Hey folks, amateur video editor here. I was about to purchase Mac Pro and I was wondering what monitor I should also purchase alongside with it. Should I go for the glossy Apple cinema display or some other IPS matte display? I prefer glossy for everyday use myself but I've been hearing that color correction is much better on a matte display. Would like to hear some opinions from those that have worked on these screens for long periods of time editing video.
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Editing video on a glossy 27" cinema display?
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Avoid the Apple monitors for anything colour critical. The are nice looking monitors but it stops there. Bad ergonomics also.
NEC PA series are the best option it seems at the moment. Eizos are equaly good but far more expensive for the same thing.
If you hold off for a month or so you will find a NEC PA series in a 30". 27" is available now.
If you want to spend less. You can get the excpetional LCD2690 or LCD3090 from NEC. Slightly older design but still 98% coverage of the Adobe 98 Colour Space.
Dell Monitors are really good too. Not as good for colour critical use though.
I would always give glossy screens a miss personally. They have a bit of wow factor when you look at the machine but that wears off in seconds when you try to work on one. I think it's the dumbest design ever - style over substance.
NEC PA series are the best option it seems at the moment. Eizos are equaly good but far more expensive for the same thing.
If you hold off for a month or so you will find a NEC PA series in a 30". 27" is available now.
If you want to spend less. You can get the excpetional LCD2690 or LCD3090 from NEC. Slightly older design but still 98% coverage of the Adobe 98 Colour Space.
Dell Monitors are really good too. Not as good for colour critical use though.
I would always give glossy screens a miss personally. They have a bit of wow factor when you look at the machine but that wears off in seconds when you try to work on one. I think it's the dumbest design ever - style over substance.
It depends on how much you want to pay and how critical your color correction work is. I like my Apple 30" matte, though the videos I do on FCS is never color corrected, so color accuracy is never important for video editing, which i do need in photo work. Doesn't the glare bother you? Maybe you work in a dark room 24/7, but I would just hate the glare since I work in a a naturally lighted room. Unless you can stand glare, I would choose an IPS matte display and absolutely stay away from glossy screens. Glossy screens for graphic/imagery work is a joke. 
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If you can fully control the lighting in your work space glossy is fine,but full lighting control is not always possible. you need a lighted keyboard.
if your working with video you need a dedicated NTSC TV monitor for preview. Computer monitors use a different color space so don't waste your money on a fancy monitor when you really need a nice TV
You mean you'd work in a dark room? That's not at all the right way to use an LCD. They are designed for use in a room whose general illumination is similar to the brightness of the LCD. Using an LCD in the dark will give you bad eyestrain.
Well, it's not going to kill you, but it is worse for color correction.
However, I'd argue if you want to do serious color correction get an actual preview monitor hooked up as your second display. Any computer display is probably not going to be representative of the sort of display viewers will watch your content on. But that's if you really seriously color correct.
Full lighting control means direction and brightness of all the rooms light and the screen itself.. I am able to keep all lighting glare off screen. I am also able have room dark to bright and in between.
My screen is wall mounted and can tilt downward and left or right. Further reducing glare.
If he can do all that it may work for him. As an aside I have color blindness and have had 2 cataract operations . So color correction is not why I have a 27 inch apple screen. Clarity and brightness were my needs. I will say this the glare is brutal without proper lighting control.
Yeah glossy is OK if you have correct calibration and ambient light control. I have an NEC 20WMGX2 and it stays stable as .29 DeltaE with ColorEyes and i1 pro puck. No issues with proofs etc. But if it is that important, you should get an Eizo with calibration kit or something like that. The NEC IPS stuff is good but input lag and response times are terrible so I stayed away. I needed all purpose. The Dell IPS's are awesome if calibrated and have anti-glare for a fraction of the price of others. In the end the Apple is too limited. The cable is too short, there are no RGB controls and it has an LED backlight which aside from running pretty "green" is a pain to calibrate. You have to use a Spyder3 and I have gone through 3 of those as they break easily. Glass also make it more difficult to calibrate.
Hi!
My advice is, try yourself, if you could, Glossy and Mate Displays in your office.
For all purposes I prefer Mate finish. The ACD 27" is very nice but if you work in a place with light, reflection... it´s a nightmare!
I bought a DELL U2711 and my experience is very good.
Try it... in my opinion!
Best regrets
P
My advice is, try yourself, if you could, Glossy and Mate Displays in your office.
For all purposes I prefer Mate finish. The ACD 27" is very nice but if you work in a place with light, reflection... it´s a nightmare!
I bought a DELL U2711 and my experience is very good.
Try it... in my opinion!
Best regrets
P
Unless the OP is producing videos for the web, in which case most viewers will probably also be using glossy LCD monitors... delivery medium might be an important consideration.
That said, unless it is web video you're editing, I completely agree. If the final medium is TV or film, and colour correction is important to you, a proper preview monitor is a must...
