Recommended DVD calibration disk?

I use Avia.


I think DVE has a few more test images that are targeted at professional evaluators/calibrators. It's harder to navigate but not so awful that it's unusable.


From the standpoint of user level calibration of the DVD player / Display combo, the only such test I've found on DVE that I miss because it is not on Avia is a simple test for determining whether "Blacker than Black" data is being passed properly. For that I use the "THX" image in any of the commercial DVDs that include a "THX Optimizer" collection of tests.


Avia and DVE are more accurate for setting levels than any "THX Optimizer" that might be on any of your current movie DVDs. So I would not recommend using any such "optimizer" as a substitute for Avia or DVE.


As far as explanations go, I find the explanations on Avia are perfectly adequate for folks calibrating analog (CRT-based) displays, but really don't focus enough on the differences for folks calibrating digital displays such as plasmas or when using digital video connections such as HDMI. The key differences being what to look for when setting white levels and sharpness. However there are plenty of threads here that talk about how to use Avia for plasmas.

--Bob

jhanson,

Those extra controls exist on other types of TVs as well. That's not the "difference" for using such DVDs with plasmas. Calibration DVDs intended for normal users don't go into dealing with those other controls (such as gamma) a lot because (1) they are difficult to explain, and (2) you can easily get into trouble tweaking those without a measurement device to double check what you are doing. That's why some TVs hide those extra controls away in "service" menus.


Here's an example of the type of difference I'm talking about: When setting white levels with the Contrast control you generally want to crank up Contrast so that whites don't look gray. However you don't want to crank it up so far that you lose white details. The narration on Avia concentrates on the specific symptoms that will show up in a CRT-based display when you are overdriving the whites -- blooming or spreading of the beam which cause fuzzy smeared areas in bright whites and inadequate power supplies which cause geometry problems in the image when high white levels are displayed. Checking for the first signs of such problems will enable you to set an upper limit on how you might set Contrast. Plasmas, however, are not subject to either such problem and so you'll never see what Avia is telling you to look for. With plasmas the thing you want to watch out for as an upper limit on Contrast is "thresholding" or loss of the ability to distinguish near white from pure white. The Avia narration makes only a brief mention of how to use the moving off-white bars to check for that.


If you really want to try tweaking the more exotic controls, you should first gain experience with how the image can be improved or damaged using the regular controls -- i.e., train your eye to know what a properly calibrated image looks like using the regular controls. Then do some studying as to what those other controls actually do.


Ovation, publishers of Avia, also publish a much more expensive version called Avia Pro which is targeted at professional calibrators. It comes with a thick manual of explanations. There's a thread in the Power Buys forum which includes some excerpts from that manual if you'd like to get a feel for the complexity of that sort of stuff.


But most home calibrators are not going to feel comfortable futzing with things like Gamma levels.

--Bob

No. It's much more likely you didn't understand the best way to use the Video Essentials test patterns. Even basic user level calibration takes some practice and plasmas are more finicky than conventional TVs -- more likely to look bad if the settings are incorrect.


For example, setting white levels and black levels can not be done independently. They effect each other. You need to cycle several times to hone in on a sweet spot setting that works for both of them.


In addition, you need to be careful to turn off "features" on your display *OR* your DVD player that will fight you during calibration. "Features" that automatically adjust colors (particularly flesh tones) or light levels according to what is being displayed are the worst offenders here.


Finally, there is no such thing as one, proper calibrated level. Changing source devices, changing outputs/inputs used by a given source device, even changing apparently unrelated settings such as resolution may require adjustments to the calibrated levels.

--Bob