves on to the next measurement without trying to improve the 0.5 measurement?

And following the same line... why doesn't CalMAN remember the settings from the 0.5 reading and when it can't get the dE any lower than 0.5, why doesn't CalMAN just return to the original settings that produced the 0.5 setting? (this isn't exactly the same question and this question would be moot if CalMAN doesn't take more measurements after the initial 0.5 dE in the previous question)

I haven't ever seen it end up with a much worse result, unless it simply times out at 10 retries.

We are always looking at improving AutoCal, I know we are digging through some AutoCal Stuff right now, so hopefully some stuff will show up right away in 5.0.4.

Further out we are constantly trying to refine AutoCal so hopefully we'll always be seeing new improvements in speed and features.

Does the PC Client support HTPC Autocal or is that exclusive to CalPC? Also, could you reiterate why we calibrate a PC in YCC 4:4:4 to 0-255 and not 16-235? Is it because the PC works in 0-255 but the output is automatically 16-235 so normalizes all PC RGB values and the the video card outputs it as 16-235?

You calibrate 0-255 in windows, because that's where windows content lives. The UI, browsers and video games will never know anything else, they all render full range 0-255. So you setup your software players so everything matches. Now all the content on the PC has uniform levels.

The setting on the video card (either YCC or RGB limited) to PC range output then means even though windows runs 0-255, it gets compressed on output to 16-235. So black goes on the wire at 16 and reference white goes on the wire at 235. So even though you calibrated 0-255, the end result is a 16-235 video signal that works the same as other video signals.

Yes at first I saw the same thing as you are describing, however I started to drop my dE threshold lower. I now use dE of .5 and don't have that problem anymore.

I should add that the problem may have been because by not setting the 2 point (30/100 IRE before I run the calibration). Of-course the lower you drop the threshold the longer Calman will take to complete.

ss

Also it depends on when you saw something, we have had 4 different releases of the CalMAN 5 core (5.0.0, 5.0.1, 5.0.2, and 5.0.3) every time there are some refinement for AutoCal and 5.0.4 has yet more tweaks.

I had the same experience any time i used AutoCAL for Grayscale using Target dE1976 @ Zero.

It took the first reading with 0.1dE and then it took another 2 readings staying at finally 0.8dE.

Doug, during Grayscale AutoCAL, open the DDC Window and check what is happening to another % of Gray during to your current measurement, It's more complicated than it actually seems. CalMAN is performing uniform corrections to another stimulus leves also during the GrayScale AutoCAL.

You can always use the manual mode using Lumagen Remote that i found it much much better but it needs a lot of extra time, with small visible difference.

We're always looking for ways to improve workflows. Can you please elaborate on what you mean by "report showing before and after readings graphically (in a way that a novice would understand)." Do you mean provide examples that show what is considered 'good' so a novice would have something to compare to, or are you talking about simplifying the data/charts further? Can you provide examples/samples, please?

I think this is a good idea. I've brought this up with the development team previously. However, the response I received from our team is "it's probably not a good idea to start a calibration session at one point in time and pick it back up at a later point in time." This makes total sense and I see why we don't do this, but I also see your point in that you want to exit or shut down your computer and come back to the calibration shortly after. I'll run this by the team again (or they can reply here) and see if their is an appropriate way to handle this.

Thank you for pointing this out. It's always difficult to decide what hardware to include when explaining how to calibrate. Of course, with a dedicated pattern generator and display/processor that supports DDC the calibration is easier, but not everyone has all of the parts. We should probably base our webinars on different skill levels and hardware (example, Skill: Basic, Hardware: Meter and Pattern Disc. Skill: Intermediate, Hardware: Meter and DPG-2000, etc.)

Good point. We'll try and filter out any obvious or easy steps that can be found online.

Thank you for your suggestions and feedback. If anything else comes up please send me a PM or post here.

iScan Duo and AutoCal:

After getting frustrated with AutoCal and GreyScale, cleared all the Duo's settings to Zero and did a Manual Calibration getting a lot better results and an almost Flat line at 0 by +/- 0.5. With AutoCal, 0 +/- 2.
May check into that lowering of the dE someone mentioned above.
Over on the Duo Forum, download the new Panel Program for the Duo: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1180042/new-dvdo-iscan-duo-2-0-firmware-released/3300 Posting #3321
May try to manipulate the Duo's settings this way to try and get rid of the Peaks and Valleys caused by the 1 click up, or one click down, when what you really need is a half click.

Have completely turned off the AutoCal now.
A complete Manual calibration of GreyScale and CMS gave better results as of last night.
Edited by p5browne - 11/7/12 at 9:20am

Will the next release of CalMan 5 allow for more headroom when manually calibrating at 75% Saturations with the Duo as we discussed earlier?