Top Calibration and Display Setup Questions (with Bram Desmet)

How to Avoid Common Calibration Mistakes (and setup your display for sRGB)

Team Mixing Light recently had the pleasure of spending a day with Bram Desmet of Flanders Scientific. We took the opportunity to have a series of conversations with him. In this conversation, Patrick asks Bram about the top calibration mistakes and misunderstandings that FSI experiences. Remember, FSI is heavily invested in providing calibration services to its customers – including educating them in proper calibration workflows. Bram and his team have helped thousands of production and post production pros in properly setting up their displays.

If you’ve been following along in Mixing Light’s various calibration series then you’ll be familiar with some of the pitfalls that Bram encounters; for you, this Insight is filled with good reminders of proper workflows and practices. If you’re coming to this video Insight without the benefit of learning from our series then you’ll get some great tips and pitfalls to avoid. And at the bottom of this text are additional Insights to help you get started with display profiling and calibration.

Topics Covered in this Insight:

• 3D LUT calibration tip: FSI’s displays offer the ability to upload calibration LUTs. Bram starts off the discussion with the biggest mistake people make when calibrating using 3D LUTs.
• 3D LUT calibration – OLED vs LCD: As a follow-up to the previous tip, Patrick asks the difference between setting your nit values on an OLED versus an LCD in the precalibration step.
• How to choose your gamma and color space for web delivery: Message boards are littered with questions (and answers) on this topic. If you’re using a high-performance display then Bram has the answer for you.
• How to choose between Full Range and Video Levels on your display: Another topic that litters message boards (and we recently covered here in the CalMAN series) is asked – and answered – by Bram.
• How to choose between Full Range and Video Levels in Premiere Pro and FCPx: Those of us working in DaVinci Resolve are lucky, we have granular control over the settings Resolve outputs to an external display. But what should you do if you use different software, such as Premiere Pro or FCPX?

Related Insights on MixingLight.com

At the time of this writing, Mixing Light is approaching its 5th anniversary. And we’ve covered many of these topics in various degrees of depth. If you want to dig deeper then here are some of our suggestions:

• Calibrating with CalMAN Series: This series is still on going but digs deeply into many of the calibration topics discussed in this Insight.
• Using Calibration Test Images In Your NLE: If you want to test your particular external display to make sure you don’t have a Data level vs. Video level mismatch, this Insight shows you how to figure it out.
• Introduction to Reference Display Profiling: Are you new to calibration and a little intimidated by it? This series is our ‘starter’ series that answers the question: Does my external display need to be calibrated?? You’ll start from ground zero and it prepares you for the more in-depth CalMAN series and our upcoming LightSpace series.