EP030: Discussing Monitors Part 1

Episode 30
Duration 58:48

Guests
Bram Desmet - CEO - Flanders Scientific
Bram Desmet

http://www.flandersscientific.com

Nate McFarlin - Dolby
Nate McFarlin

http://www.dolby.com

David Abrams - Portrait Displays/Avical
David Abrams

http://www.portrait.com


Talking Monitors With Bram Desmet, Nate McFarlin & David Abrams

For our 30th episode we’re discussing that topic we always seem to revisit – monitoring! While we have some opinions on the state of reference and consumer monitors in 2025 we thought it’d be fun to celebrate our 30th episode with some good friends who also happen to be experts in their part of the monitoring ecosystem.

In Part 1 of a two-part series, we’re joined by Flander Scientific CEO Bram Desmet, Nate McFarlin from Dolby, and David Abrams from Portrait Displays/Avical.

We’ll discuss their areas of expertise with each of them a little bit – monitor manufacturing, display testing and validation, and calibration.

Specific topics explored in this episode include:

  • Staying on top of monitoring technologies
  • Choosing display technologies for a monitor product line
  • Determining what features make it into monitor software
  • Addressing different needs of different users e.g. DITs vs Colorists
  • How staying at the forefront of color science helps deliver the most accurate monitors possible
  • The role that an R&D company like Dolby plays in the monitor ecosystem
  • How monitor usability is just as important as performance
  • The complexity of monitor display technologies and how they can complicate monitor evaluation
  • Sometimes monitor evaluation brings with it things manufacturers don’t want to hear
  • Consumer monitors can be considerably harder to evaluate than professional monitors
  • What does Dolby Certification really mean for consumer TVs
  • When will we hit a point where HDR is standard & SDR is looked at in a similar way to HD or 4:3
  • Professional vs Consumer displays when it comes to calibration accuracy out of the box
  • Calibration is not a replacement for understanding & proper setup/use of a monitor
  • Exploring how calibration has become both easier and harder
  • How accurate is accurate enough and is the cost of reference calibration gear worth it
  • Just noticeable differences & degrees of accuracy with calibration
  • Drift and the frequency of recalibration

In part 2 we explore some monitoring topics provided by our listeners and ones that Joey and Robbie have been eager to discuss.

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-Robbie & Joey

Video
Links
Transcript

01:00:03:21 - 01:00:07:26
Hey there, and welcome back to another installment
of The Offset Podcast. And today,

01:00:08:01 - 01:00:12:05
we're taking a look at the state of
monitors in 2025. Stay tuned.

01:00:18:04 - 01:00:23:19
This podcast is sponsored by Flanders Scientific, leaders
in color accurate display solutions for

01:00:23:19 - 01:00:28:27
professional video. Whether you're a colorist, an
editor, a DIT, or a broadcast engineer,

01:00:29:06 - 01:00:33:00
Flanders Scientific has a professional display
solution to meet your needs.

01:00:33:10 - 01:00:35:21
Learn more at FlandersScientific.com.

01:00:36:23 - 01:00:41:04
Hey everybody, welcome back to another installment of
The Offset Podcast

01:00:41:04 - 01:00:44:12
I am Robbie Carman, and with me as always is Joey D'Anna.

01:00:44:12 - 01:00:45:14
Joey, how you doing buddy?

01:00:46:00 - 01:00:47:14
Good, how are you?

01:00:47:14 - 01:00:52:09
I am good, man. Spring is in the
air. I'm wearing pink. I'm feeling like

01:00:52:09 - 01:00:56:25
it's monitor season. Every spring, I sort of start
to feel like it's monitor season for a

01:00:56:27 - 01:01:00:19
couple of reasons. One, it's kind of like trade show
season, you know, so like everybody's going

01:01:00:19 - 01:01:05:08
to big trade shows and talking about monitors. And it
just seems like, you know, post the holidays

01:01:05:16 - 01:01:08:27
and you know, the start of a new year, everybody's
like, hey, what's my big purchase going to be

01:01:08:27 - 01:01:14:23
this year? And it's probably a reference monitor, right?
That is something that colorists and DITs

01:01:14:23 - 01:01:18:27
and stuff are always thinking about. And so I wanted
to spend this episode talking a little bit

01:01:18:27 - 01:01:23:12
about, I don't know, the state of affairs of monitors.
I think we went through a period for

01:01:23:14 - 01:01:30:03
a couple of years where things were really kind of like
flat, kind of boring. It was clearly that

01:01:30:03 - 01:01:34:14
like everybody was doing kind of stopgap things. And
to a certain degree, I think we're probably

01:01:34:14 - 01:01:40:23
still in that zone. But I wanted to talk about monitors,
but here's the thing, man, is that you

01:01:40:23 - 01:01:47:18
and I can flap all we want about monitors and SDI connections and contrast ratios. But the fact is,

01:01:47:18 - 01:01:53:03
is that we have some very, very smart friends who are
experts in this field and know quite a bit

01:01:53:03 - 01:01:57:02
more than we do about this. So today we thought we'd
have a little bit of a special episode.

01:01:57:02 - 01:02:02:25
This is going to be part one of a two part series, kind of
exploring the state of affairs on monitors.

01:02:03:25 - 01:02:10:19
And we are lucky to be joined by these three gentlemen.
Hi, guys. How are you? Let me introduce

01:02:10:19 - 01:02:15:26
everybody. First of all, we have Bram Desmet from
FSI. Bram, actually you and Nate,

01:02:15:28 - 01:02:19:25
who I'll introduce in a second, have the honor of
being our only return guests. That's because

01:02:20:08 - 01:02:25:14
we've only had two guests before, both of you. So
congratulations for being return guests.

01:02:26:00 - 01:02:32:11
We have Bram Desmet from FSI, who is the CEO and
general manager down there. He is a guru of

01:02:32:11 - 01:02:37:00
all things, display manufacturing, process, technology
of displays, that kind of stuff.

01:02:37:25 - 01:02:40:05
We have Nate McFarlin from Dolby.
Hey, Nate, how are you, man?

01:02:40:21 - 01:02:41:06
Doing well.

01:02:42:03 - 01:02:49:17
Nate is a engineer, validator, jack of all trades
over at Dolby. At Dolby Labs, he explores

01:02:50:26 - 01:02:55:04
you know, if the proof is in the pudding with
monitors, he does a lot of training

01:02:55:29 - 01:02:59:28
and part of the certification process for Dolby.
For those of you who want to become

01:03:00:14 - 01:03:04:24
Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos certified, that's
kind of Nate's area of expertise.

01:03:05:22 - 01:03:09:16
And he is my go-to person for any time
I have a question about,

01:03:10:29 - 01:03:14:21
hey, is this a good purchase to buy? What
do you think? Is the truth here?

01:03:15:08 - 01:03:19:12
So he'll have some good perspectives about monitors
from Dolby's perspective and validation,

01:03:19:20 - 01:03:25:04
that kind of stuff. And then we also have David Abrams.
David is a, how am I going to say this?

01:03:25:15 - 01:03:31:01
I think David is like the guru among gurus when it
comes to calibration. If you talk to any,

01:03:31:19 - 01:03:37:14
pretty much any post-production facility or any colorist,
they will know David's name and his

01:03:37:29 - 01:03:44:27
calibration company, AviCal. And David also is now at
Portrait Displays. David came out with a awesome

01:03:45:15 - 01:03:49:04
application. What was that David? Probably about
three or four years ago you released

01:03:50:21 - 01:03:56:18
your app. Patterns. Patterns test generator. Yeah, so Patterns is a very cool application to

01:03:56:18 - 01:04:01:08
be able to interface and do calibration on computer
monitors, displays. It's a very cool

01:04:01:08 - 01:04:06:15
app. We'll let him talk about it a little bit more in
detail in just a bit. But David's expertise is

01:04:06:15 - 01:04:10:27
obviously with anything calibration. He's probably,
I mean, I'm guessing David at this point, you

01:04:10:29 - 01:04:16:00
probably calibrated a hundred thousand displays or
something ridiculous. It's probably a lot, right?

01:04:16:25 - 01:04:21:18
It's about, you know, actually, I actually had to look
this up at some point. It's about 25,000.

01:04:21:26 - 01:04:28:07
Oh my gosh. So if anybody's going to have the experience
and who's sort of seen it and done it

01:04:28:07 - 01:04:34:26
and seen all the gotchas is David. So guys, we can't
thank you enough for jumping on. We're really

01:04:34:26 - 01:04:39:15
excited to sort of talk about some of this stuff.
And so I want to spend just kind of a couple

01:04:39:16 - 01:04:44:10
minutes with each one of you. And then like I said,
in part two of this, of this series, we'll

01:04:44:10 - 01:04:50:05
come back and kind of explore some of the hot button
topics, things that are on our minds that

01:04:50:05 - 01:04:57:03
you guys are experts in. So, Bram, let's start with you,
man. I'll put you on the spot. You know, I

01:04:57:03 - 01:05:02:28
think when I think of your expertise, I often think about
all of the, I don't know, probably at this

01:05:02:28 - 01:05:09:08
point, thousands of hours that you've spent in conference
rooms at shows, you know, at big trade

01:05:09:08 - 01:05:13:16
shows, listening to monitor presentations. And I'm
not talking about like the marketing people.

