Blackmagic Forum

The nano-texture thing is basically a matte screen, some people say that videos on nano-texture look noticeably worse, that they lose a ton of contrast and that colors look more washed out and less true to life. However, other opinions claim that nano-texture provides better colors and that there is absolutely zero difference in color/contrast.

I work long hours in front of a screen, for me it is important to reduce eye strain. I'm going to buy a MacBook Pro and I don't know what kind of screen to choose.

What is the opinion of those of you who are involved in color correction at a professional level? Which do you think is better? A screen of this type or a standard glossy display?

I don't think it matter what screen the Laptop has.

If you work for social media, the Mac screen with the right settings will suffice.
Personally, I like to use the screen without nano-texture. How many viewers will have matte screens on their smartphones?
Just create the right environment for grading, with no light sources behind you. You can’t grade on a laptop sitting in a café.

No nano-texture, no woled... as for coffee, what else ?

I had a thinkpad with similar screen, personally I would avoid it.

I was in a store today where they had some MacBook Pro's, they didn't have the nano-textured screen but I took a look at the glossy one. It was just as glossy as the one on my Macbook from a decade ago and therefore bothers my eyes just as much.

In the room where I edit, the light from the ceiling lamp falls directly on the screen and the light coming through the window to my right also. It is quite annoying. I'm worried about my eyesight, my eyes are already very strained. But what worries me most is that buying a nano-textured screen might mean that it will be impossible for me to adjust the colour and contrast properly.

About what you were saying about the right settings, how can I set up the display properly for color correction with DaVinci? Can you please tell me any professional software used to calibrate a Mac display?

I imagine with that software it wouldn't matter if the nano-texture does what Apple says it does:

Typical matte displays have a coating added to their surface that scatters light. However, these coatings lower contrast while producing unwanted haze and sparkle. Etched into the glass at the nanometer level, the nano-texture scatters light to further minimize glare — for outstanding image quality even in challenging lighting conditions. The nano-texture glass option comes with a polishing cloth that’s made with soft, nonabrasive material for safe cleaning.

It all depends on which market you are working for.
If you have clients like broadcast, major streaming services or even from the movie industry, you must have a proper grading room and a calibrated display connected by an I/O device from BM. Calibrating the internal screen of an MBP doesn't suffice.
If you work for less demanding markets, just use the proper setting as offered by Apple, like BT 1886 for SD or HDR 2048 for, you guessed it, for HDR. They are pretty good out of the box, IMHO it doesn't make much economical sense getting the new devices from Calibrate to adjust them. You'll still need a grading room with controlled lighting. For editing only, get the matte screen and sit down wherever you like, sipping on your coffee.

We worry more about contrast and accurate color than anything else. I try to just control the light in the room and make sure there are no possible glares visible in the main color monitor. Do that, and your problems will go away -- no nano screen necessary. We keep the room very dark, except for six of the 6500° Ideal-Lume Desk Lamps made by Medialight.

This will preclude color grading while at the beach, but you shouldn't do that anyway. I'm not convinced that any of the Apple screens are good enough for grading, nor do I think they can be calibrated very well. I don't know any facility in the world that trusts them for final color (not even Apple Studios in Culver City).

This guy, whom I consider quite knowledgeable, has a video about it:

While on the subject of lighting... can you even buy a decent PC desktop these days without being blinded by its RGB components? I couldnt find one so had to build my own -- but even getting some components without RGB was a task and a few wires had to be cut to keep everything dark.

RCModelReviews wrote:While on the subject of lighting... can you even buy a decent PC desktop these days without being blinded by its RGB components? I couldnt find one so had to build my own -- but even getting some components without RGB was a task and a few wires had to be cut to keep everything dark.

We just buy off-shelf Dell UltraSharp displays and drop the brightness/contrast down so they're not too overwhelming. And we tell clients to disregard the image on these GUI displays and only trust and believe in the big calibrated color monitor in front of us.

Thank you very much for all your help. It is really interesting everything you show me. The last professional experience I had with color grading was working for TV using Apple Color. Many years ago, I don't know if the screens of that company I worked for were calibrated or not and I have never known how to professionally calibrate a screen. We only worked with just one.

