Avia (DVD), Avia II (DVD), Digital Video Essentials (Blu-Ray, Or AVCHD (Flash Drive)?

You will likely learn the most by acquiring both 'DVE: HD Basics' on BD and 'Avia II' on DVD. They both have a lot more to learn from than just video test patterns. Spending repeated sessions working through both programs will build your scope of home entertainment technologies substantially.


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CinemaQuest, Inc.

A Lion AV Consultants Affiliate


"Advancing the art and science of electronic imaging"



Quote:
Originally Posted by GeorgeAB /forum/post/15393609


You will likely learn the most by acquiring both 'DVE: HD Basics' on BD and 'Avia II' on DVD. They both have a lot more to learn from than just video test patterns. Spending repeated sessions working through both programs will build your scope of home entertainment technologies substantially.

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Probably not a bad idea. I'm always eager to learn more about Home Theater. Might help with my video production stuff to (college kid, that's my major ) So you're saying you would recommend Avia II over Avia right?


I would assume I should use DVE for PS3 games/Blu-Ray playback calibration and I'd use Avia for DVD playback calibration. What should I use for 360 games though? They're HD so I would assume an SD calibration disc would not be ideal so perhaps AVCHD?

*Is it AVCHD or AVSHD? It's written both ways in the thread for it. AVSHD makes more sense but I'm not sure.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rolls-Royce /forum/post/15393669


Actually, there isn't an "HDMI" color range. The "DVE: HD Basics" is encoded in the HD (REC 701) colorspace, while the original AVIA is SD material encoded in the REC601 colorspace. HDMI can transmit both, but its up to the player/display combo to make sure everything is displayed properly.

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When I said HDMI full color range I meant RGB 0-255 as opposed to RGB 15-235 (RGB limited). Maybe it's the same thing, maybe I'm rambling about things I don't know enough about



Quote:
Originally Posted by PvtChurch /forum/post/15393101


Ok I'm looking to calibrate a PS3 and a 360 for game and movie playback on a Sharp Aquos. The PS3 will be used for PS3 games, Blu-Ray movies, and DVDs. The 360 will be used for games and SD Netflix streams. Which disc should I calibrate with? I assume since DVE is on a Blu Disc it will output the full HDMI color range whereas the Avia discs won't right? However if I use DVE I can only calibrate on the PS3 and I then must simply assume those settings will play nice with the 360 as well. If I do go with Avia should I use Avia or Avia II? I would assume Avia is the superior disc being 9 years newer but I've heard some fairly negative things.


Of course my other option is the free AVCHD. Is it possible to download the MP4 file and play it off a memory stick? If not would I just be better off burning AVCHD to a DVD and using that in both? Maybe I should use DVE in the PS3 and AVCHD on a DVD in the 360?


I apologize for the above, it's probably very confusing. I generally am. I'd just like to find the ideal way to calibrate my TV since up to this point I've just been using the THX Optimizer and I feel I can be doing better.

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Another option is to get Digital Video Essentials on Blu-ray and fine tune everything to look good for Blu-ray movies. Then make your own STANDARD DEF DVD (not the HD version, not sure if anybody has a link to an SD-DVD make-your-own test disc). Go through all the material on DVE, setup for HD and have a look at everything with an SD disc. If you can't find a standard def make-your-own DVD, you can use the THX Optimizer that appears on a number of DVDs. So you don't HAVE to buy an SD Test Disc. If you are calibrating with an instrument/meter and you have 2 separate memories that will hold separate settings for HD and SD then you get more out of a setup DVD (SD) that has true SMPTE-C color.


AVIA II is a good disc for SD... however, it can be a little tricky to use because it's patterns are all IRE and not % of White.


When % of white is used, digital 16 is 0% white (black) and 235 is 100% white. This tends to make things easier for beginners.