01:05:13:16 - 01:05:19:11
I'm talking about like the uber engineer guys who
are talking about like sub pixels and

01:05:19:19 - 01:05:27:05
quantum this and quantum that, right? I guess my first
question for you is, you know, as a monitor,

01:05:27:13 - 01:05:33:29
you know, provider maker, what goes into picking
technologies and panels and stuff? And kind of

01:05:33:29 - 01:05:38:03
how do you stay on top of that? Like, because it seems
like it's an ever shifting, ever developing

01:05:38:14 - 01:05:44:16
kind of landscape. Yeah. Well, first, thanks for having me on and really appreciate what you guys

01:05:44:16 - 01:05:52:04
are doing. And yeah, it's, it's always a challenge. So
what we do is we have good contacts at various

01:05:52:07 - 01:05:56:18
semiconductor manufacturers. So the big companies
that make the panels themselves,

01:05:57:13 - 01:06:00:26
so we have ongoing relationships with those. So a lot
of that is just relationships that have been

01:06:00:26 - 01:06:05:10
built over the last 20 years and having discussions about
what they're working on their future road

01:06:05:10 - 01:06:12:27
maps. There's other, you know, like any industry, there's
also trade shows and organizations that

01:06:12:27 - 01:06:19:03
kind of cater to our very niche kind of needs. So
one that we try to go to, for example, or I

01:06:19:03 - 01:06:26:25
personally go to is SIDs Display Week at SIDs Display
Week. And that event essentially brings

01:06:26:26 - 01:06:33:03
together those semiconductor manufacturers, probe
manufacturers. It's kind of a level removed from

01:06:33:03 - 01:06:38:17
this type of stuff. I think that colorists, editors, DITs
are interested in because it's not complete

01:06:38:17 - 01:06:44:21
products. But it is a good opportunity to meet with
those companies, talk to them about what

01:06:44:21 - 01:06:50:15
they're doing. Obviously, a lot of this happens overseas.
So this is one of the few kind of events

01:06:50:15 - 01:06:55:07
that happens more, more state side. And then just a
lot of, you know, industry trade stuff, press

01:06:55:07 - 01:07:00:21
releases, we try to keep on top of what everybody
is making and how technologies are evolving.

01:07:02:09 - 01:07:06:14
you often times get really excited about things on paper
and they get really disappointed when you

01:07:06:14 - 01:07:13:07
evaluate them. So a lot of evaluation, a lot of rejection
of technologies. So yeah, it's a kind

01:07:13:07 - 01:07:21:08
of ongoing ever evolving process. And it's, yeah, it's
a kind of a full time job. Yeah, I was gonna,

01:07:21:08 - 01:07:26:06
I was gonna say, do you have as a display manufacturer
and being more in the know than we

01:07:26:06 - 01:07:32:06
are, do you struggle with having to wade through a lot
of the marketing part of this as well? Like,

01:07:32:06 - 01:07:36:21
you know, like, because it just seems to me that like,
you know, one of the challenges for, you know,

01:07:36:21 - 01:07:41:00
our audience as colorists, editors, etc. is like, you
know, a company will come out and be like,

01:07:41:00 - 01:07:46:25
hey, this is the ultra quantum, you know, do hickey.
And it sounds revolutionary, right? But like,

01:07:47:01 - 01:07:51:29
do you have to wade through that same level? Or when
you're evaluating displays, is it more of

01:07:51:29 - 01:07:54:23
like, no, we get rid of that, we're just dealing
with the engineering part of it?

01:07:55:23 - 01:08:00:09
So I think we've learned enough over, you know, I've
been in the industry about 20 years now,

01:08:00:09 - 01:08:06:01
and we've learned enough about evaluating specs,
specifications, even just on paper,

01:08:06:01 - 01:08:10:10
and we can quickly wade through a lot of the marketing
BS and know, you know, what we can

01:08:10:10 - 01:08:15:17
expect out of display technology based on things
like the report specifications or reported

01:08:17:01 - 01:08:21:04
spectral power distributions, sometimes we get access
to that information. But there's a lot

01:08:21:04 - 01:08:27:14
of marketing hype to wade through. It's not so much
the marketing hype is easy for us to kind

01:08:27:14 - 01:08:34:12
of suss out what's real, what's, you know, again, hype.
The harder thing for me, the thing that

01:08:34:28 - 01:08:40:23
frustrates me more is misuse of terminology, or
giving things names that are intentionally

01:08:40:28 - 01:08:50:26
very confusing. You mean LED TVs? LED TVs, you know, calling things, you know, very similarly

01:08:50:28 - 01:08:56:15
named things like tandem primary, this and that and
versus regular tandem OLED. Well, I gotta say,

01:08:56:15 - 01:09:01:25
I was really disappointed when I bought a quantum dot
television that I like didn't get entangled

01:09:01:27 - 01:09:05:17
and like, all of a sudden just start seeing I don't
know, that's bad joke, but you get the idea.

01:09:06:24 - 01:09:13:29
It's true. So some of those naming conventions and stuff
can be confusing. And yeah, so that that's

01:09:13:29 - 01:09:18:09
always a challenge. But I think we've gotten pretty good
at sussing those things out. And ultimately,

01:09:18:09 - 01:09:23:24
what it comes down to is buy samples, test the product,
see if we think there's a market for it.

01:09:24:12 - 01:09:29:06
And then also try to do our due diligence on, you
know, staying power of that technology,

01:09:29:11 - 01:09:33:28
because that's really been the biggest frustration over
my last 20 years of doing this is that you

01:09:34:00 - 01:09:37:25
get really excited about something. And what we've
seen time and again is that unfortunately,

01:09:37:25 - 01:09:44:05
a lot of times the best performing technologies are
so niche, so expensive that the providers

01:09:44:05 - 01:09:49:24
of those technologies, there's not really a market here,
we're going to stop. And so we've seen those

01:09:49:24 - 01:09:53:26
instances, sometimes it's a, you know, thing where
you have three, four or five years of notice,

01:09:53:26 - 01:09:59:15
and then sometimes it's just overnight that company's
gone. So we've gotten a lot more careful

01:09:59:20 - 01:10:04:24
about that. And luckily, a lot of the mass market stuff
that's produced in high qualities and tends

01:10:04:24 - 01:10:10:26
to have staying power has gotten a lot better. So there's
less of that worry now than there used to

01:10:10:26 - 01:10:14:21
be. But that's been an ongoing frustration over the
years. Yeah, I was gonna I imagine that's a

01:10:14:21 - 01:10:19:17
challenging kind of thing. Like, how do you like, you're
having to read the tea leaves a little bit

01:10:19:17 - 01:10:23:10
about like, okay, this is what's coming, this is what's
potentially gonna have the same power.

01:10:23:22 - 01:10:30:11
Like in the broader sense, would you say that your
your work, your R&D work is a couple years

01:10:30:14 - 01:10:35:16
or a couple months? Like, what's the time period ahead
that you generally are for when like a guy

01:10:35:16 - 01:10:39:14
like me is buying a monitor, right? Is that a couple
years is a couple months? Like does it vary?

01:10:40:07 - 01:10:46:11
It does vary. So when we do like the back, the back
end hardware that drives the panels, when we

01:10:46:11 - 01:10:52:08
do a change there, that is something that typically will
be, you know, in development for a couple of

01:10:52:09 - 01:10:57:20
years before anybody knows or sees anything about it.
In terms of new panel technologies, though,

01:10:57:20 - 01:11:02:12
as long as we have a platform that supports the type
of connection going to that panel, whether

01:11:02:12 - 01:11:08:19
that's, you know, EDP or LVDS, or whatever it may be
at UHD 4K, HD resolutions, whatever it is,

01:11:09:02 - 01:11:13:14
as long as we have the back end hardware that can fit
into that, is it's actually, you'd be surprised

01:11:13:14 - 01:11:17:14
how quickly we can get a prototype ready. So we can
get an extra panel and have something up and

01:11:17:15 - 01:11:23:07
running in like three, four weeks. So it can go quickly,
then there's always, you know, the

01:11:23:07 - 01:11:29:18
debugging and the fine tuning, and we're constantly
iterating, trying to improve, you know, find

01:11:29:18 - 01:11:35:03
problems, catch problems, improve on things. But it
is a, you know, it's a constant evolution.

01:11:36:16 - 01:11:41:23
But yeah, it varies a bit. But there are, you know, there
are platforms that have been in the works for

01:11:42:02 - 01:11:46:19
years that haven't seen the light of day yet. But there
is a lot of that happening behind the scenes

01:11:46:19 - 01:11:52:26
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I often I think it's
easy to think of like a company like FSI or

01:11:52:26 - 01:11:57:13
other monitor companies as like hardware companies.
But like the fascinating thing to me is like,

01:11:57:29 - 01:12:02:23
and I don't know if this is 100% accurate, it
just seems this way to me is that like,

01:12:03:02 - 01:12:07:25
you guys are almost more of a software company at
times than you are than you are a hardware

01:12:07:25 - 01:12:12:03
company, right? Figuring out like functionality of
this button is going to do this. This is the

01:12:12:04 - 01:12:17:04
feature that this group looks for. Can
you speak to just in general, like how

01:12:18:15 - 01:12:23:25
the the process or the challenge of kind of like designing
features and figuring out like, okay,

01:12:23:25 - 01:12:27:27
this is going to be something that we think this group
of, you know, our customers are going to

01:12:27:27 - 01:12:31:26
want or need. Like what goes into that thinking and
the kind of like the development of that?

01:12:32:10 - 01:12:36:03
Yeah, so when we have new panels or new back
end architecture that's developed,

01:12:37:03 - 01:12:43:14
we take the approach of first focusing on color
reproduction, color accuracy, and then also

01:12:43:15 - 01:12:48:17
displaying video correctly. That means things like,
you know, displaying whatever, you know,

01:12:48:17 - 01:12:53:03
frame rate you're getting at an even integer frame rate
on screen so that you have proper cadence of

01:12:53:06 - 01:12:59:13
video. So we work on the basics first. That's we start
with what most people buy a monitor from us

01:12:59:15 - 01:13:05:01
for, and that is color accuracy and accurate display
of the content on screen. Then from there,

01:13:05:03 - 01:13:09:20
we have, you know, things that we think a lot of times
stuff that customers haven't asked for,

01:13:09:20 - 01:13:13:05
but that we think will bring a lot of value to market.
We have a lot of our own ideas about

01:13:13:05 - 01:13:16:25
those things and we develop those out and we, you
know, have those come out as features.

01:13:17:08 - 01:13:23:05
But you're right. We are very much a company that
focuses on we're essentially a company that,

01:13:23:05 - 01:13:26:22
you know, hardware is part of what we do certainly,
but a lot of our time and effort

01:13:27:10 - 01:13:32:02
is spent on firmware. A lot of that comes from feedback
from customers. And a lot of times it's

01:13:32:03 - 01:13:36:22
just us, you know, we think we know how our displays
are going to be used and then you're

01:13:36:22 - 01:13:41:02
oftentimes surprised. So a good kind of, I think
the two real world examples of that,

01:13:41:02 - 01:13:44:23
when we introduced the XMP series monitors were
like, cool, we're going to focus on UHD,

01:13:45:00 - 01:13:50:05
Progressive, PQ, HLG. That's what people are going
to be using these for. Then we start.

