- Posts: 4
- Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2017 5:53 pm
Hello everyone,
I've been working in video post-production as a freelancer for a few years now, and I think it's about time I got myself some decent hardware for color work. As I don't have too much experience on this area (plus I don't have a very large budget), I am looking for some advice here.
Here's a quick overview of what I'm currently working with and what I am looking to buy:
Status Quo:
What I want to get:
Here's why I want to get a workstation GPU:
Here's why I want to get a video I/O card: According to what I learned in college (I'm studying media technology), this would be the only way to bypass the OS color management and get an accurate Rec.709/2020 output to my reference monitor.
My absolute maximum budget for those three things combined is 1.000€. Because of this, the components I'm leaning towards are
Now, what I'd like to know is:
Does any of the above make sense? Especially, does it make sense to get both a workstation GPU and a video card, or does the Blackmagic card solve my calibration problems and I can get a cheaper gaming GPU just for the hardware acceleration? Does the way I split the money between those three components generally make sense for someone who is not a professional colorist, but wants to do basic color work in a workflow as accurate as possible for my kind of budget?
Also, is the above mentioned monitor good enough to be a reference monitor? Do you think I should rather go for a 4K monitor (not working with a lot of 4K footage now, but it might become more in the future)?
Plus, I'm not clear on how my workflow is going to look with this kind of setup, especially when it comes to calibration. Where is the calibration data saved? I thought until now that it was saved on the GPU, but is that also the case for the reference monitor that's not even connected to the GPU directly? And does it even make any sense at all to calibrate the consumer monitors (I'd still like them to be as accurate as possible even if I have a reference monitor next to them)?
And a way more basic question: Are the above mentioned components even compatible to each other? Would it even work to connect two monitors to the GPU and one to the Blackmagic and then have all three of them running in Windows extended desktop mode? Or will I only be able to use the reference monitor as a preview monitor in Premiere and Resolve?
I know this is a lot to ask at once, but as I said, I'm just lacking a lot of experience here and it has happened to me several times before that I bought something without doing enough research before and then found out later that I should have bought something else and/or could have saved a lot of money.
I don't expect anyone to answer all my questions at once, but it would be awesome if someone could answer a few, and someone else could answer some others, until I know what I need to know
I've been working in video post-production as a freelancer for a few years now, and I think it's about time I got myself some decent hardware for color work. As I don't have too much experience on this area (plus I don't have a very large budget), I am looking for some advice here.
Here's a quick overview of what I'm currently working with and what I am looking to buy:
Status Quo:
- PC with an i7 CPU and GTX760 GPU
- 2 consumer range HDMI monitors
- Datacolor Spyder5 Colorimeter
- Adobe Creative Cloud + DaVinci Resolve 12
- I'm working mostly with 1080p and 2160p 4:2:0 8-bit footage, but also some 4:2:2 10-bit
What I want to get:
- A reference monitor (doesn't need to be too high-end, just 10-bit and calibratable)
- A workstation GPU (Radeon Pro or Quadro)
- A Blackmagic video card to connect the reference monitor
Here's why I want to get a workstation GPU:
- Hardware acceleration in Adobe Premiere: Adobe doesn't support the GTX760 here. I know the Radeon Pro series is currently not supported either, but as far as I understand, it soon will be. And I think a GPU like that could significantly increase preview and rendering performance - right?
- Calibration: With my current hardware, when I calibrate my monitors, I'm getting extreme noise combined with falsely displayed colors and block artifacts in the shadows and some banding. I read somewhere that using a GPU that can work with 10-bit LUTs (which only AMD Radeon, Radeon Pro and FirePro, and NVIDIA Quadro cards can) would fix that. Can someone confirm that?
Here's why I want to get a video I/O card: According to what I learned in college (I'm studying media technology), this would be the only way to bypass the OS color management and get an accurate Rec.709/2020 output to my reference monitor.
My absolute maximum budget for those three things combined is 1.000€. Because of this, the components I'm leaning towards are
- Radeon Pro WX4100 or WX5100 (350-450€ here in Austria)
- Dell UltraSharp 25" 1440p display (UP2516D, I'm not allowed to post URLs but you can find it on the Dell homepage under Monitors, 25-28", Usage: Productivity) as reference monitor (350€) (don't think I need 4K, this guy is 10-bit and, according to Dell, it can be calibrated and display 100% Adobe RGB, I think that should do)
- Blackmagic Mini Monitor 4K (around 200€) to connect the reference monitor.
Now, what I'd like to know is:
Does any of the above make sense? Especially, does it make sense to get both a workstation GPU and a video card, or does the Blackmagic card solve my calibration problems and I can get a cheaper gaming GPU just for the hardware acceleration? Does the way I split the money between those three components generally make sense for someone who is not a professional colorist, but wants to do basic color work in a workflow as accurate as possible for my kind of budget?
Also, is the above mentioned monitor good enough to be a reference monitor? Do you think I should rather go for a 4K monitor (not working with a lot of 4K footage now, but it might become more in the future)?
Plus, I'm not clear on how my workflow is going to look with this kind of setup, especially when it comes to calibration. Where is the calibration data saved? I thought until now that it was saved on the GPU, but is that also the case for the reference monitor that's not even connected to the GPU directly? And does it even make any sense at all to calibrate the consumer monitors (I'd still like them to be as accurate as possible even if I have a reference monitor next to them)?
And a way more basic question: Are the above mentioned components even compatible to each other? Would it even work to connect two monitors to the GPU and one to the Blackmagic and then have all three of them running in Windows extended desktop mode? Or will I only be able to use the reference monitor as a preview monitor in Premiere and Resolve?
I know this is a lot to ask at once, but as I said, I'm just lacking a lot of experience here and it has happened to me several times before that I bought something without doing enough research before and then found out later that I should have bought something else and/or could have saved a lot of money.
I don't expect anyone to answer all my questions at once, but it would be awesome if someone could answer a few, and someone else could answer some others, until I know what I need to know