New Monitor and Calibration

[Jay Knobbe]

It's been a long time since I posted.

I purchased a new Dell U2415 monitor to replace the primary Dell U2315H monitor. The U2415 is factory calibrated. I still have a U2315 as a secondary monitor.

Running a NVIDIA 950 video card.

When I had the matched pair of U2315H monitors I calibrated them with my DataColor Spyder5Pro (55P100).

I have some questions.

1. Should I install the drivers for the U2415? Can I have different monitor drivers for different monitors? Any tricks I should know doing that?

2. Does the fact I calibrated my previous monitor have any calibration impact on the new monitor? Does the video card play a role in that? If so what should I do to maintain the factory calibration?

The new monitor is connected and working.

Thank you for sharing your expertice!

[R Neil Haugen]

The two monitors will each use their own drivers ... so make sure they are both updated.

Next ... you probably want to use the same calibration settings in the software for both monitors. I use the i1 ColorMunki, and it calibrates both my monitors ... to either similar or different standards, I assume your software can do the same.

And a bit of stuff for running PrPro ... it's a total Rec709 program. Period. Which is designed for an sRGB color profile. And it 'sees' things as "data level" which is 0-255, rather than "video level" which is 16-235. So it's best to set your monitor to sRGB and then calibrate. Gamma levels ... PrPro is according to some testing set to 2.2, be aware. Lars Borg, head of color for PrPro, says that it's useful to set your "confidence" monitor for the following depending on the primary user you're delivering content for ...

YouTube/Vimeo/other web probably viewed from bright offices to sunlight on 'devices': gamma 2.2;

TV broadcast or other use in a more 'controlled' lighting viewing environment: gamma 2.4;

Dark-room (movie theatre style) environment: gamma 2.6.

Unless you have a full HDR setup, which those monitors can't handle, most colorists suggest setting the brightness (when you are working in a controlled lighting environment!) of your 'confidence' monitor to close to or just above 100 "nits", which is the term now used replacing cdm2. And of course, working in a moderately dim light-controlled environment.

From Borg's comments, I would think that if you were 1) delivering primarily to YouTube/VimeoWeb and 2) working in an office type 'normal' lighting arrangement, probably set your monitor for gamma 2.2 and maybe run as high as 150 nits to the monitor, though I'd be more comfortable with 120.

And whatever, test you outputs to ensure your process works for your clients. Or use.

Neil