01:13:50:05 - 01:13:52:14
And then there's Rob, then there's Robbie making web videos.

01:13:53:10 - 01:13:57:10
It's not just web videos, but it is people
like you who are like, you're like,

01:13:57:11 - 01:14:01:15
hey, you know what? We deliver an inordinate amount
of interlaced still. And we're like,

01:14:01:15 - 01:14:07:04
oh crap, you know, because the inside baseball, one of the things that I, I ought of the many

01:14:07:04 - 01:14:10:18
things that I drive Bram crazy with, it's the fact
that I'm always saying something about

01:14:10:18 - 01:14:15:27
interlacing and Bram's general responses.
Aren't we over interlacing yet? Like,

01:14:15:27 - 01:14:20:26
what's going on should have died a long time ago? Yeah. But, but, but it is. So, so those types of things.

01:14:20:26 - 01:14:24:11
So we added those as features. So that's a good
example of like, what I love is that,

01:14:24:12 - 01:14:29:03
yes, we build a hardware platform, to do a certain thing,
but that platform tends to be really

01:14:29:03 - 01:14:33:06
flexible, right? And we can do a lot with firmware.
So when we, when we got a lot of this feedback

01:14:33:06 - 01:14:37:24
about, hey, I want to see interlaced on screen, like
a CRT monitor would show it, we did that.

01:14:38:04 - 01:14:43:01
And I think we're one of the few kind of large
format monitors, certainly, certainly UHD

01:14:43:01 - 01:14:48:09
resolution monitors that actually can replicate interlaced
very much like a reference grade CRT

01:14:48:09 - 01:14:52:14
would. So you can see things like field reversals,
accurately. Now there are a lot of consumer TVs

01:14:52:14 - 01:14:58:03
that do a good job of, of, of converting interlaced
to progressive and making it look

01:14:58:03 - 01:15:02:13
really good. But typically those have six, seven
frames of processing delay to do that.

01:15:02:19 - 01:15:07:11
And ultimately you're still not seeing it as
interlaced on screen. So what we do is we're

01:15:07:11 - 01:15:11:16
actually showing it to you as interlaced. The other
good example was HD. We thought everybody

01:15:11:16 - 01:15:16:21
was going to be using these things for UHD and just
UHD and 4K. And that's it. A lot of people

01:15:16:21 - 01:15:21:05
were like, Hey, we need HD. And we were doing very,
you know, very basic nearest neighbor scaling.

01:15:21:15 - 01:15:27:14
And it has jaggy edges when you do that. So it is, we
developed a higher-quality bicubic scaling.

01:15:27:29 - 01:15:30:28
So now that scaling is approved. So those are the
types of things where it's just customer

01:15:30:28 - 01:15:35:02
feedback, right? People saying, Hey, you know, these
are what we think are highest priority.

01:15:35:02 - 01:15:38:22
And then it's, you know, like any company working
on software or firmware, it's, you know,

01:15:39:04 - 01:15:42:17
priority lists, you know, where, what do we think
is going to have the greatest impact to the

01:15:42:17 - 01:15:46:08
industry? What's going to, you know, selfishly
help us sell more displays?

01:15:47:20 - 01:15:48:18
Yeah, squashing of bugs that kinda stuff

01:15:48:18 - 01:15:54:08
we're constantly iterating there. And in post, they're really only a core set of things. They're not,

01:15:54:08 - 01:15:59:10
there's not that much to tackle. So a lot of, you
know, a lot of the preliminary stuff,

01:15:59:10 - 01:16:03:04
or let's get everything ready for post. And then we
start digging into catering more to those,

01:16:03:18 - 01:16:07:29
to those production applications, where there are
a lot more of these like really niche,

01:16:07:29 - 01:16:12:28
you know, requests like, Hey, I want to do four, four
images into a monitor. I want to do custom

01:16:13:02 - 01:16:19:03
look LUTs. I want to control it via Livegrade. And so we
build those things out over time to cater to

01:16:19:03 - 01:16:23:28
more and more. I mean, we already operate in a super
niche space, right? And then we cater to

01:16:24:04 - 01:16:28:07
niche segments of this already niche space, but, but
that, that's, that's what makes us different

01:16:28:07 - 01:16:32:17
than an off the shelf computer monitor or something,
right? So we enjoy that. That's,

01:16:32:17 - 01:16:37:16
that's part of what, what we think makes us a little
special. So yeah, so we spend our time

01:16:37:16 - 01:16:38:09
and effort on it.

01:16:38:16 - 01:16:42:16
Yeah. I mean, in part two, we'll get more into some
of your prognostications on like what the

01:16:43:06 - 01:16:47:11
industry and the future trends are. But I
got one last question before we, we

01:16:47:28 - 01:16:54:12
ask Nate a few ones here as well. Like one of the things
I'm fascinated by is, and this might be

01:16:54:12 - 01:16:59:29
unique to you, but it just seems in general that I see
this a lot with display companies like that

01:16:59:29 - 01:17:05:11
intersection of color science and that this technology
too is also really interesting to

01:17:05:11 - 01:17:10:01
me. Like I think a lot of people who know you or have
come to know you or see you at a trade show

01:17:10:02 - 01:17:15:15
floor, like you become a resource for color science,
you know, type questions, right? And

01:17:15:22 - 01:17:21:10
I know you spend a lot of time, you know, studying this
stuff and talking to other experts. Like just

01:17:21:17 - 01:17:27:00
briefly, what is that intersection like for you?
Like, cause like, you know, obviously color

01:17:27:00 - 01:17:32:04
science has a lot of uses, meanings, et cetera, but
as a display manufacturer, like why is that

01:17:32:04 - 01:17:37:14
something that, you know, you guys focus on so much? Is
it part of that accuracy equation? Is it part of,

01:17:38:02 - 01:17:44:08
uh, you know, just answering people's questions? Like
why spend so much time learning something,

01:17:44:08 - 01:17:49:13
you know, and being an expert in color science?
Yeah. I mean, uh, you know, people buy our

01:17:49:13 - 01:17:54:03
monitors, I think primarily for accurate color reproduction,
right? That's, that's kind of the

01:17:54:03 - 01:17:58:16
paramount thing. And, um, as I tell, you know, like
our sales team, for example, it's like,

01:17:58:16 - 01:18:02:22
what you're really selling people is confidence,
right? So to be confident that the image is

01:18:02:22 - 01:18:07:00
correct. So the only way to be confident that the
image is correct is to really know the color

01:18:07:01 - 01:18:10:29
science through and through. So you need to know the
industry specifications. You need to know how

01:18:10:29 - 01:18:15:28
to adhere those specifications. You need to know how
to calibrate those specifications. Um, and you

01:18:15:28 - 01:18:20:13
need to understand kind of the gotchas and caveats and
cause none of this is straightforward, you know,

01:18:20:13 - 01:18:27:03
and especially when you get to, um, to more, you
know, advanced, if you want to say targets,

01:18:27:03 - 01:18:33:11
like we talked about PQ and HLG and Rec. 2020 and, and,
you know, uh, out of monitor gamut targets

01:18:33:17 - 01:18:37:20
and how you handle that first, uh, you know, cause
there's, there's multiple ways to handle it.

01:18:37:20 - 01:18:41:17
What's the correct way to handle it. And then we also
interface a lot with industry standards

01:18:41:17 - 01:18:46:24
bodies, you know, so we try to talk to people at SMPTE.
We try to talk to people at EBU. Um, we,

01:18:46:24 - 01:18:52:24
we participate in, you know, uh, you know, very nuanced
niche events. Like we did December,

01:18:53:05 - 01:18:58:12
we did a metamerism experts day in the UK. And that sort
of stuff is really fascinating to me on a

01:18:58:12 - 01:19:03:13
personal level, but it also helps us, you know, uh, cater
to our, to our clients because our clients

01:19:03:13 - 01:19:09:03
have these questions, you know, so, Hey, when I'm in
Rec. 2020, why does it do this or what should it

01:19:09:03 - 01:19:14:26
be doing? Um, Hey, when I'm in PQ, you know, what, what
ranges should I be operating in all these

01:19:14:26 - 01:19:18:16
sorts of things? Like we need to know that stuff. And
then again, when it comes down to the color

01:19:18:16 - 01:19:24:19
science part of it, you know, the challenges like
metamerism failures, of metamerism, in

01:19:24:21 - 01:19:30:29
terms of display matching, um, uh, inter observer,
metamerism, uh, all those sorts of things become,

01:19:30:29 - 01:19:33:23
become really important that you can only understand
that if you really understand the

01:19:33:23 - 01:19:38:23
underlying color science. So that's why we're obsessed
with it and why we spend so much

01:19:38:23 - 01:19:44:19
time trying to learn everything we can about those topics.
So now I want to talk to Nate a little bit

01:19:44:19 - 01:19:51:22
about his perspective from Dolby as a color scientist
and an engineer, because I think

01:19:52:14 - 01:19:58:10
Dolby has a pretty unique place in the industry when
it comes to displays, right? They've driven

01:19:58:21 - 01:20:04:23
display innovation in the past, making prototypes, making
new technologies, basically inventing and

01:20:04:23 - 01:20:11:10
introducing us to what I consider to be, you know, the
biggest shift in how we encode and display an

01:20:11:10 - 01:20:20:04
image since color, which is HDR. And, but at the end
of the day, they don't make TVs. They don't

01:20:20:04 - 01:20:28:00
make or sell reference monitors. They make kind of
innovative technologies around the imaging

01:20:28:04 - 01:20:35:01
space and partner with all these companies like FSI,
like the consumer TV manufacturers to kind of

01:20:35:01 - 01:20:42:03
make sure the image is shown in the best kind of possible
light. And a big part of that I know is

01:20:42:26 - 01:20:51:01
testing a huge array and variety of monitors, right?
I've seen pictures. And when we went to Dolby,

01:20:51:01 - 01:20:58:18
I've seen like rooms filled with monitors of, you know,
everywhere from little ones to huge ones,

01:20:58:18 - 01:21:04:10
to prototypes, to off the shelf consumer TVs, to whackadoodle stuff that you've never even heard of.