With Avia II, 0% white is encoded as 7.5 IRE... which makes 0 IRE = to digital video 0 (PC video or full range RGB uses digital values from 0-255 or 1-256 to get 256 steps). This isn't as difficult as it sounds, but it can take a few minutes to get a handle on it the first time. Life would be easier if IRE would just disappear as it doesn't apply to digital displays like it did to analog displays - % White and digital values are what really makes the most sense for digital displays. Anyway... this means people can get confused about what they are looking at with AVIA II - you display a window pattern labeled 7.5 IRE (and AVIA II makes this even more obtuse by labeling this pattern 075 IRE or somthing like that) and you don't see anything so you crank brightness up so there's a visible gray window in the center... that would be wrong. 7.5 IRE on the AVIA II disc should be just as black as the surrounding black border. If you display a 10 IRE window, that should not be an obvious shade of dark gray like 10% white... 10 IRE is equivalent to ~2.5% white so a 10 IRE AVIA II window should have a just-barely-visible above-black level.


Personally, I think your SD setup with THX Optimizer is "good enough" - learning more about your HD digital display is worth getting Digital Video Essentials on Blu-ray.


Finally - the Game Industry is all over the map for color. They all have their own take on color. Since few are seriously trying to replicate the real world, it doesn't really matter much if you aren't recalibrating for each game -- they don't provide you with references anyway so anything you do would just be a guess anyway. So setup the PS3 with DVE and setup the XBox with the THX Optimizer and just forget about doing anything special for Games - they will look reasonably OK with the same settings you use for movies. Some TVs have "Game" modes, but those hype everything too much to suit me - YMMV.


You'll only get so far with test/setup discs and what you are doing with them really isn't calibration, per se. You are just using them to try to make the basic user menu control settings reasonably OK - expecting more is expecting too much. It really takes instrumentation and calibration software to get video displays to the next level. A lot of TVs have TERRIBLE out-of-box settings... if you rate the image a "1" out of box, you might get to 5-7 with a test/setup disc. But this will still leave a lot of room for improvement to get to the "10" calibrated state (which means the best any given display can be - you can't make every display perfect, most don't have enough controls to do that).



Quote:
Originally Posted by PvtChurch /forum/post/15402192


Wow, thanks guys this is all a really big help. I think what I'm going to do is buy DVE-Basic on Blu-Ray to get my Blu-Ray movies and games looking as good as I can get them at the moment. Just for the fun of it I'll grab AVCHD as well and play around with that. I'll stick with the THX optimizer for SD content for now as it seems to do an acceptable job. Then down the line I'll pick up Avia II and learn what I can from that while possibly using it for further tweaking.


My new question: As I'll undoubtedly get much more into this in due time I'll probably start playing with calibration equipment and messing around in the service menu so is there a good disc that can teach me about more advanced stuff like that?


Also whatever happened to the Blu-Ray version of Avia II? I recall hearing about it last Spring and it was supposedly due out in 2008 but I haven't heard anything since then and can't find it anywhere.

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Unless you take a calibration training course, there's not much to learn from beyond the Calibration For Dummies thread here. Not even the 2-day ISF course is adequate for you to really understand calibration though. I'm just guessing that it probably takes a good 100 hours or more of study for a reasonably bright person with no real knowledge of calibration other than what they may have read in magazine reviews, etc., to get to where they understand SOME of the concepts and practices of calibration with an instrument and software. The 100 hours will be a combination of reading/studing and experimenting on your own TV/TVs. This might be very conservative as I've been doing calibrations as far back as the 1970s and it's hard to remember what it was like not knowing anything about calibration at all.


From comments made by Joe Kane in appearances on the Home Theater Cruise... and from comments made by THX... both of whom have made or tried to have made, a Blu-ray disc with reference patterns... having a custom Blu-ray disc made without anything on it being messed up is damn near impossible. They make you a disc, you check your disc and everything seems to be OK, but then you find problems with a handfull of test patterns - or the disc works on 10 disc players but not the PS3. So you try again... some of the problems are fixed, but some problems remain. Worse, half a dozen new problems pop up that didn't exist on the first disc. Last I heard, THX gave up trying to have a Blu-ray disc made that didn't have problems.

Great thread, helped me a lot too!