Sound for Video Session: Choosing Audio Monitors

Here are some more thoughts on things to consider when it comes time to invest in reference near-field monitors to take your audio processing to the next level.

Aputure VS-2 FineHD Monitor: See When You Shoot!

The tiny 3 inch screens on most cameras vary in quality but the fact remains that it is hard to compose, focus and expose your video in such a small space. My eyesight is 20/20 but with large sensor cameras, I am often surprised at how often I miss focus when I rely on my viewfinder or 3" screen. I'm also surprised and disappointed at how often I miss distracting elements in my composition simply because I couldn't see it in the EVF or screen.

That's a big part of the value of external monitors like the Aputure VS-2 FineHD. This is a 1920x1200 resolution HDMI monitor that is very reasonably priced and nicely appointed for its $299 price. The kit comes with everything you need to use it right out of the box including a friction arm, 2 HDMI cables, battery, charger, sun hood, and more.

For the last year, I’ve been using a 7 inch HDMI monitor/recorder (Atomos Shogun) which has helped me work more quickly and shoot with more confidence and fewer missed shots.

Aputure was kind enough to send us this unit before they start shipping generally.

Monitoring Audio: Headphones or Near-field Monitors?

If you're looking to improve the sound for your film or video projects, you need a way to listen to your sound so that you know whether it's as good as you'd like. If you're like me, you're not doing your audio post-production work in an acoustically treated studio or control room. More likely you've got a home office or spare bedroom.

And you don't typically want awesome hi-fi speakers for this job because hi-fi speakers are meant to make everything sound as good as possible. They are usually designed to add a little more bass and a little more treble.

What you really need is a brutally honest sound that is as accurate as possible. And that's the job of near-field monitors and reference headphones.

So in cases like mine where you're working in a spare bedroom, do you go with near field monitors or do you go with a good set of headphones? Do you try to acoustically treat your room? Ideally, both.

That's a tough question that I haven't totally answered even for myself. I have a set of the KRK Rokit 8 near field monitors. But they're not exactly perfect, particularly since the room I'm working in is FAR from acoustically perfect. I recently bought a reference measurement mic and used FuzzMeasure to see how long various frequencies hang around in my room. It wasn't pretty at all. Like almost all small household bedrooms, the bass lingers forever. And you might think, "You must get amazing bass sound in that room." But no, it is actually quite the opposite. The bass is mushy and creates all sorts of comb filtering. So I'm not getting an accurate picture of my recordings at all. How frustrating!

So I've got a DIY project in motion to see if I can address that issue by trapping some of that extraneous bass. More on that in the future.

I also have a set of Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro 32 ohm headphones that I bought several years ago. These are closed-back headphones that sound very good, but they have a closed back design. This makes them very good for use when you're recording (so that sound doesn't spill out and back into the mic) but to get the most accurate sound, most reference headphones have an open-back design. Evidently you just can't get reference accurate sound in a closed back design.

So I'm now on the hunt for a decent pair of reference headphones. I've got my eyes on the AKG K712 Pro reference headphones. Anyone out there have experience with these? There are several other options in the same pricerange. Audio Technica has a new offering but their marketing materials say very little about accuracy. I realize that's very difficult or impossible to capture in specifications.

Deal: X-Rite i1Display Pro Colorimeter - Calibrate Your Computer Monitor

B&H has a special going on the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter which is what I use to calibrate my computer monitor. Now this is not to be confused with a legitimate color managed workflow that colorists use (at many thousands of dollars), but for those of us that are enthusiasts or one-person crews, calibrating your computer monitor will at least get you into the ballpark and ensure you produce reasonably consistent color on your video and photo projects. And now, you can pick this up for less than $200 US. It comes with X-Rite's Profiler software and calibrates your monitor quickly and easily. Here's a recent episode where we showed the process on my Mac. (also works with Windows):

https://youtu.be/Q7jrIWVBD98

Calibrate Your Computer Monitor For Web Video and Photo

For a long time I’ve felt like I was fighting to get the color in my videos to look right. I'd get things looking right on my computer, upload, and then when I viewed from another computer, YUCK! In this episode we cover how to calibrate your computer monitor to get more consistent results. In this case, I use the X-Rite i1 Display Pro colorimeter. This episode is NOT intended for serious color critical decision making nor for professional color grading. Monitoring for pro work like that is far more expensive than most of us hobbyists can afford. But the calibration we cover here is a nice first step for someone on a very tight budget.

http://youtu.be/Q7jrIWVBD98

- For the longest time, I felt like my color results for video and photography have been pretty inconsistent. It was not unusual for me to color correct a video and do my best to get it looking how I wanted it to look but then find, with frustration, that on other computers it looked totally different and in many cases, really, really bad.