01:21:05:00 - 01:21:10:22
Why is it so important to test all these monitors and
tell us a little bit about what actually kind

01:21:10:22 - 01:21:16:27
of goes into testing all these monitors of different
capabilities? You know, how do you

01:21:16:27 - 01:21:20:04
kind of bring it all together into, okay, I'm going to
look at a monitor, this is what I'm going to

01:21:20:04 - 01:21:25:00
look for. And this is why I'm going to look for those
factors. Yeah, sure. Happy to talk about

01:21:25:00 - 01:21:30:29
that. And thank you guys for having me on again. I'm
honored to be a returning guest. But yeah,

01:21:30:29 - 01:21:37:03
no, I to Joey's point, I think Dolby has a really cool
intersection, just as a company. It's one of

01:21:37:04 - 01:21:41:14
the reasons why I love working here is that we really
do sit at this really niche intersection

01:21:41:15 - 01:21:45:28
of art and science, which is something that's very,
you know, it's home for me, I'm very

01:21:45:28 - 01:21:51:12
passionate about, but also very cool to see how we've
influenced, you know, the changing ecosystem,

01:21:51:18 - 01:21:57:11
and also really, really great to always see folks coming
to us as a resource or, you know, a beacon

01:21:57:24 - 01:22:03:07
in the evangelization and education for HDR. So
your question about monitors is a great one.

01:22:03:20 - 01:22:09:11
Part of the complexity here is that we deal with things
on both the creation side and also the

01:22:09:11 - 01:22:15:16
playback side, right? So from my point of view, I work
typically, most frequently on the content

01:22:15:16 - 01:22:22:00
creation side of things. So the way I typically will
approach any sort of display evaluation is

01:22:22:00 - 01:22:28:10
wearing this hat of like, hey, would this display be
suitable for creating HDR content that will

01:22:28:10 - 01:22:35:13
eventually be mastered in Dolby Vision and go downstream
to a Dolby Vision device. So, from a very fundamental level

01:22:35:13 - 01:22:40:04
think it's a lot of the same sort of considerations
of Bram was just speaking about, right? Things

01:22:40:04 - 01:22:45:17
like color accuracy, luminance performance, black level,
stepping out of black, how additive is the

01:22:45:17 - 01:22:51:21
display. And that's a lot of kind of the more scientific
or numerical objective approach that

01:22:51:21 - 01:22:58:01
I would say. But there's also a really big component
of usability, right? So as these displays

01:22:58:06 - 01:23:04:09
continue to become more accessible, more folks are
reaching them and using them, but that also

01:23:04:09 - 01:23:10:02
means that more uneducated folks, right? So people that
don't have a background in color science or

01:23:10:02 - 01:23:16:00
maybe are getting into editing or post or VFX or things
for the first time. So a lot of it's not

01:23:16:00 - 01:23:20:24
just, hey, how accurately does this track PQ or what
are the primaries looking like? But it's like

01:23:21:03 - 01:23:25:17
something as simple as, hey, how easy is it to navigate
the menu? How easy can you set up

01:23:25:17 - 01:23:32:18
picture profiles and do things? And one of my close
colleagues at Dolby Timo Kunkel and I talk

01:23:32:18 - 01:23:37:26
about this all the time. And we say that in general,
I'd say that we're getting to a spot where

01:23:38:00 - 01:23:44:08
displays are continuously improving, which is really
great for HDR accessibility throughout

01:23:44:09 - 01:23:49:14
the whole ecosystem. But they're coming with a lot of
added complexities. And I'm sure we can talk

01:23:49:14 - 01:23:54:20
about this a little more in the next episode as well.
But I almost equate it to things like when

01:23:54:22 - 01:24:00:04
you shoot a video or a picture on your iPhone, right?
Where it's very hard to manually dial it

01:24:00:04 - 01:24:02:24
in and you're kind of just trusting that the software
is doing the right things, right? And

01:24:02:24 - 01:24:07:01
that's permeated all the way to displays. And that's
why reference displays like the ones that

01:24:07:01 - 01:24:12:27
FSI make are so valuable, right? Because there are no
algorithms tweaking things. It's literally just

01:24:12:27 - 01:24:17:02
like signal in, signal out and being able to trust that
in sell confidence like you guys were talking

01:24:17:02 - 01:24:23:00
about earlier is super, super important. But so that's
kind of how the testing is done or kind

01:24:23:01 - 01:24:29:04
of the framework we typically like to use. But from
also just say kind of an ecosystem point of

01:24:29:04 - 01:24:33:14
view. We also just like to compare different technologies,
see where the industry is heading.

01:24:34:12 - 01:24:40:29
It's very important for us to also stay up to date
on informing the partners like Bram and

01:24:41:06 - 01:24:45:16
FSI and all these other folks of like what our
users are asking for. Because ultimately,

01:24:45:16 - 01:24:50:12
like Dolby has a vested interest in creating or help
folks creating the best HDR content so that

01:24:50:15 - 01:24:55:28
when you get to the end user experience, you're getting
really compelling viewing experiences.

01:24:57:00 - 01:25:00:22
So we're obviously very vested in helping our partners
create the best displays as possible as

01:25:00:22 - 01:25:04:21
well. And we'd like to hope that that's valuable. So
maybe Bram, I don't know. I'd like to hope

01:25:04:21 - 01:25:10:05
that Bram appreciates my evaluations. Yeah.
And that's interesting because I feel like you

01:25:10:05 - 01:25:16:13
kind of have to sit between the consumer, the artist
and the manufacturers, right? Because

01:25:17:05 - 01:25:22:06
the artists might be asking for one thing, I just want
to do everything 100 nits the same way I've

01:25:22:06 - 01:25:27:06
been doing it forever because I have one film print
LUT that I love and why doesn't it always

01:25:27:06 - 01:25:32:00
look the same in HDR? Whereas, you know, the consumer
TV manufacturers and less so the

01:25:32:00 - 01:25:37:03
professional monitor manufacturers, but to some degree,
they want to kind of show off the technology

01:25:37:03 - 01:25:43:17
and take it to, oh, you can go to five bajillion nits
on this. How great is that? How do you kind

01:25:43:17 - 01:25:50:29
of navigate when you're talking to both, you know,
manufacturers and artists and other kind of

01:25:50:29 - 01:25:55:04
kind of when you're sitting in the middle of all of
this, how do you kind of bring it all together

01:25:55:04 - 01:26:00:02
and say, okay, here's how I'm going to, you know, get
a set of recommendations that will kind of

01:26:00:02 - 01:26:06:03
make everybody happy and nobody mad. It's tough. That's, that's very hard. You'll notice

01:26:06:03 - 01:26:12:01
David and Bram both laughing at that. This is why Nate still has hair because he's a lot younger.

01:26:14:10 - 01:26:16:17
Dave and I are both bald now. That's right!

01:26:18:23 - 01:26:22:10
No, it's a really good question, honestly. And this
is something that we speak to a lot in our

01:26:22:10 - 01:26:27:12
trainings is that I think this whole discussion was
a lot easier back, you know, a few decades ago

01:26:27:12 - 01:26:33:20
when folks were no matter where you were looking at
some flavor of CRT, relatively similar size,

01:26:33:20 - 01:26:39:18
right? There's just so many formats and variability now
between different display types, whether it's

01:26:39:18 - 01:26:45:13
OLED, LCD, dual layer, you know, QD OLED, you know,
there's so many different flavors of display

01:26:45:13 - 01:26:48:28
technology, but then there's also so many form factors,
right? I mean, this is something that's

01:26:48:28 - 01:26:54:03
really cool to me about Dolby, in general, is that we're
not just talking about Dolby Cinema or TVs

01:26:54:03 - 01:26:59:23
at home now, we're in, you know, iPhones, tablets,
laptops, computer monitors. I mean, we have

01:27:00:10 - 01:27:05:20
displays of into cars that are Dolby Vision enabled,
which is mind blowing to me. So I think

01:27:05:20 - 01:27:11:01
that makes it really tricky as well, right? Because not
only are you introducing the variability in the

01:27:11:01 - 01:27:15:09
technology, but also the environment. And then, you
know, you have issues like ambient light, you

01:27:15:09 - 01:27:20:05
know, viewing distance angles, like, you know, you could
go down a rabbit hole very quickly with what

01:27:20:05 - 01:27:24:19
makes this stuff difficult. So that's why like, when
I do my evaluations, I love when I get the

01:27:24:19 - 01:27:27:26
reference monitors in, because I'm like, this is easy,
like, these are great. This is very simple,

01:27:27:29 - 01:27:34:21
like more cut and dry than some of the other types. But
also, you know, there's applications outside

01:27:34:21 - 01:27:39:18
of the specs, like I was saying, right? So, you know,
a great, you know, TV might not make a good,

01:27:39:27 - 01:27:44:15
you know, display to use on set or things like that.
There's things like, there's so many

01:27:44:15 - 01:27:49:10
different applications, whether it's for VFX, you
know, first color, even something like a GUI

01:27:49:10 - 01:27:53:08
monitor, or, you know, monitor and on set, like, they
all require different, you know, physical

01:27:53:11 - 01:27:58:14
capabilities and image quality parameters. So long-winded
answer to your question is it's really

01:27:58:14 - 01:28:06:25
tough. So that kind of brings me to the general idea
of, you know, when you look at a display,

01:28:07:18 - 01:28:13:14
or especially a consumer TV, you know, you go to the
store, you buy one, it's got a little Dolby

01:28:13:14 - 01:28:20:11
Vision badge on it. What does that actually mean on the
back end? What are you getting as a consumer

01:28:20:13 - 01:28:28:04
when you buy a television that has the official Dolby
Vision badge and certification on it?

01:28:28:27 - 01:28:32:07
Yeah, that's a great question. And again, another
common one we get all the time. So

01:28:33:01 - 01:28:39:05
there's a big misconception that Dolby somehow, like,
was instrumental in helping create or

01:28:39:05 - 01:28:44:13
manufacture these specific displays. That's not the
case. So whenever you go into any sort of

01:28:44:13 - 01:28:48:19
retail space that sells, you know, TVs, or whether
it be a desktop monitor, things like that,

01:28:48:23 - 01:28:53:21
if you see a Dolby Vision logo on the box, all that means
is that display has the capability to decode

01:28:53:27 - 01:28:59:15
and do the display mapping required by a Dolby Vision
encoded signal. So if you pull up a Dolby

01:28:59:15 - 01:29:06:05
Vision TV and you start up your Netflix, Disney+,
whatever OTT service that supports Vision,

01:29:06:21 - 01:29:10:16
and that specific piece of content was mastered in
Dolby Vision, and you have the, you know,

01:29:10:16 - 01:29:14:25
the according subscription model or whatever you
need, that will play back on Dolby Vision.

