 Hey, how you doing? It's Greg back to here and in this video I'm going to show you how to calibrate your HDTV or your 4K TV using SpectreCal's Calmin software and the X-Rite i1 Display Pro. All right, let's get started. So in a second, we're going to go to the computer. I'm going to walk you through step by step using the SpectreCal Calmin software. Now, if you're watching this video, you may be on the fence whether you should calibrate it yourself or whether you should hire someone. I know Best Buy has a service where they'll come out and do it for three or four hundred dollars. I highly recommend doing this yourself, especially if you're already a photographer and you calibrate your computer monitor. It makes sense to calibrate your TV as well. Now, you can use the X-Rite i1 Display Pro to calibrate your computer monitor to make sure you have accurate colors. And you can also use that to calibrate your television using the SpectreCal Calmin software, which I'll walk you through. Now, if you think about it, movies and television is set to a certain standard. But if you don't calibrate your TV, then you're not really seeing the results you should be seeing. Just like if you don't calibrate your computer monitor, your photographs aren't going to have accurate color, the same goes for your TV. And that's why I think it's very important. And it's easy to do. You can do it yourself and you'll see that in this video. All right, let's get to the software portion of this video. All right, so here we are on the computer. We're looking at the Calmin software here. And what's great about this is you can choose a wide number of workflows. I'm going to put a link below in the description box below this video. And I'll give you a link to the SpectreCal website where you can check out the different versions of software that they have, as well as I'll have a link to a tutorial, a written tutorial too. All right, so let's get started. So if we go here to workflow, this is the first page that comes up, you can see there's a number of different workflows. We're going to pick a basic calibration. You can also give it a name or a description right there. We're going to click start session. And I'll walk you through this software. What's great about this software is it's very step by step. And there's also instructions as well. And there's also help. So I found it very easy. And once you do it once or twice, it becomes really second nature. It's really fantastic software to work with. So I'm going to click on next right here at the bottom. And you can see find source. And so right now if we were going to use a DVD test pattern, then that would be fine. We'd leave it for there. But if we wanted to use the SpectreCal mobile forge app, which I'm using, we'd click find source here. Now you can see it says manual control. That would be for a DVD. Now these are different test pattern devices that you can use that are compatible with the Kalman software. I'm going to choose SpectreCal here. And I'm going to click here and I'm going to look for the mobile forge app. Now you can download this app for iOS or Android. I'm going to click here. Now this is going to be using my iPhone. So it's searching for my iPhone. Once it shows up, I click on my iPhone and I click connect. Now I'm connected to my iPhone and my iPhone is going to display the test patterns through the Apple TV. Now I'll also put some settings for your Apple TV in the written tutorial. I'll put that link in the description box just below this video. But you want to make sure your Apple TV is set up properly so that you're getting the proper test patterns on your television. So I'll just say it again. I'm using the Apple TV in conjunction with my iPhone and the mobile forge app to create these test patterns on my television. Now there's also Android iOS and there's also an Amazon Fire Stick. Now you can also use a DVD for test patterns. That'll be a separate video. I'll put a link in the description box below for how you can calibrate using a DVD. But right now we're using a mobile forge app. I hope that's clear. I'm going to click on next and you can see here find meter. It's already found my meter. So I'm using the X-Rate i1 display pro retail version. Now number two, this is your LCD lighting configuration. So some TVs have different. So you see there's LCD LED, there's LCD LED RGB. I'm using a 4K Sony TV. I contact at Spectre Cal. I suggest you do the same and make sure that you have this setting correct. For my TV, it's LCD LED blue-green. So that's the setting for my Sony TV. It may be different for yours. I would contact Spectre Cal and make sure you have that set right. Now we'll go to the next screen. We'll skip here as well. Now I'm calibrating a 4K TV for standard. There's Ultra HD. This is just standard dynamic range right now. So my color space is Rec 709 sRGB. The white point is D65 Gamma Formula ITU BT1886. Again this is the display type for my Sony TV, the LCD LED blue-green setting, pattern size 100. I'll click next again. Now here you would put your different settings. So this would be your pre-calibration setting. So what I recommend that you do is you call up your default settings for a movie mode. So on a Samsung TV it would be a movie preset. On the Sony they have Cinema Pro and that type of thing. So I would pick something that's close to a movie setting and then just fill this out. So whatever your current color temperature is, your Gamma, I'm going to walk you through these settings in a second on my TV. I'm not going to fill this out. I don't want to bore you. But I would put these settings so that you can compare your pre-calibration with your post-calibration settings. And I'm going to click on next again. Normally I would fill