Quote:
Originally Posted by
sperron 
I don't have the software, expertise or desire to take such shots myself.
In the end what actually matters is what appears in the material you intend to watch. In that respect my take is to just skip what anyone has to say and to simply look at what actually comes on commercial disks. I find the above-white discussion interesting, but I simply haven't cared to actually check and see what appears in typical video material myself. On a windows PC it can be somewhat simple to do for DVD:
1 - First you need to be able to check levels and screen capture. The easiest way to check levels is to use the Colorcop program. This will display the RGB of the on-screen color. Screen capturing can be done by simply pressing printsceen in windows, and then you can paste the captured image into a paint program. Paint.net is an example of a free program that has a dropper tool to look at a selected color's RGB values similar to Colorcop.
2 - Make sure that you're using video levels with the patterns linked at
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post14044357 All the levels should show up. You can use either program listed in #1 to also check RGB levels. If the computer is expanding levels then bars will be missing from the pattern or the RGB will not match what's indicated on the patterns. I think the default behavior of Windows Media Player is unexpanded video levels, but I've used so many players that I couldn't say for sure without rechecking.
3 - Use a calibration disk such as DVE or Getgray to check colors. For example 100% colors should show the relevant color(s) around 235 and the other(s) around 16. For example for a 100% red pattern then R would be 235 and G & B around 16, but with rounding errors a number higher or lower is somewhat common. Again I think WMP does a decent job at displaying the correct levels, but it's been a while since I've done this sort of thing myself.
4 - Once you have verified that you're using video levels (#2) and colors are displayed as expected (#3), then simply play a DVD with the same program. You can press print screen, paste into a paint program, and save. At this point you can use the programs from #1 to check how much information appears over 235.