01:29:14:26 - 01:29:22:26
And it will automatically trigger that display's Dolby
Vision mode. So it'll automatically flag it

01:29:23:03 - 01:29:27:28
on the signal, the TV will flip into, typically
speaking, it's the Dolby Vision

01:29:28:17 - 01:29:33:24
bright mode, as it's called on most TVs. You can
also then change, there's things like

01:29:34:09 - 01:29:38:11
Dolby Vision dark, Dolby Vision bright, we have
game modes, vivid modes, etc, for various

01:29:38:14 - 01:29:43:02
different models. So typically speaking, the bright
mode is always the default out of the box.

01:29:43:16 - 01:29:48:03
And that's just because we're assuming that the average
living room is not as well controlled,

01:29:48:11 - 01:29:55:00
maybe likewise as a grading suite. Yeah. So, you know,
staying in the consumer world for a little

01:29:55:00 - 01:30:02:11
bit, how do you feel, you know, in terms of the adoption
and accessibility of HDR, both content

01:30:02:11 - 01:30:12:00
and monitoring is these days? Because I think, you
know, just a few years ago, HDR was really, really

01:30:13:00 - 01:30:17:24
God, we keep saying everything is niche in this
episode, but it kind of was, right?

01:30:17:24 - 01:30:23:13
I think, no, I think you're right. I think a few years ago it seemed, and we talked about this in

01:30:23:13 - 01:30:27:26
the episode, both episodes that we did with Bram and
Nate previously, I think that, you know, for

01:30:27:26 - 01:30:33:04
a while, you know, HDR was a little bit of a country
club ecosystem, right? It was happening

01:30:33:04 - 01:30:38:09
at the highest end, at the highest productions, etc.
And now that that's trickled down, right?

01:30:38:10 - 01:30:45:04
I think that people are... A big, big, big part of this, in my opinion, is when Apple decided to make

01:30:45:08 - 01:30:52:08
all their iPhones, take photos and videos and display
photos and videos in HDR by default,

01:30:52:08 - 01:30:59:06
right? Now you have an entire swath of the consumer
landscape doing their everyday day-to-day

01:30:59:06 - 01:31:03:27
interaction with the device. And now they're seeing
HDR where they weren't seeing HDR before.

01:31:04:15 - 01:31:08:06
And they just kind of, they don't know, you know,
the average user might not know, hey,

01:31:08:13 - 01:31:13:16
I shot this photo on my iPhone in HDR and I'm looking
at it in HDR and it looks really good.

01:31:14:06 - 01:31:18:12
They just know that if I have my iPhone and I take
a picture with it, it looks better now.

01:31:18:25 - 01:31:23:16
And if somebody else with an iPhone sends me a picture
that they took, it looks better on this

01:31:23:16 - 01:31:30:24
display. Is that something that is actually, tangibly
kind of improving and moving the industry

01:31:30:27 - 01:31:36:20
forward, kind of having these manufacturers, you
know, really put more HDR into everything?

01:31:37:22 - 01:31:42:12
Are people adopting HDR more now than
they have before? Or is it still

01:31:43:03 - 01:31:47:10
kind of that niche, nerdy thing for us display geeks?

01:31:48:15 - 01:31:53:28
No, that's a good question. And I think the, the good
thing is, is that I think you're correct in

01:31:53:28 - 01:31:57:24
the sense that from my point of view, and you know,
you talked to most folks at Dolby would

01:31:58:24 - 01:32:04:04
unanimously agree that HDR is as accessible as it's
ever been. And a big proponent of that,

01:32:04:04 - 01:32:09:13
like you mentioned is the Apple ecosystem. Obviously
they have the scale and the just raw

01:32:09:13 - 01:32:13:17
numbers to support something like this, right? Just
to give kind of like a side anecdote,

01:32:13:29 - 01:32:18:17
a lot of the trainings I start, especially when
I'm doing trainings for folks that are

01:32:18:20 - 01:32:24:23
maybe newer to HDR, not as well versed to think of
like universities, education partners, things

01:32:24:23 - 01:32:29:15
like that. Whenever I'm in person, I like to do one
of the first questions I'll ask is like, Hey,

01:32:29:21 - 01:32:34:08
who here has, you know, knowingly watched any sort
of Dolby vision or gone to like a Dolby

01:32:34:08 - 01:32:38:12
Cinema? And if you have like a 50 person class, you
usually get, you know, a handful of hands,

01:32:38:14 - 01:32:43:02
right? And I'll say like, okay, who has an iPhone 10
or later? And then, you know, like 75% of the

01:32:43:02 - 01:32:46:28
class raises their hand. And I'm like, any of you guys
ever watch like your streaming services on

01:32:46:28 - 01:32:49:28
there? And you know, everybody, you know, keeps their
hand up. I'm like, okay, so without even

01:32:50:00 - 01:32:55:29
knowing it, you've been watching HDR, Dolby Vision
for years now, right? And this is even,

01:32:56:02 - 01:33:00:10
you know, permeating into things like social media.
I mean, we have a ton of ton of influence

01:33:00:14 - 01:33:06:11
going on in that space. And we're seeing the numbers
there. I mean, we have a lot of social

01:33:06:11 - 01:33:11:07
media platforms overseas launching HDR and Vision capabilities. I mean, YouTube, you can even upload

01:33:11:12 - 01:33:16:23
on HDR and YouTube now. So like, there's a lot of
cool momentum there. But to your point,

01:33:16:23 - 01:33:20:21
Joey, I think that the thing we're seeing is that while
it's accessible, I don't think a lot of

01:33:20:21 - 01:33:25:21
people really know that they're watching it, right? Or
they're, is that a, is that a, is that a bad

01:33:25:22 - 01:33:30:16
thing? Yeah, I was going to say, kind of success of, you know, like if the technology means seamless,

01:33:30:16 - 01:33:34:28
right? Instead of making somebody to think about it,
they're just getting, they go and they go,

01:33:34:28 - 01:33:38:24
oh, I got this Dolby Vision TV. I'm getting better,
better results. That seems like a win too.

01:33:39:08 - 01:33:45:01
So when do we get to, if you had to put your crystal
ball, when do we get to the ideal,

01:33:45:02 - 01:33:53:01
my ideal world of HDR is just the default. And we're
kind of looking at SDR like we look at 4x3 safe

01:33:53:01 - 01:33:57:17
by three safe. That's a really good question. I'd be
curious to hear Bram and David's answers to that.

01:33:57:17 - 01:34:02:00
But I would say we're at least still another like five
years out. I think there's a lot of hesitation

01:34:02:11 - 01:34:08:20
in kind of the legacy creative community as well. I
know, especially onset is an issue that we've

01:34:08:20 - 01:34:12:16
seen in the past. And we've tried to address that
pretty directly at Dolby with a lot of our

01:34:12:24 - 01:34:17:04
newer education initiatives and helping folks better
understand how to manage HDR on set too.

01:34:17:12 - 01:34:22:02
But I think the good news is, is that again, as the
displays become more accessible, the price

01:34:22:02 - 01:34:27:11
barrier to get into HDR on set and during, you know, content
acquisition has come down quite a bit too.

01:34:27:11 - 01:34:32:27
And I've heard a lot of, you know, pretty high up DPs
saying like, you can't really use the budget

01:34:32:27 - 01:34:36:12
excuse anymore. Like this is something that you should
be considering. But I think that also

01:34:36:12 - 01:34:41:22
requires like a pretty big overhaul on education as
well. Right. I mean, you get into any of these

01:34:42:26 - 01:34:48:04
top echelon of film schools in the US and even overseas,
like, you know, they're teaching SDR

01:34:48:04 - 01:34:52:06
predominantly still, right. And that needs to change
to enable the next generation of content

01:34:52:06 - 01:34:57:21
creators, right. But I think having accessibility on
iPhones and social media, being able to do it

01:34:58:07 - 01:35:01:07
certainly helps. I don't know if Bram or
Dave wants to speak to that too.

01:35:01:15 - 01:35:06:17
Well, I have one more thing to add just to before we move on to chatting with David. And I think

01:35:06:17 - 01:35:11:24
this is kind of a question about the intersection of
Bram's, you know, sphere and your sphere,

01:35:11:27 - 01:35:17:20
right. Bram, like the work that Dolby does as sort
of a, I think of Dolby often as like,

01:35:17:20 - 01:35:23:12
as a research company, but they're sort of like a
almost like pseudo standards body, right.

01:35:23:12 - 01:35:26:10
Because they're doing all this R&D. I mean, they're
not a standards body, but you know what I'm

01:35:26:10 - 01:35:31:00
saying? Like they do all this R&D, they're having the
high level meetings with SMPTE, ITU, etc.

01:35:31:18 - 01:35:37:11
I guess my question is the work that that Dolby does,
Nate does, etc. How much does that inform,

01:35:38:05 - 01:35:42:23
you know, kind of like some of the things that you guys
do on your end, the choices that you make,

01:35:42:23 - 01:35:47:05
the standards that you're adhering to that kind of stuff.
Because I think that like, as Joey pointed

01:35:47:05 - 01:35:51:06
out with Dolby, it's like, okay, cool. Like they put
their badge on something, get some licensing

01:35:51:08 - 01:35:57:25
fees and move on. But it seems to me for a company like
yours, there's a lot more value behind the

01:35:57:25 - 01:36:01:08
scenes happening with something that Dolby is doing,
like that work that Dolby is doing, right?

01:36:01:13 - 01:36:07:20
Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, 100%. I mean, what
we do is, you know, we look, we do look to

01:36:07:20 - 01:36:13:09
and lean on Dolby a lot for guidance on what would
be a best practice, you know, what design

01:36:13:09 - 01:36:20:01
objectives we should be trying to strive for. And, you
know, I interface with Nate a ton, I think

01:36:20:01 - 01:36:25:23
Nate and I probably speak every month or two, just
catch up about everything in the industry and

01:36:26:07 - 01:36:30:22
try to learn about what, you know, Dolby is working on,
what Dolby's interests are, how we can better

01:36:30:22 - 01:36:35:19
facilitate, you know, content creators trying to make
Dolby vision. And I think the answer to Joey's

01:36:35:21 - 01:36:41:10
earlier question in terms of when does it become the
default? I think we can safely say that HDR

01:36:41:15 - 01:36:48:27
will be the default when it's no longer a premium add-on
for most of the streaming services. So I

01:36:48:27 - 01:36:55:01
think when you sign up for a service and the price
is just the default gives you HDR

01:36:55:05 - 01:36:57:16
That extra six bucks a month or whatever.
Yeah, yeah.