that out. Now once I click on this we're going to run through a series of test patterns. So with my other camera I'll show you. I have the X-Rite color meter set up in the center of my screen and that's going to measure the different test patterns. Now there's a couple of different methods. There's the contact method where I have this just touching my screen. There's also some people say that they prefer the non-contact method. I'm going to put a written tutorial. I'll put a link to that in the description where I'll go into more depth about contact versus non-contact. I'm using the contact method and I have a boom stand. I'm also a photographer. I'm lucky to have this boom stand and it allows me to put the color meter in the exact position that I need. All right so let's just do a pre-cal run. Now you can see here we can play a single test pattern here or I can put read series. Now this is great if you're using a DVD this is a manual process where you'll have to go to each screen on the DVD but because I'm using the SpectreCal Calmin Mobile 4Jab it does it for me. So just watch what happens as I click read series. It's going to run through the various test patterns and then it's going to take a measured reading of that. So this is the pre-calibration view. I'm on the Pro Cinema setting and I'll show you in a second. There's a couple of tips I want to give you before we should have done this but you want to make sure that everything is zeroed out. So I'm going to call that up in a second as this goes through this. Once it's done I'll call it up and I'll show you what I mean but before you do the pre-calibration you want to make sure that any additional processing that your TV offers is turned off. So I'll call that up on the Sony TV and I'll show you what that looks like. It's going to look a little different if you're a Samsung or LG user but the thought process is basically the same. So we're on picture mode Cinema Pro and what I mean is any external processing like auto picture mode that's off. Now the brightness and contrast you can set that with a test pattern beforehand with the AVS709. You can download that for free and that'll help you set your brightness and your contrast on your TV. I've already done this so I know roughly brightness should be around 18. Now if we go to this mode here you could see if I look on the right you could see my black adjust is off the advanced contrast enhancer auto local dimming all of these processing modes live color off just want to make sure these are all set off reality creation off random noise digital noise set all of the extra external processing that your TV can do to off we just want the basics for this calibration so I just want to show you that you should do that prior to doing your pre-calibration little run that I just did but you can see here now if we look at the screen you can see there's a real blue push it looks like green and red are pretty close together across the board if we look left to right 10 would be the darker darks or blacks and if you go to 100 that's the brighter brights or the whites so that's how that graph works now we're going to go to next we're going to go to the next screen and we're going to start making some adjustments now they have different settings depending on your TV now the sony has like I said the cinema pro they have I'll show you a couple here and it's a little different on the sony and the samsung so we have cinema pro but if I click here I also have cinema home or custom so we want to pick one that's close to 6500 and that's the temperature we want and I know the cinema pro cinema home are pretty close to that on the Samsung I believe the movie mode is probably one that you want to start with so that's what we're going to measure so I'm just going to click that off here just to make sure that's off screen and then what I could do here is say read series but what it's also pretty neat about this too is they also have a continuous if you look to the right here it's a read continuous now what that allows you to do is when you click on that you can go through the different modes and see if you can find one that's a little closer to 6500 now I already know from testing that this mode is the closest I can get to 6500 so that's the one I'm going to choose now let me just show you what would happen if I switch modes for example it shouldn't really change too much on this one actually let me show you on the next one because there's also a different mode I'll show you in a second because all of these modes on the Sony are pretty good they're pretty close to 6500 but let's go to the next screen and I'll show you what I mean and just skip that one now there's a mode setting color temperature now they have this on the Sony they have this on Samsung as well and so we've picked that first one the Cinema Pro but if I go down here to advanced settings and if I go to color you can see I have color temperature now you'll see this as well on a Samsung and other TVs so expert one you can see we've got expert two we have cool we have neutral we have warm you'll see settings like warm one and warm two on the Samsung now as I go through this you'll see how this read continuous works so I'm just going to say read series and it's going to read the series here and it's going to show me the temperature now watch what happens if I put read continuous and then if I switch this mode you should see the temperatures change because it's reading continuous so as I get to something that's a little different you can see right now that's a lot higher than the suggested 6500 so just from trial and error knowing doing this a few times I know that expert one is pretty close to 6500 on my set so I'll put a list of all my settings for the