Actually, they're really not the same thing. While the panels themselves can sometimes be identical, Eizos also have internal hardware color calibration (as in, independent from the graphics card), whereas the PA series NECs lack this and would be calibrated to an ICC profile linked to the graphics card.
This a lot of what makes Eizos so expensive, actually. But I would still wholeheartedly recommend an NEC. They're easily the best looking displays for the money.
To the OP:
Color correction makes a big difference with just about any published media, actually, whether it's for web, TV or film. It will give your work a professional edge. iMacs use very decent IPS-based panels so they're actually of reasonably good quality, minus the whole glossy factor.
Also understand that color correction for digital photos (typically sRGB color space) and broadcast video (usually NTSC/PAL or REC-709 color space) are inherently different. Computer monitors are by nature RGB devices, whereas televisions are YUV devices. For this reason, what looks correct on an RGB display won't on a YUV display, and vice-versa. This is definitely something to consider if you distribute work via broadcast or DVD/Blu-ray.
Many pro video editors and practically all post houses use calibrated NTSC broadcast monitors (connected via a capture or I/O interface) in conjunction with their normal computer display(s) to properly grade video. Matrox also makes a device called the MXO, which acts as scan converter, allowing you to use a quality computer monitor as a NTSC broadcast monitor.
But of course if, your primary delivery method will be Internet, a properly calibrated RGB monitor would likely work fine.
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Thanks everyone for the input.
So my computer display shouldn't matter much then? I was looking at the new MacBook Pro's and was wondering if that would be a better option. I could buy the MacBook Pro for less while it already comes with a display and the benefit of it being portable then spend the money on a good external NTSC TV. But then it comes back down to glossy or matte so I'm assuming everyone would say I should go for matte for web video or does it not matter as much and can I choose my personal preference(which is glossy)?
So my computer display shouldn't matter much then? I was looking at the new MacBook Pro's and was wondering if that would be a better option. I could buy the MacBook Pro for less while it already comes with a display and the benefit of it being portable then spend the money on a good external NTSC TV. But then it comes back down to glossy or matte so I'm assuming everyone would say I should go for matte for web video or does it not matter as much and can I choose my personal preference(which is glossy)?
The quality of a laptop screen is entirely different than desktop monitors. Low viewing angles, bad response times. Fairly bad color out of the box and hard to calibrate. But if color accuracy does not matter its no biggie. Apple is now on 2.2 gamma so things can't get too bad.
Buy the display you're editing for...
If you're doing web video, a lot of the people viewing your stuff might have glossy displays.
If you're targeting TV, or higher end displays, you'll want a secondary higher end monitor.
If you're just doing it as a hobby, your display doesn't matter.
Any way you go, I think having a glossy is ok if that's your personal preference.
Actually, not the case. Even the older NEC LCD2690 and 3090 had it's own hardware 12bit internal LUT. I've been using them for some years now with Spectraview. The PA series is the newer technology, LED Backlit display and infact does use internal LUT hardware calibration via Spectraview and a choice of calibrators.
The difference between Eizo and NEC really is the price and an established pedigree that no is no longer unmatched by anyone else. That's all. NEC has wider viewing angle than the Eizo's too for which you have to be dead on. While it's getting better still not as good as the NEC. The NEC does exactly the same thing for much less.
sRGB for photos? This is the last thing a professional would choose. Only chain type mini-labs use sRGB and the reason for this is it is closest to an image which is stripped of colour profiling which is what something like iPhoto does to it's library. It's a much smaller colour space than Adobe 98 which has been the standard colour space for well over a decade. Profoto is the colourspace people are starting to move to but no monitors display this as yet and it requires specialized colour knowledge to manipulate properly. Current Pro Inkjets have a colour gamut that exceeds Adobe98 but is less than Profoto.
Web use is sRGB as it's most similar to an image which has been stripped of it's colour tagging. Which is what older browsers do, ignore them. However now with the advent of wider gamut monitors browsers have mostly shifted to colour management. Flash however hides the profile from the viewer so it's best to use sRGB for flash websites still otherwise your images will be oversaturated.
AND Imac screens are terrible for anything colour critical. Oversaturated, Delta E that's all over the place and no adjustability makes them impossible to calibrate properly. They do this for a reason for a obviously!
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Spyder3Elite, for video work. It's cheap and does a excellent job. Be aware that there is a HUGE gap between the color temp you calibrate to (6500K) and the standard default tv of today (+9300k). 9300K is very blue compared to 6500K. Also be carefull with your black level, and Gamma. You either need to understand the terms, or be sure you use the right settings.
I personally use:
Black = 2.5 cd/m2
White = 120 cd/m2
Gamma = 2.35
Whitepoint = 6500K
That is sort of a modified EBU standard.
Don't believe the hype about needing a broadcast monitor. The only thing you need that for is when you work with interlaced video, and they are things of the past, still alive in post production facilities. Once calibrated an IPS based LCD like ACD's deliver well within the REC 709 colorspace, even though you will meet a ton of "experts" who will tell you otherwise.
Happy calibrating
EdBBOB