01:36:57:25 - 01:37:00:23
Exactly. That's when we'll be there. And I think
that's going to happen. That's going to be,

01:37:00:24 - 01:37:04:15
it's going to be one of these things where people
are like, of course it needs to be HDR.

01:37:05:10 - 01:37:10:07
So we're not quite there yet, but I think we're making
huge strides in that direction. And yeah,

01:37:10:07 - 01:37:15:13
like I said, we do lean a lot on Dolby's guidance there
and try to cater to, you know, what they

01:37:15:13 - 01:37:19:07
see as the pain points in the industry as well within
the, you know, limits of what display

01:37:19:07 - 01:37:23:27
technology can do. But yeah, we look to them
a lot for advice and guidance.

01:37:24:08 - 01:37:29:21
Very cool. Well, David, you have been sitting there
so patiently waiting for us to chat.

01:37:30:00 - 01:37:37:00
Thank you for that. I have to say, David, we did a,
Joey and I did a like overview of calibration

01:37:37:03 - 01:37:41:19
episode a couple of weeks ago and we released it out
there and all I could think was recording

01:37:41:23 - 01:37:46:10
when we were recording with, was that hopefully you
weren't going to, it wasn't going to land

01:37:46:10 - 01:37:51:24
anywhere on your desk and you weren't going to see
it. Right. I was operating from a place of

01:37:51:27 - 01:37:59:14
fear out of this because I have to be honest with
you. You are a, I don't know. I mean,

01:37:59:16 - 01:38:03:25
all of you guys are, but I also, I consider you to be
an industry giant, right? And it's just one

01:38:03:25 - 01:38:08:11
of those things where it's just sort of like, okay, don't
say anything wrong. Don't get corrected by

01:38:08:11 - 01:38:14:14
David. Anybody who knows you realizes that you're just
the sweetest guy and that's not your M.O. in

01:38:14:14 - 01:38:20:09
general. But I will say that we're really excited to
have you on here because I think we could,

01:38:20:15 - 01:38:25:00
we, and we definitely need to do this again with you
revisit our calibration episode because it's

01:38:25:00 - 01:38:30:23
such a deep and complex topic and you're one of the
experts. So again, appreciate your patience,

01:38:30:23 - 01:38:35:18
but I have some questions for you if you're willing.
So I wanted to start out with you

01:38:35:24 - 01:38:43:15
sort of this idea of kind of the consumer versus professional landscape when it comes to calibration.

01:38:43:25 - 01:38:50:20
Right. So like, you know, I think that in my
perspective, what's exciting is that

01:38:50:28 - 01:38:56:16
TVs are getting better, right? That the performance of
TVs are vastly improved. And more importantly,

01:38:57:12 - 01:39:02:25
so many more consumers are aware of kind of the
idea of how calibration can improve

01:39:03:08 - 01:39:08:19
their general investment, you know, in their TV to get
it looking its best. But I wanted to start

01:39:08:19 - 01:39:13:02
out by like this idea between professional and consumer,
like when it comes to calibration and

01:39:13:02 - 01:39:18:01
the quality of this displays, having seen 25,000
or how many of you have calibrated,

01:39:18:19 - 01:39:24:17
is that a tangible difference in terms of accuracy
and quality between the consumer

01:39:24:18 - 01:39:29:03
market, high end consumer market, even let's say, and
in the professional world, are you literally

01:39:29:11 - 01:39:35:11
getting something that's more accurate if you buy a
quote unquote professional display versus a

01:39:35:11 - 01:39:41:15
consumer display, if that makes sense? Well, first off, thank you for having me. And I am honored to

01:39:41:16 - 01:39:50:15
be your third guest ever. Yeah, it's amazing.
In terms of the calibration of displays,

01:39:51:22 - 01:39:57:21
I think a lot of that comes down to, you know, the target
audience, right? And then the budgets that

01:39:57:21 - 01:40:02:03
we have. So when you look at a consumer TV manufacturer,
there's only so much time they can

01:40:02:03 - 01:40:06:04
put towards calibrating that display on the assembly
line, right? Right. Going through that factory,

01:40:06:04 - 01:40:09:25
because the longer they have it on that line, the less
they're getting through, the higher the costs

01:40:09:27 - 01:40:15:00
go up. And when you look at broadcast monitors in the
professional market, you know, people like

01:40:15:00 - 01:40:18:22
FSI, they have a lot more time, right? They can put
a little more time into them. Of course,

01:40:18:22 - 01:40:22:22
we also see those costs go up, right? You know, you
might be paying, I don't know, Bram, what is

01:40:22:22 - 01:40:29:23
it $12,000 for an XMP310? Are you going to pay $12,000
for a 32 inch monitor in the consumer

01:40:29:23 - 01:40:33:29
space? You're probably not going to be paying that
kind of money, but Bram's able to maybe do a

01:40:34:05 - 01:40:37:24
better factory calibration, because he'll put a little
more time and energy into that. So we do

01:40:37:24 - 01:40:45:03
see on the pro side, most manufacturers putting in
more time and energy into making sure they're

01:40:45:03 - 01:40:51:12
getting a display to their customer that has a higher
level of accuracy. The question we always

01:40:51:12 - 01:40:56:06
have, and Bram and I talk about this all the time, is
just because you got a display from even FSI

01:40:56:21 - 01:41:02:04
doesn't mean it's set up right. And what I mean by that
is it comes in one mode, right? It comes in,

01:41:02:04 - 01:41:07:25
let's say 709. You can't just plug it in and
start grading P3. You have to go in the menu,

01:41:07:25 - 01:41:12:27
you have to change it to what you're working in.
And so that's something that if you bring a

01:41:12:27 - 01:41:17:14
calibrator out to your facility, we'll usually say,
what's the mode you're working in? How's your

01:41:17:14 - 01:41:22:29
system set up? Oh, you're in full range. Let me make
sure this monitor is in full range, right?

01:41:23:16 - 01:41:27:27
So you can get a monitor from a manufacturer that might
be very well calibrated. You still have to

01:41:27:27 - 01:41:31:26
know how to use it. And that's very, very important because
it doesn't matter how perfect your monitor

01:41:31:27 - 01:41:38:07
is calibrated if it's not in parity with the signal
you're sending. That ruins the whole thing.

01:41:38:17 - 01:41:42:17
So we see that. On the consumer side, we do
see things getting better. We see

01:41:42:25 - 01:41:49:08
displays getting more predictable. We see technology
getting more stable. And so we do

01:41:49:08 - 01:41:54:01
start to see things coming off the assembly line
a little bit better. And for AviCal with my

01:41:54:01 - 01:41:58:07
calibration hat on, that's not the best thing for an
independent calibrator saying, hey, they're

01:41:58:08 - 01:42:02:12
getting better off the line. Don't worry, they're not
perfect yet. There's still improvement to be

01:42:02:12 - 01:42:07:09
made. Okay. He's like, don't worry, that's calibrating
run. But for Portrait, it's actually

01:42:07:09 - 01:42:10:23
good because we actually make some of the technology
now being used in several factories.

01:42:10:23 - 01:42:12:05
By those CD manufacturers. Sure.

01:42:12:13 - 01:42:16:23
So Portrait is actually working with TV manufacturers
on the line to apply some of our technologies

01:42:16:26 - 01:42:20:04
there. So it's good for Portrait that we're starting
to get from the line, the independent

01:42:20:05 - 01:42:24:09
calibrator. I still think it's good. I still think there's
enough for the independent calibrator out

01:42:24:10 - 01:42:30:01
there to make improvement that's noticeable. So David,
I think one of the next questions I have

01:42:30:01 - 01:42:33:06
is just sort of the complexity of calibration. I
know when I got started, and it's something

01:42:33:06 - 01:42:37:28
I've spoken to Bram about in the past, is that
if you're not doing this every single day,

01:42:38:15 - 01:42:43:20
the software, the tools, et cetera, can be complicated,
can be intimidating. From your

01:42:43:20 - 01:42:49:17
perspective, the state of calibration these days, is
it still difficult? Is it something that's

01:42:49:19 - 01:42:55:05
accessible to colorists like me or to an end user?
Where does that sit? Because it seems like

01:42:55:16 - 01:43:00:12
more and more people are aware anyway of the
benefits of calibration and its need,

01:43:00:23 - 01:43:05:06
but that doesn't necessarily mean they're taking it
on themselves. Where is that sit kind of now

01:43:06:09 - 01:43:11:10
with modern tools and modern software?
I think calibration has gotten

01:43:13:18 - 01:43:18:15
more difficult and at the same time easier in a lot
of ways. It's kind of hard to explain. So

01:43:18:17 - 01:43:25:28
when I started calibrating, it was CRTs. We would even
open up the CRT and take the glare screen off.

01:43:27:01 - 01:43:30:02
You had the Fresnel linticular, and you had the
glare screen. You take the glare screen off,

01:43:30:02 - 01:43:34:06
so you could have that matte finish. You wouldn't have
this huge reflection because 25 years ago,

01:43:34:06 - 01:43:40:07
those were pretty obtrusive glare screens. They're not
like some of what we have today with modern

01:43:40:07 - 01:43:47:10
displays. We'd turn the trim pots and we'd maybe do
focus on the CRTs and then spend hours doing

01:43:47:10 - 01:43:52:06
convergence. You might have convergence for all these
memories. So you have a lot of physical

01:43:52:09 - 01:43:57:19
stuff that happened years ago, but you only had so
many adjustments when it came to dialing,

01:43:57:19 - 01:44:02:12
let's say your grayscale, and you might have had cuts
and gains. You might have only had choose a

01:44:02:12 - 01:44:08:18
gamma. There was no tracking any EOTF or doing a 1D
lookup table. I feel like in those days,

01:44:08:18 - 01:44:13:22
they fought each other a lot more. You change
pedestal and then everything else

01:44:14:04 - 01:44:20:07
needs to be. It's a lot more dialing one thing in and
then dialing another thing back to compensate.