Sony TV at the end of this video too so that you can just use those as a starting point for your calibration so I'm at expert one and I'm at Cinema Pro and I'm going to go to the next screen now we're going to measure our gamma and it's very similar to we can do the read series we can do continuous read and make some adjustments till we get the suggested gamma reading now I'm going to read series here and it's going to go through and it's going to read this and it's at 2.2 so also have a link to a written tutorial that goes a little deeper but I want to be around 2.2 for my room now some people might want to be around 2.4 for a darker room but I'm going to calibrate my TV for a brighter room now I also suggest too that you do this in a darkened room without external light sources bouncing off of your TV so I've got the curtains closed in here I don't have any other light sources hitting my TV I wouldn't suggest doing this in a really bright room so try to keep that in mind too is when you calibrate it I don't think it has to be a totally black room but make sure there's no external light sources bouncing off your TV all right so we're going to go to next here I'm happy with that gamma setting now I'm going to skip this one here I don't have any adjustments for that I'm going to skip this just from trial and error I know my brightness and contrast settings are pretty accurate the way I have them right now I'm going to skip this one as well I've already done this you can use a test disk to do this so here's where we get into the actual calibration of things right here and this is where it's going to get interesting and I can make some adjustments now this is going to measure at 30% and 80% and what I want to do is make some adjustments and you'll see that in real time to those settings so we're going to come over here we're going to click read series now this is going to read the series and it's going to show us a little graph now I'm going to start with the high point and then we'll do the low point and they work together now in order to be able to see my adjustments in real time I click read continuous so I'm going to click on the action menu on the Sony TV I'm going to go to picture adjustments and then I'm going to go to advanced settings so I'll have that pop up so you can see that now you can see my brightness is at 18 my contrast is at 90 my gamma is minus one it's different my home settings a little brighter this is my movie setting so pro cinema the gamma is at minus one the black level is at 50 and then we're going to go to color we're going to go to advanced color temperature right here now you can see we have red green and blue so r gain g gain blue gain now that's the upper portion so the 80% so if we want to adjust that we adjust these controls now in the Sony TV they're at max that's the default setting it may be different on a Samsung the default setting might be in the middle it might be neutral or 50 now for the lower settings this is the red green blue or the r bias g bias b bias this is to adjust the 30 portion so as I look to the right at where it says 80% there that's the upper portion so I want to use the r gain g gain or b gain I can see that the blue gain is too high so I'm going to click on the blue gain b gain and I'm going to go minus and see what happens as we go to the left or take some of that blue out now you can see here we have a zero and one two three on the right where you can see the gray patterns we want that to be just below one so I'm going to keep going until I can get that to go below one you can see I'm at minus seven we're getting there and you can see I'm at minus eight let's go again minus nine and we're starting to get into that window now I think now that I look at it I probably have to take the red down so I'm going to go back up to the red so make sure that you're on the gain setting because it's easy to make a mistake here make sure you're adjusting the proper things now I've taken the red down and you can see we're well below one but I think I might have gone too far because I don't want to go too crazy because it's going to affect my 30 percent so I'm going to go back to eight and see where we are and that's above one so I have to be at about nine so my settings there if I show you again we're going to go back it's picture adjustments let's walk you through how that works picture adjustments advanced settings we're going to go to color advanced color temperature and you can see now my red gain is minus one and my blue gain is minus nine that's the upper portion now that's calibrated now when I make adjustments here to the bias it may affect the upper portion so it's a bit of a back and forth here make sure you're on the low settings the 30 percent if you're doing the bias on the Sony so we'll go back to center again so you can see my bias is all zero my gain is still the same I look at it I realize the green needs to be adjusted so I click on that and we'll adjust my green now I'll go to the left and you can see as I'm adjusting the green my gray 30 patch there is going down I want to get below mine or one right there so I don't want to go too far in the green I can see that I could probably make an adjustment on the red it went up so it's a matter of really just playing with the different settings until you get where you want to be and I've got about a minus six there in the green I'm going to go minus seven and when it stops going down then go back to your last setting so at minus six it had moved I went to minus seven it didn't now I'm going to go to the red I'll see if I can get it to go lower so it moved so I'm good I'll try it again it didn't move so it's a bit of back and forth now now I'm going to go to the green we'll try the