Smogsy: HZ vs Resolution Thread

[Nexus18]

Grey hue is what a lot of people complain about when they see a stock pg278q, not talking about your image, turning down the gamma removes that as an issue for the monitor in general, not specifically just the image you showed

He says you should only be able to see one side of his face, but inspecting the image you posted both sides of his face have exactly the same pixel data, so they should both be visible, or both not. The same goes for his teeth and bits of his sunglasses are actually brighter.

I dont see a wall behind him.

Anyway, if anything all this is saying is that I still have my gamma too high, where as smogsy was saying the black levels were rubbish and his gamma was even higher than mine, so my "did you try adjusting the gamma" is even more relevant.

Ah I see.

No idea about pixel data and all that, I'm just going by what he has said and how he intends that particular scene to be viewed on displays.

And I think he has somewhat covered that by saying the following:

Just because that data might be in the image when mastered and brought out with incorrect gamma or panel brightness, it doesn’t mean you are supposed to see that detail.

It is worth bearing in mind that this particular discussion of his is being done based on very high end TVs i.e. OLED, which will trounce all of our current LCD monitors so I don't expect any current monitor to be able to achieve "exactly" what he has stated, at least not with settings that are usable outside of this one scene.

Whilst gamma plays a part in this, black depth amongst many other important areas also contribute to this scene.

So you shouldn't be adjusting your gamma just for that one image as it might then ruin other things. If you don't have a monitor calibrator then you should be adjusting monitor settings using this site:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

 

[andybird123]

Ah I see.

No idea about pixel data and all that, I'm just going by what he has said and how he intends that particular scene to be viewed on displays.

And I think he has somewhat covered that by saying the following:



It is worth bearing in mind that this particular discussion of his is being done based on very high end TVs i.e. OLED, which will trounce all of our current LCD monitors so I don't expect any current monitor to be able to achieve "exactly" what he has stated, at least not with settings that are usable outside of this one scene.

Whilst gamma plays a part in this, black depth amongst many other important areas also contribute to this scene.

So you shouldn't be adjusting your gamma just for that one image as it might then ruin other things. If you don't have a monitor calibrator then you should be adjusting monitor settings using this site:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

No he hasnt. Incorrect gamma will change both pixels equally if they start the same they will end up the same. Saying one bunch of pixels should be visible but another identical area of pixels should not is just nonsense. The background is obviously darker and your gamma would have to be way too high to see the background clearly.

If he wanted some pixels to be visible and others not then they should be different, not the exact same values.

If youve rehosted the image are you sure the image hosting doesnt do any kind of jpeg compression that could skew the results?

I'm already well aware of the lagom website test images, but thanks

On my IPS laptop i have to set the gamma to where i cant even see grey 1 to 15 on lagom to get that image how he says it should look, and I'm pretty sure thats not right, why would you want your blacks/greys crushed to that degree

 

[Nexus18]

No he hasnt. Incorrect gamma will change both pixels equally if they start the same they will end up the same. Saying one bunch of pixels should be visible but another identical area of pixels should not is just nonsense. The background is obviously darker and your gamma would have to be way too high to see the background clearly.

If he wanted some pixels to be visible and others not then they should be different, not the exact same values.

If youve rehosted the image are you sure the image hosting doesnt do any kind of jpeg compression that could skew the results?

I'm already well aware of the lagom website test images, but thanks

On my IPS laptop i have to set the gamma to where i cant even see grey 1 to 15 on lagom to get that image how he says it should look, and I'm pretty sure thats not right, why would you want your blacks/greys crushed to that degree

Well like I said, he is the colorist that worked on the film so I'm pretty sure he knows what he talking about and how he wants that scene to be "viewed"

And like I said, that scene will be down to more than just gamma control as he also went on to say this:

Scenes like the 'Freeman in darkness' sequence highlighted the amount of work Panasonic’s engineers have been putting into the harder aspects of image quality, like low APR scene detail and gradation performance. It’s been obvious with their LED LCD TVs this year that the new 8000 registry point LUT tables have significantly improved colour saturation and luminance performance (at less than 75% luminance) to provide some of the most natural looking colours we have seen in a long time from a consumer TV.

So there definitely looks to be a lot more going on than just gamma control, black depth and the other basic stuff, which we are accustomed to.

And no I don't think there is any compression, the image is uploaded to imgur (+ it is a PNG) and looks the exact same as it does when playing back the film.

 

[andybird123]

If you dont get how identical pixels should look identical then you highlighting sentences you dont really understand isnt going to help the conversation.

Where did you get the image from?
Looking through the links you provided it doesnt come up.

 

[Nexus18]

If you dont get how identical pixels should look identical then you highlighting sentences you dont really understand isnt going to help the conversation.

Where did you get the image from?
Looking through the links you provided it doesnt come up.

I know what you are saying about the pixels but that doesn't change the fact what a well renowned colorist who worked on the film has said. He has put it as simple as possible:

• You should only see the left side of his face and his goggles/eyes, everything else should be black
• Just because the data is there in the source doesn't mean you should see it
• Whilst he says about gamma he then goes onto say there is more to it, which panasonic engineers have specifically been working on

It's really not that hard to grasp.