01:44:21:05 - 01:44:27:19
Absolutely. So you go back and forth and you'd have
very few actual controls of the image

01:44:29:04 - 01:44:32:20
compared to today, but you'd have a lot of physical
stuff you could do that would really,

01:44:32:20 - 01:44:36:26
really improve the image. That combined into a really
great image when you were done calibrating

01:44:36:26 - 01:44:41:14
today, there's almost no physical adjustments on a
lot of these flat panels. You have physical

01:44:41:15 - 01:44:45:13
adjustments on projectors, but you don't really have
it on these flat panels, but now you have

01:44:45:13 - 01:44:52:19
very complicated image processing paths where you can
do 1D lookup tables, 3D lookup tables. You can

01:44:52:19 - 01:44:59:20
do different EOTF tracking. There's just so much you
can do. And then you add into the complexity

01:44:59:22 - 01:45:05:15
back then, it was really one calibration you were doing,
whether that was for SMPTE-C or BT-709. Now,

01:45:06:02 - 01:45:11:09
you're calibrating for SDR, HDR, and often Dolby
Vision. So now you have three calibrations

01:45:11:20 - 01:45:16:23
in that one calibration session and that just makes
the complexity that is at another level. Now,

01:45:17:05 - 01:45:23:15
we also didn't have software like CalMAN, 20 years ago,
because 20 years ago CalMAN came out and we're

01:45:23:15 - 01:45:29:04
celebrating our 20th anniversary this year. But 22 years
ago, we didn't have CalMAN to make things

01:45:29:04 - 01:45:34:02
easy. So now with the software that we have and the
software tools that are out there in the

01:45:34:02 - 01:45:40:00
marketplace, it is much easier to quantify a display,
understand what the display is doing,

01:45:40:00 - 01:45:46:03
and make those decisions. And they can help guide you
through that process to success. So even though

01:45:46:03 - 01:45:51:26
they've gotten more complicated from a display adjustment
standpoint and an image processing

01:45:51:26 - 01:45:57:19
standpoint, the software has tried to keep up with
helping users achieve their success with that

01:45:57:19 - 01:46:01:24
calibration process. Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah, I think it's getting easier. I think

01:46:01:25 - 01:46:06:00
we're getting easier and we're going to keep trying
to make it easier over time. So another

01:46:06:02 - 01:46:12:12
thing that pops to mind is when it comes to calibration
is that I think like anything else,

01:46:12:12 - 01:46:16:29
there seems to be levels to this. I mean, just take
a look at some of the hardware. There's

01:46:17:08 - 01:46:23:00
go to the old Apple store and buy a little relatively
cheap colorimeter, put it on the monitor,

01:46:23:10 - 01:46:30:06
you're Bob's your uncle, but then there's $10,000,
$20,000 displays. How important is the

01:46:30:26 - 01:46:37:29
level or quality of gear, specifically when it
comes to meters, and pattern generators,

01:46:37:29 - 01:46:42:29
the hardware aspect of this for achieving success.
I think a lot of people, I know

01:46:43:03 - 01:46:48:05
Joey and I talked to a ton of colorists that go, "Yeah,
cool. I know calibration is important,

01:46:48:05 - 01:46:54:03
but it's not $20,000 important to me." Are there good
results that can be had somewhere in the

01:46:54:03 - 01:46:57:23
middle? Speak to that a little bit because it seems
like there's just a lot of variability

01:46:58:07 - 01:47:02:28
in terms of cost and functionality when
it comes to some of this gear.

01:47:04:05 - 01:47:10:21
Yeah. So this is the question the geeks get into, which
is the how accurate is accurate enough.

01:47:11:25 - 01:47:19:09
And as you go up in equipment capability, when you get
into somebody's higher and laboratory grade

01:47:19:20 - 01:47:27:09
colorimeters and spectroradiometers, you get a higher
level of precision in those measurements.

01:47:27:18 - 01:47:32:10
You get a higher level of repeatability precision, you
get a little more confidence that what you're

01:47:32:10 - 01:47:36:08
measuring is going to be accurate based on maybe
it has a two nanometer bandwidth on a

01:47:36:08 - 01:47:43:01
spectro versus a 10 nanometer bandwidth on a different
spectro. But a colorimeter and even

01:47:43:01 - 01:47:49:03
a low cost device can be quite accurate if it's profiled,
what we call profiled or has a correction

01:47:49:06 - 01:47:55:21
table for that specific display. So we're starting to
see more of that happen at Portrait, where we

01:47:55:22 - 01:48:02:23
have our C6 HDR 5000 colorimeter, and we have a lab
now that we build profiles for it for our

01:48:02:23 - 01:48:08:25
customers for CalMAN in there. So if you have a profile,
you can get a really good result in

01:48:08:25 - 01:48:14:13
comparison to say, a 20, 30, $40,000 spectroradiometer.
If you don't have a profile, you're going

01:48:14:13 - 01:48:19:04
to have a little more error in that reading, right?
And how much that's going to be is going to be

01:48:19:04 - 01:48:25:19
dependent on how far off the profile you're using is.
So you could have a generic WRGB OLED profile,

01:48:25:29 - 01:48:31:06
might be really great on Model A, but Model B has a
different type of panel, maybe it's an MLA panel,

01:48:31:21 - 01:48:35:16
and you're going to have a larger error because you're
using a profile from one for another.

01:48:36:21 - 01:48:40:29
Once you get that calibration of the probe out
of the way, then it starts to become

01:48:40:29 - 01:48:46:16
down what's the capability of the probe itself. So
if you're working on a monitor that says,

01:48:46:24 - 01:48:52:12
say has a really great black level, Quantum Dot OLED,
WRGB OLED, the JOLED panels we saw

01:48:52:27 - 01:49:00:24
on some of the monitors, like the LG 32EP950, those
go pretty darn close to black, if not perfect

01:49:00:24 - 01:49:06:21
black. And if you're trying to calibrate a 1D lookup
table, how low can you measure with your

01:49:06:21 - 01:49:12:08
meter and get a reliable reading? And that starts to become
really important with these. So if you're

01:49:12:08 - 01:49:17:24
calibrating a monitor that only has gains and bias, maybe
you don't care that you can't measure 0.05

01:49:18:00 - 01:49:23:06
nits because you can't adjust it. If you can't adjust
it, you might not care. But if you can

01:49:23:06 - 01:49:27:24
adjust it, and then you're using that probe and you
just can't measure accurately down there,

01:49:27:24 - 01:49:32:11
well, you're going to increase your error. So I guess
to answer the question, I think there's

01:49:32:14 - 01:49:37:03
some really great low cost colorimeters on the market.
And if you know the limitations of those

01:49:37:03 - 01:49:41:22
products, if you know what they can do and what you
might be fighting against in terms of getting

01:49:41:22 - 01:49:46:12
that ultimate accuracy, they're just fine. And
then if you want to go up that next level

01:49:46:22 - 01:49:51:22
to those higher end probes, you just get that
confidence. It's that confidence

01:49:51:22 - 01:49:55:12
gain Bram was telling you about, you're going to get
that confidence that, hey, I know I've got

01:49:55:12 - 01:50:00:26
a probe, it's lab grade, it's right, I can measure
anything with this. I'm going to get the same

01:50:00:26 - 01:50:05:19
result. So I mean, we often think about calibration as like the truth, right? So like that makes a lot

01:50:05:19 - 01:50:09:28
of sense that sort of the more accurate you can be,
the more truth that you're seeing. I guess

01:50:10:03 - 01:50:16:14
the question sort of a part B to that is like, is
that difference between using the higher end

01:50:16:14 - 01:50:24:12
gear and entry level gear, is it enough to be a noticeable
difference to the person looking at

01:50:24:12 - 01:50:30:06
that monitor? Or is this the case of, no, we're getting
this prettier, nicer graphs kind of thing,

01:50:30:23 - 01:50:35:20
but visually it doesn't really matter. I think a lot
of people debate that whether it's something

01:50:35:20 - 01:50:39:22
they can do. Robbie loves to chase pretty calibration
graphs. I do like a pretty graph.

01:50:39:23 - 01:50:47:06
That is for sure. That is for sure. Dave and I have
used, I think for as long as we've known each

01:50:47:06 - 01:50:54:06
other is degrees of accuracy. Accuracy is not a binary thing - accurate or inaccurate thing when it comes to

01:50:54:06 - 01:50:58:25
calibration. It's all about degrees of accuracy. And
that is a sliding scale with a lot of steps.

01:50:59:18 - 01:51:03:22
No, I agree with that Bram. I think that,
you know, for a user like me who's,

01:51:03:22 - 01:51:10:02
who admittedly has a level of OCD that a lot of people
don't have, I am, you know, I can't tell

01:51:10:02 - 01:51:14:00
you how many times I've had conversations with Bram,
sometimes very late at night being like,

01:51:14:10 - 01:51:19:20
all right, man, well, I'm nervous because 0.7 seems
high versus 0.6. I'd really like it to be 0.6,

01:51:19:20 - 01:51:25:02
you know, that kind of thing. And he walks me off
and off a ledge. But I think that, you know,

01:51:25:02 - 01:51:29:10
that's, that's a consideration that people have. Like,
if I'm going to invest all that much money,

01:51:29:10 - 01:51:35:16
am I really getting something that's tangibly different
in terms of what I'm seeing on the

01:51:35:16 - 01:51:41:15
display? It comes down to, again, I think what you're trying to do with it, right? So if I try

01:51:41:15 - 01:51:46:19
to take a lower cost colorimeter and I calibrate an
LG OLED, for example, and I've done this,

01:51:46:19 - 01:51:51:17
I've actually done this myself to see the same difference
you're talking about. My coming out of

01:51:51:17 - 01:51:57:10
black on the LG OLED will be a little different than
if I take, say, my CR100 (Colorimeter) and I do it. And

01:51:57:12 - 01:52:02:01
I can see that if I look at a pattern, like if I
look at a shallow gray ramp, or I look at,

01:52:02:18 - 01:52:06:01
you know, maybe something really dark off like
Spears and Munsell (HDR Patterns). And I can say,

01:52:06:01 - 01:52:10:00
oh, look, I can see a little difference between
these two images. For a consumer,

01:52:11:10 - 01:52:19:05
how dramatic is that? Probably not super dramatic for
a colorist and a content creator that's, you

01:52:19:05 - 01:52:24:20
know, nitpicking every little thing. It's probably
going to be the end of the world.