green again if it goes down we're good now I can see I'm right under one so if I click here you can see now with my bias settings I'm red minus two green bias minus seven so my bottom end is good let's go back and test the upper end so I'm going to go back to the 80 patch here and we're going to do the continuous reading and now that's off so we have to look at that and say well what's off about that it looks like maybe the red is too high so we're going to go back up to the red gain now these are the red gain the higher settings I'm going to go minus two there and now you can see that's in the window now we have to go and test the low end again to make sure that's right so we're testing the low end and they're both well it's sort of well they're both at one and it's a little bit of back and forth of going back and forth between your gain and your bias on the Sony so I'm going to click next and then here we would put our after settings so our picture mode would be pro cinema the color temperature would be expert one our gamma was minus one and to get those settings here again you just hit the action menu on the Sony and it's going to vary depending on the set picture adjustments cinema pro would be our picture mode and then you'd see our brightness setting would be 18 our color would be 50 our advanced settings here you can see our contrast would be 90 our gamma would be minus one our black level would be 50 and then we'd go to color settings color would be 50 hue would be zero again there's the color temperature expert one then we'd go to our advanced color temperature here and you could see the one on the right high red would be minus two green gain would be max the high blue that would be minus nine and then on the left the low settings that would be our red bias would be minus two our low green green bias would be minus eight and then the low blue be bias would be zero and if you have any notes you can put that so that's really a two point calibration you can get more advanced you can see here we have a 10 point calibration I'll save that for another video and this is where you go through and you adjust the different ranges and that'll be in a separate video I'll put a link below in the description box now after you've done this what you can do is now you can turn back on your settings that you had previously and for the Sony I'll shoot a different video with all my Sony settings but I would turn on my auto local dimming etc I'll put a link below this video and you can watch that one that shows all of the Sony settings once I've done my calibration but that's the basics of walking through this now what you can do too is when you go to next you can do the post calibration so if you recall the blue was way off on that pre calibration so what we'll do is we'll click read series and we're going to go through and this is the post calibration and this really helps you get a better view of the adjustments you've made and you may find that you might want to go back and do this a second time and actually once you do this a couple times it becomes kind of addictive and becomes kind of fun and you start to say wow look how much tighter this is I bet you I can do better at least that's how I find it and I just find it really it's kind of enjoyable actually to do this yourself and so I'm going to put a link below to the spectra cal software and I'll also put a coupon code that will save you 10% off home enthusiast so if you're just getting started with this I recommend the spectra cal home enthusiast version and I'll put a coupon code below that'll save you 10% off and a link to their website and they also have a ton of tutorials on youtube as well as well as instructions and I really recommend the software it's great I really enjoy it I've used this on my sony tv and my samsung 1080p tv and it's never looked better I never calibrated my tv's in the past and I'm shocked at how good my 1080p tv looks it's very comparable to my 4k sony tv and I'm really surprised that it looks that much better but it looks like that because I've used the spectra cal calmon software to calibrate it using the x-ray color meter and I learned how to do it myself and you can do the same too so watch this video a couple times if you have any questions ask them in the comment section below also look in the description box below this video I'll put links to other videos that I'm going to create for this series as well as a written tutorial so that for people who like to read to sort of understand things as well but you can see from this post calibration view that we've got a red green and blue tracking down the center line the gamma is not perfect but I can make some tweaks to that knowing where things fit now and so this is my first video in the series for spectra cal calmon tv calibration software I hope you enjoyed it if you have any comments put them in the comment section below please give me a thumbs up for this video also share this video on the web in tv forums as well if you found it helpful and if you're not already a subscriber make sure you subscribe to my youtube channel this is primarily a photography channel but I also do videos like this as well all right I hope you enjoyed this video and once again if you're not already a subscriber just hit that subscribe button also hit that like button and also share this video on the web with anyone that you think that might be interested in calibrating their hd or 4k tv anyway I hope you enjoyed this video make sure you leave a comment below if you have any questions and I'll create future videos in this calibration series to address those questions that you have all right thanks for watching make sure you subscribe hit that like button and I'll see you in the next video