HD Monitoring

[Stuart C]

Another poster mentioned that is essential when shooting HD to view the image on a HD monitor. I'm wondering why this is so ? Why can't you simply monitor in standard def?

 

thanks

[Charles Haine]

While I'm unsure what the original poster intended, I suspect it has a lot to do with the contrast range of the viewing medium.

 

When shooting film, what you monitor (or choose not to monitor) with matters very little to lighting, as you will be out there with your meter checking every light to get it right. In HD, the tendency is to light to the image on the monitor, and also to your vectorscope.

 

A Standard def monitor tends to have more contrast inherent to the image than an HD monitor: thus, if you light for an SD monitor, you will end up lowering the contrast of your lighting in the scene tremendously in order to get it to look "right" on the SD monitor, and then your image on your HD tape will be exceptionally flat (and will even look flat when played back from tape on SD).

 

The SD signal is just not designed to contain as much brightness variation as is contained in the HD signal. Of course, without an HD monitor, if you've tested the camera against a grey scale, you can get a sense of what it's film ASA equivalent and contrast ratio are, you can light with your meter, the way you would light film, and then use your SD monitor for framing.

 

 

chuck haine

[Stephen Williams]

Another poster mentioned that is essential when shooting HD to view the image on a HD monitor. I'm wondering why this is so ? Why can't you simply monitor in standard def?

 

thanks

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Hi,

 

You have to view the image as you intend to show it! In SD you will not be able to see the focus is sharp in HD.

 

Stephen

[Justin McInnes]

Hi,

 

For MPEG2 compression HDTV (such as the Sony HDV range) you can view your camera in HD on your computer/laptop via firewire. A laptop is a light way of monitoring your HD footage. You can view HD using VideoLAN, free download at www.videolan.org

 

Hope this helps!

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

If you are only interested in seeing framing, that is if you only want it to be as useful as a video tap is on film (with probably some extra information about exposure, depending on the downconvertor) - then yes, you coudl reasonably view it as SD, and if you wanted to send it to a lot of people around the set on handheld displays and to a dozen floor monitors, then you'd probably do that just for reference.

 

But clearly, if you want to make critical focus decisions, and be able to see the detail as it will eventually be seen, so you can pick out the bad shadows and the glitches in production design - then obviously you'll want to view it as HD.

 

Isn't this all fairly obvious?

 

Phil

[Michael Maier]

Hi,

 

For MPEG2 compression HDTV (such as the Sony HDV range) you can view your camera in HD on your computer/laptop via firewire. A laptop is a light way of monitoring your HD footage. You can view HD using VideoLAN, free download at www.videolan.org

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

How this videoLAN compares to HDVrack for monitoring HD (lighting, focus, color)?