01:52:24:22 - 01:52:29:26
Having worked with a lot of colorists, we'll see,
oh, the shadow doesn't quite match in this

01:52:29:26 - 01:52:35:13
scene from this monitor versus that monitor. And you
go, oh, well, I need to change this. But

01:52:35:23 - 01:52:42:00
we don't see many pro calibrators using some of these
lower end probes. And one of those things,

01:52:42:00 - 01:52:46:12
and this is something Bram and I have talked about
recently, and I'm tempted to just try and

01:52:47:04 - 01:52:52:16
get this new meter from Minolta that's super fast. And
what I was going to say is we don't see a lot

01:52:52:17 - 01:52:58:29
of pros using these probes if they're calibrating as
a service like Avical is, because they take a

01:52:58:29 - 01:53:04:03
long time, right? So when you spend more money, you
often get a little more sensitivity, a little

01:53:04:03 - 01:53:09:24
more speed, right? So your CR100, your Klein, your Minolta
CA-527, they're going to be a lot faster.

01:53:09:24 - 01:53:14:18
So you can achieve the calibration much quicker. And
so time starts to become money, but you're

01:53:14:18 - 01:53:19:28
not only getting that speed, you're also getting that
increase in precision from these devices.

01:53:20:05 - 01:53:24:20
So it's kind of a win-win if you're doing it as
a business to invest in that better gear

01:53:25:01 - 01:53:33:04
and get in, get out faster along with those better
results. So, you know, I think, I think,

01:53:33:04 - 01:53:37:04
again, if you're in that pro level, it's worth having
that consistency and that accuracy and

01:53:37:18 - 01:53:42:11
then what not from these higher probes. But if you're
in the consumer world, yeah, the lower cost

01:53:42:11 - 01:53:46:02
probes that are on the market are doing a great job.
And I think the most important thing for me

01:53:46:03 - 01:53:49:22
is making sure one, you have a meter profile for
the type of display you want to measure.

01:53:50:08 - 01:53:54:23
And two, making sure it's adequate for the display you
want to measure. You wouldn't buy a probe that

01:53:54:23 - 01:53:58:17
only does a thousand nits if you're trying to calibrate
a 3000-nit monitor. Yeah, obviously.

01:53:58:17 - 01:54:02:18
If you know you're building a LUT that goes near black, you want to make sure that your probe can

01:54:02:18 - 01:54:08:11
measure near black. And so those considerations start
to become less as you go up in the tiers,

01:54:08:11 - 01:54:11:26
because a lot of these higher end probes can measure
really wide dynamic ranges and you don't

01:54:11:27 - 01:54:17:29
have to think about it as much. And one last one
for you before we wrap up this part of our

01:54:17:29 - 01:54:24:01
discussion with you guys. I think one other question
is that, you know, so I buy a display

01:54:24:04 - 01:54:28:02
and it comes in and says, "Oh, hey, it's been calibrated
at the factory." So I'm trusting that

01:54:28:02 - 01:54:33:12
to a certain degree. But I think people know that, hey,
I live with the display for a year or so.

01:54:33:12 - 01:54:39:01
Like I need to recalibrate it. In your opinion,
like what's the recalibration process,

01:54:39:01 - 01:54:44:25
like the necessity of it, right? Like how often should
somebody be going, "Hey, I need to, you

01:54:44:25 - 01:54:49:28
know, validate or recalibrate this display." Can you
put a number on it? Is it every quarter? Is

01:54:49:28 - 01:54:56:01
it every, you know, six months? Like is there a time
demarcation or is it more of just, hey,

01:54:56:01 - 01:54:59:21
that's a personal preference. Do it whenever you
feel like doing it to reassure yourself.

01:55:01:05 - 01:55:04:13
This comes down sort of to the customer, right?
So we have customers that are

01:55:04:28 - 01:55:10:12
that are all over the place. When you think about a
home user, we have some customers that'll call

01:55:10:12 - 01:55:17:28
up a calibrator or recalibrate themselves every six
to 12 months. Realistically, at Avical,

01:55:17:28 - 01:55:21:24
I tell my customers about every 18 months if you're
a home user, they'll average you about three

01:55:21:24 - 01:55:26:16
hours a day, you know, figure they're putting on around
1500 hours. It's going to have drifted.

01:55:26:16 - 01:55:30:12
It has some aging. Let's bring that back in. When
you start getting to content creators,

01:55:31:01 - 01:55:37:01
you start looking at displays that are being used 40,
50, 60 hours a week. And so at that point,

01:55:37:01 - 01:55:41:26
it also comes down to are you using it 40 hours a week
in HDR or are you using it 40 hours a week

01:55:41:26 - 01:55:48:16
in SDR? Our general rule of thumb is about every six
months for a colorist and about once a year

01:55:48:16 - 01:55:53:23
for an editor. Yeah, the editor's model is going to
drift, but if they're not really doing serious

01:55:53:23 - 01:55:59:09
color timing and color grading at the end, then they
can let it drift a little longer if they want.

01:55:59:17 - 01:56:02:24
We did an experiment with the studio a few years
ago where we were coming out every quarter

01:56:03:17 - 01:56:08:11
for about a year and we were quantifying some broadcast
monitors and we were quantifying the

01:56:08:11 - 01:56:13:08
LG OLEDS that were on the wall. What we found was
the LGs were drifting in the quarter a little

01:56:13:08 - 01:56:17:26
more than the broadcast monitors, right? The broadcast
monitors were staying much more stable over that

01:56:17:26 - 01:56:22:06
amount of time. And what we came up with about every
six months is probably pretty good for this

01:56:22:06 - 01:56:27:04
particular studio where they're not really seeing
a difference in parity between the broadcast

01:56:27:05 - 01:56:33:19
Mars and the LG until about that six months point.
And the goal is, I stress this to all

01:56:33:19 - 01:56:39:29
your listeners, try to get ahead of it, right? The point
of recalibration, the point of making sure

01:56:39:29 - 01:56:44:21
you stay dialed in is so that you don't end up with
the fire drill. Because once the client

01:56:44:21 - 01:56:48:13
sees something and you start getting notes or you start
getting someone in your bay questioning,

01:56:48:13 - 01:56:53:02
then it becomes the fire drill and then it's, oh, we
need someone here right away and we need to go.

01:56:53:03 - 01:56:57:21
Oh yeah. And there's loss of, loss of, loss of
trust, like all sorts of issues involved.

01:56:58:07 - 01:57:02:12
Yeah. Yeah. So we try to keep up with our customers,
or at least at Avical, we try to

01:57:02:12 - 01:57:05:26
keep with our customers. Every six to eight months,
we'll send reminders out to our studio

01:57:05:28 - 01:57:10:09
customers and say, Hey, it's been about this long.
You know, are you interested in setting

01:57:10:09 - 01:57:15:17
up a recalibration appointment? Some of them do
it like clockwork. Some of them wait until

01:57:15:20 - 01:57:19:09
the project's over. Maybe it's another season. We have
a lot of TV shows we work on where they'll

01:57:19:10 - 01:57:24:16
do it every season. And they'll just say, you know,
it's, it's good for the season. But again,

01:57:24:16 - 01:57:28:23
that six to eight months is usually pretty good for
a studio. And I'd say about every 18 months

01:57:28:23 - 01:57:34:18
to two years for consumers. Pretty, pretty decent for
most people. Awesome. Well, I think I have

01:57:34:18 - 01:57:38:22
some more questions, but I tell you what, let's hold
off on those additional questions for all

01:57:38:22 - 01:57:43:19
three of you for a part two, because we have a lot
more to ask you, a lot more to dive in,

01:57:43:29 - 01:57:48:01
but hopefully this gives everybody sort of a high
level overview of kind of how these sort of

01:57:48:03 - 01:57:53:03
disparate parts, you know, in these guys sort of
roles in the display industry kind of gel

01:57:53:03 - 01:57:57:20
together from display manufacturing to validation
and kind of standards to actually, you know,

01:57:57:20 - 01:58:01:04
the technical part of getting to make sure that these
displays are as accurate as possible with

01:58:01:04 - 01:58:06:24
calibration. Very cool stuff, guys, but hopefully you'll
stick with us for another part where we'll

01:58:06:26 - 01:58:11:07
fire some rapid fire questions off for you. As a reminder
for any of our viewers, you can always

01:58:11:07 - 01:58:11:25
fire some rapid fire questions off for you. As a reminder
for any of our viewers, you can always

01:58:11:25 - 01:58:16:02
head over to offsetpodcast.com and get some show notes.
We'll definitely have some show notes

01:58:16:02 - 01:58:21:04
for these episodes. You can always follow us on social
media on Instagram or Facebook. Just search

01:58:21:04 - 01:58:27:12
for The Offset Podcast and you can find us on all major
streaming platforms as well as YouTube. Just

01:58:27:12 - 01:58:32:29
search for The Offset Podcast. All right, so stay tuned
for a part two. Very big thanks to all three

01:58:32:29 - 01:58:38:14
of our guests for joining us on this episode, but we'll
be back in just a little bit for part two

01:58:38:14 - 01:58:44:02
and diving into more depth. So for The Offset Podcast,
I'm Robbie Carman. And I'm Joey D'Anna.

01:58:44:03 - 01:58:44:23
Thanks for listening.


Robbie Carman
Robbie Carman

Robbie is the managing colorist and CEO of DC Color. A guitar aficionado who’s never met a piece of gear he didn’t like.

Joey D'Anna
Joey D'Anna

Joey is lead colorist and CTO of DC Color. When he’s not in the color suite you’ll usually find him with a wrench in hand working on one of his classic cars or bikes


Stella Yrigoyen - Editor
Stella Yrigoyen

Stella Yrigoyen is an Austin, TX-based video editor specializing in documentary filmmaking. With a B.S. in Radio-Television-Film from UT Austin and over 7 years of editing experience, Stella possesses an in-depth understanding of the post-production pipeline. In the past year, she worked on Austin PBS series like 'Taco Mafia' and 'Chasing the Tide,' served as a Production Assistant on 'Austin City Limits,' and contributed to various post-production roles on other creatively and technically demanding project


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