- Calibration your monitor can help with this issue.

- First a note, this is NOT a guide for high-end, professional color grading because proper solutions in that league generally cost more than most of us enthusiasts can afford, using 4 - 10,000 dollar reference monitors fed by video I/O cards rather than a standard computer graphics card.

- This episode is for people with regular computer monitors and very small budgets that want to take the first step to ensure that their videos or photos look decent when displayed on other computers on the web. Note that it is not just a matter of identifying monitors that have “really good color” or are “really accurate”. Every room is different and every batch of monitors and computers are different. Even the highest quality monitor should be calibrated in the environment where it will be used.

- Calibration of your monitor does not suddenly make your $150 US monitor from a big-box store look amazing with images and footage the pops off the screen! It doesn’t even ensure that your monitor is able to cover all of the colors or luminance levels of any standards.

- What it does is set your monitor as close to a standard color space, white point (balance), luminance levels and contrast (gamma curve) as your monitor is capable. The goal is to do the color correction and grading on a monitor that is close to the standard and then when displayed on the web and all of the monitors people use out there (which are mostly NOT calibrated), they will at least look reasonably consistent with the look that their monitor imparts to other images and footage produced in color managed workflows—closer to how you intended it to look.

- So, it doesn’t make crappy monitors look amazing, or even make good monitors look amazing, it just makes them display everything as close to the standard as that monitor is capable.

- What standard are we talking about? For computers, we’re talking about sRGB. This applies to both Windows and Macs.

- As background, I have two relatively inexpensive monitors. The really cheap one is a 7 year old HP monitor that is really quite bad in a host of ways that we won’t bother to cover here. I’m in the market to replace it with a reasonably affordable, but more capable monitor. My main monitor is a Dell Ultrasharp U2413. This is a “wide gamut” monitor that cost around $475 USD at the time I bought it. It is much better than my old HP but not a high-end color correction/grading reference monitor. But it is good enough to do non-pro web delivered video production.

- How do I calibrate the two? I use the X-Rite i1 Display Pro colorimeter which comes with X-Rite i1 Profiler software. This is an approximately $250 device that you place on your monitor, connect to your computer via USB and the software runs the monitor through a series of color swatches to calibrate your monitor in terms of contrast, white balance, and color space to get you as close to the sRGB standard as possible. On more modern monitors, it can change all the monitor settings for you. On older, less capable monitors, you may have to manually set the “brightness” settings

- It also tests the quality of your monitor to let you know how closely it is able to reproduce the sRGB color space and white balance and contrast (gamma) and can also test the uniformity of your monitor—whether you have any bright or dim spots from the backlight.

- The process takes about 3 to 5 minutes and it is recommended that you run it every 4 weeks or so. It works with various types of LCD screens (fl or LED backlit) and CRTs and even projectors.

- First thing I noticed after the first calibration is that my monitor looked a lot less bright, almost too dim. I learned that ideally, your room should be dark, with one high CRI light behind the monitor aimed at the wall. This is why the “grading suites” either have no windows or the windows are covered to block all light from coming in and influencing the color of the light in the room. This not only provides a more consistent environment but also reduces eye strain.

- Is it worth the $250 price tag? For me it was because, subjectively, I do not struggle with the final color and contrast of my projects since I’ve been using this—I now get much more consistent results.

- Don’t get too confused by the color grading forums where people tell you that you cannot use your computer’s monitor to color grade. That’s true if you are color grading for broadcast TV or cinema projection and selling your services as a professional colorist, but if you’re just producing enthusiast videos for online, using a colorimeter to calibrate your computer’s monitor is way better than nothing at all.

- I’m still in the process of researching what I will do when it comes time to upgrade to a reference grade monitor and will share more as I learn more. Check out LearnLightAndSound.com for more articles on what I find.