Black and White = Chroma!

Hands-on craftsmanship is essential to what we do. Mindful of the blazingly fast introduction of high frame rate and high dynamic range cameras and tools, my co-author and I do what we've always done—we make practical test patterns. Newly introduced color and contrast standards¹ and practices have formidable ramifications for the future of our entire imaging chain. More than ever before, basic display settings such as frame rate and white balance must be rock solid and provably consistent. — Seemingly innocuous variations on familiar test patterns have revealed, and now make completely reproducible, a couple of curious and sometimes substantial inconsistencies found in most LCD monitors. These content-dependent temporal and chromatic distortions—which have long been suspected—can now be isolated, measured, and scrutinized. Our test patterns, which we have released to the Standards Community, raise important questions as to the limits of our ability to preserve artistic intent. Today's explosion of low-cost, highly oversampled “super-cameras” is certain to expose these display shortcomings even more dramatically, and with increasing frequency. — LCD technology is core to our production and distribution ecosystems. This will continue to be the case for a long time. We believe any sustainable discrepancy management practice will likely touch on several different places in the entertainment workflow. We seek guidance from the community on the best path forward.

Published

2015-10

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

LCD, overdrive, test patterns, frame rate, temporal, smear, lag, white balance, calibration, interoperability, match, monitor, chroma shift, chromatic, color, inverse ghosting, zone plate, reference monitor, flicker, moiré

DOI

10.5594/M001657

ISBN

978-1-61482-956-0