Singapore-based Widescreen Media is a post-production house specialising in high definition online editing, colour grading and motion graphics for the broadcast and feature film markets.

Responsible for the post-production of award-winning feature film 18 Grams of Love, Widescreen has also worked on a number of high profile international documentaries, television dramas, commercial and corporate videos. These have included work for National Geographic, the Korean Broadcasting Institute, Arte, Caldecott Productions International and the Korean Broadcasting Commission.

Colour challenge

Like all post-production professionals, Widescreen recognises the importance of achieving predictable and consistent colour across its whole workflow and this total visual reliability depends on efficient colour grading.

"Colour grading is an integral part of the post production process for feature films; the final polish," says Widescreen director, Ian Wee. "Colour correction and treatment achieve the director's vision of how he wants the film to look and this digital manipulation is important because the vision cannot always be achieved through the camera."

The challenge for post-production professionals is to ensure that corresponding colours are seen on each of their monitors and that the same shades are eventually reproduced on the big screen. The traditional solution has been to use high definition Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitors.

However, while this older technology provides a wide colour gamut, the monitors are bulky and since they are analogue-based they also tend to go off calibration – a problem that grows with age, increasing the levels of re-calibration and maintenance required. Also, high-end broadcast-standard CRT monitors can cost as much as US$50,000.

Slim Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) monitors are an attractive alternative but they also have problems as Wee explains: "LCD monitors fall short of the mark because they are extremely expensive, costing around US$25,000. Also the prevalent LCD norm is 8-bit which means that they can only reproduce 16.7 million colours. While that may sound a lot, it is not sufficient for broadcast and feature film work where we need a minimum of 10-bit. We work with 1.07 billion colours so with traditional LCDs we just cannot see all the colours we are working with on screen."

Consistent results

Now, these problems have been solved by HP with the development of HP DreamColor Technologies and specifically, the HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional LCD display which is the world's first colour-critical 24-inch widescreen LCD to offer a viable alternative to CRT for colour critical applications.

Delivering accurate, predictable, consistent colour and rich visual quality across total film or video production workflows, DreamColor monitors provide 30-bit, billion-colour accuracy which is 64 times the number of colours supported by traditional LCDs. They can also represent a saving of over 90 percent on the cost of competing 30-bit LCDs.

The tri-colour LED backlight enables high colour fidelity with deeper colours, CRT-class black and programmable white. For ease-of-use, DreamColor monitors come with seven colour space presets for luminance, gamma, gamut and white point, enabling the user to achieve completely accurate rendition of sRGB (colour space for consumer digital photography and most Web/CG content), Adobe RGB (professional document and graphics work and professional digital photography), Rec.601, Rec.709 (HDTV standard colour space) and DCI-P3 (Digital Cinema Initiative standard colour space for digital film makers)at the touch of a button. The user benefits from tilt, swivel and height adjustment and a redesigned onscreen display that enables quick customisation settings. DreamColor also offers many options for enhanced connectivity.

Huge savings

"Our primary use for the DreamColor is as a colour grading reference monitor," says Wee. "It enables us to be more consistent with our results across a project and has eliminated the need to use what we call 'hero' monitors. These are the most accurate CRT monitors we have and are used as the final basis for judgement in our colour-grading of critical work but they have to be shared by teams and transported between suites.

"Now, since a DreamColor monitor costs around $2,000 rather than the $25,000 of other LCD screens, even with the necessary converter boxes, it is cost effective for me to buy a DreamColor for every suite which is a major benefit because the accuracy is then consistent across the suites."

DreamColor's pre-set definitions are also popular with Widescreen operators working on broadcast and feature film markets, the most useful being the DCI-P3 and Rec.709 standards.

"In addition to the low price, the sheer quantity of colours we can see on the DreamColor screen is the biggest benefit for us. It means that the quality of our work is improved and we also save time by not having to re-calibrate CRT screens before every job," adds Wee.

"Since everyone sees the same image, using DreamColor makes our work easier and allows us to be more productive, delivering more consistent results across projects which ultimately improves the service we can give to our customers, making us more competitive."

Rate This Article

Excellent
Very Good
Good
Quite Good
Poor

  Rate This Article

Related Stories

Sensio teams up with Trident Microsystems - 1/9/2010

Montreal - Sensio Technologies Inc is collaborating with Trident Microystems Inc to provide Trident with 3D technology. Trident's system-on-chip and discrete semiconductor solutions target the digital [...]

David Hofflich leaves Asylum for Oktobor - 18/8/2010

Auckland - Award-winning visual effects, animation and digital creative convergence studio Oktobor announced that former Asylum Visual Effects LA EP David Hofflich has joined their team as executive p [...]

Dalet nominated for IBC innovation awards - 22/6/2010

Levallois-Perret, France - Dalet Digital Media Systems has been shortlisted for the IBC Innovation Awards 2010 Content Management category for their involvement with the Antena 3 Noticias project. [...]