Today, I intend to edit and color grade a short film in 4K. It will be probably by the end of 2025 and for that reason I wanted to start testing the latest version of DaVince Resolve and buy a good Mac. I had thought about Macbook Pro, my old Macbook is only good for editing 1080p video at best. In relation to what you all tell me, and after carefully watching all the videos that you have posted, I have a few questions:

First of all, about the IO device, this is one of the recommended:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... /W-DLUS-11

These are the connections:



1- All I have to do to use it is connect one end of a thunderbolt 3 cable to the UltraStudio 4K Mini and the other to the computer and then one end of an HDMI cable to the UltraStudio 4K Mini (HDMI Out) and the other to the grading monitor (HDMI)? Something like this?:



2- If the connections are as I said and as shown in this image, why are two screens necessary? Is a second monitor needed to use it as a grading monitor and only that one is calibrated?

3- I believe I understood that, in addition to something like UltraStudio 4K Mini, I also need to calibrate the monitor(s). Do I need to pre-calibrate them before using UltraStudio 4K Mini with, for example, something like Calibrite Display Plus HL?:

https://www.amazon.com/Calibrite-Displa ... 0C82LKJHY/

4- If with an IO device I would still have to calibrate the monitor(s) first, what is the advantage of having, for example, an UltraStudio 4K Mini instead of just a Calibrite Display Plus HL? I think I understood that even if you calibrate the monitor you still don't get a completely accurate image if you use the GPU. Is this the reason?

Uli Plank wrote:If you work for less demanding markets, just use the proper setting as offered by Apple, like BT 1886 for SD or HDR 2048 for, you guessed it, for HDR. .

I think you mean this (HDR Video (P3-ST 2084)). It's what the salesman showed me in the store. This on my old Macbook is different:



5- If I don't have an UltraStudio 4K Mini or a Calibrite Display Plus HL, should I always have HDR Video (P3-ST 2084) selected even when watching 4K HDR10 or Dolby Vision videos such as those found on 4K UHD Blu-ray? When I buy the Mac it will be my first experience with non SDR displays.

Let’s start from the other side: what will be the distribution channel of your film?

Stan Hoekstra wrote:Thank you very much for all your help. It is really interesting everything you show me. The last professional experience I had with color grading was working for TV using Apple Color. Many years ago, I don't know if the screens of that company I worked for were calibrated or not and I have never known how to professionally calibrate a screen. We only worked with just one.

Before you go much further, read these two articles by Light Illusion's Steve Shaw:

Why Calibrate?
http://www.lightillusion.com/why_calibrate.html

Why Master on a Calibrated Display?
https://www.lightillusion.com/grading_displays.html

Also, read page 2870 of the Resolve 19.1 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction. The same problem also exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed.

The UltraStudio 4K mini is a perfectly fine interface and works well for many people. I would not worry about HDR or Dolby Vision just yet -- keep it simple and get the project corrected for normal Rec709/gamma 2.4 broadcast, and get a decent calibrated display.

Marc Wielage wrote:

Stan Hoekstra wrote:Thank you very much for all your help. It is really interesting everything you show me. The last professional experience I had with color grading was working for TV using Apple Color. Many years ago, I don't know if the screens of that company I worked for were calibrated or not and I have never known how to professionally calibrate a screen. We only worked with just one.

Before you go much further, read these two articles by Light Illusion's Steve Shaw:

Why Calibrate?
http://www.lightillusion.com/why_calibrate.html

Why Master on a Calibrated Display?
https://www.lightillusion.com/grading_displays.html

Also, read page 2870 of the Resolve 19.1 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction. The same problem also exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed.

The UltraStudio 4K mini is a perfectly fine interface and works well for many people. I would not worry about HDR or Dolby Vision just yet -- keep it simple and get the project corrected for normal Rec709/gamma 2.4 broadcast, and get a decent calibrated display.

Thank you very much, very interesting. Specially that "Wide Gamut vs. Standard Gamut (Or why Apple cannot be relied on)". Now I know what you meant. This is very important:

Apple have their own version of P3... P3 is a standardized color space that is well defined within the film & TV industry, but Apple has what they call displayP3 color space, which incorrectly combines the P3 gamut with the encoding sRGB compound gamma - not even the correct display defined sRGB gamma, which is a power law 2.2 gamma.

Uli Plank wrote:Let’s start from the other side: what will be the distribution channel of your film?

The short film is not mine, I will edit it and I would like to do the color grading. I have to catch up on this last matter in the next months. The distribution will be first in film festivals in different countries. It is a short film that will be part of a trilogy (with two other short films, one will be animated (rotoscopy) the other two will not) and this trilogy is intended to be distributed later as a feature film on streaming services such as Netflix. That is the intention of the director (a friend of mine) and producers.

That is, I need something 100% professional, it has nothing to do with what I did in SD when I worked in TV. For festival distribution (DCP) I imagine the color space will be DCI-P3, for streaming services like Netflix I don't know yet.