I'm sure he is well aware about pixels and all that but as you can see there is far more to it than just.

Like i said, no current LCD display monitor is going to get anywhere close to what he is saying so don't be expecting your £500 TN and IPS screen to match a £8000 OLED screen just by simply reducing the gamma.

It is taken from my blu ray of the film.

 

[andybird123]

snip

hang on, so you did a screenshot and saved it as a PNG?

 

[smogsy]

hang on, so you did a screenshot and saved it as a PNG?

if thats true facepalm time

 

[Nexus18]

No not a "screenshot", it is taken as a "frame".

And like I said, it looks the exact same as it does when playing back the film on my monitor (and yes, I have also reduced the gamma during playback and it produces the exact same results as when you reduce the gamma for that image) and closer to what Sowa said, on my panasonic plasma TV

Again, are you really expecting basic (and I mean really basic at best) LCD monitors to come close to a £8000 OLED TV?

 

[andybird123]

No not a "screenshot", it is taken as a "frame".

And like I said, it looks the exact same as it does when playing back the film on my monitor and closer to what Sowa said, on my panasonic plasma TV

it doesn't matter, you've CREATED an image and then taken someone elses words out of context and applied it to an image YOU created, you have no frame of reference (pun intentended) to be able to say that HIS words apply to YOUR image. he was talking about an entire scene from a movie, not a single frame grabbed at random

if you google "oblivion freeman" you'll see a bunch of images that match his description much better than the one you created

bearing in mind your original query was

I was just curious if the people that reduce the gamma end up having nothing but a black screen

and yet with my gamma turned down I can still see more detail than you can, the complete opposite of what your assumption was
bearing in mind I view my monitor in a dark room (same with my plasma TV in the living room for movie nights at home)

No idea about pixel data and all that

^ That sums this up the best really.

 

[Dicehunter]

For me personally the best experience has been 2560x1440P 165Hz.
The 34" Ultrawide was nice when I had it but the extra screen space was wasted on me as I only tend to use around 20" of the screen so a 24" is perfect for me.
4K is a nice picture but the increase over 1440P to me isn't worth the massive amount of performance that is needed over 1440P for what to me looks like a very small visual improvement and also the limiting factor of only being available at 60Hz currently until better panels come out.

 

[Gregster]

Thanks for the write up Smogsy and very interesting. I am not really out for a new monitor but if one does come along that tickles my fancy, I will probs get it.

 

[nashathedog]

wOW poor screen then. To me its a black man with short grey hair and beard, round sunglasses with refelctions in them of a ghostly person?, hes holding a lit ciger in his right hand which is wearing fingerless leather gloves

Ahh... but can you see his gold tooth?

 

[Greebo]

Ahh... but can you see his gold tooth?

I am at work and all i can see is two white blobs where his glasses were

 

[Nexus18]

it doesn't matter, you've CREATED an image and then taken someone elses words out of context and applied it to an image YOU created, you have no frame of reference (pun intentended) to be able to say that HIS words apply to YOUR image. he was talking about an entire scene from a movie, not a single frame grabbed at random

if you google "oblivion freeman" you'll see a bunch of images that match his description much better than the one you created

bearing in mind your original query was

and yet with my gamma turned down I can still see more detail than you can, the complete opposite of what your assumption was
bearing in mind I view my monitor in a dark room (same with my plasma TV in the living room for movie nights at home)

^ That sums this up the best really.

It is not a "basic" screenshot like what you are thinking of though, it is taken as a "frame", yes, call it an image if you want, as I suppose it is technically an "image".

If you have ever looked at illegal copies of films, you will see that there are various encodes and masters of films, people upload these "frames", images or whatever you want to call them... in order for people to compare the various encodes and choose the best one for quality i.e. that matches the source the closest.

This is a full untouched blu ray of the film, not some crappy illegal encode that weighs in at 8GB

Your original point was concern of it being a "screenshot" and as a result, losing its "data"/IQ?

Maybe I have got the wrong scene but the way he describes it, says to me that my image is the scene that he is talking about:

Sowa highlighted this with Morgan Freeman’s introduction in Oblivion, where he lights a cigar and then his face disappears into the darkness. You should just make out the very left edge of his face and his eyes. Everything else should be in complete black

I have just looked again and that entire scene with Morgan Freeman in darkness is the same in terms of darkness as my first image, there is a split moment where just after he lights the cigar that could perhaps be the scene he is referring to:



But then this part rules it out...

just make out the very left edge of his face and his eyes. Everything else should be in complete black

Maybe the guy wrote this part up wrongly and meant to write the "right edge of his face" instead and he just couldn't be bothered mentioning the other areas....

The entire scene remains the same as the first image right up until the lights come on so it's not like there is a huge variety of different scenes that Sowa could be referring too.

It really is quite pointless talking about what we should and shouldn't be seeing though as these guys are viewing the film on top range OLED TVs that destroy every LCD monitor especially when it comes to handling dark scenes like the above.


And yes that original post of mine was more a tongue in cheek comment (hence the stick out tongue emoji at the end) as people who don't understand how gamma etc. works often end up reducing it to the point of losing detail i.e. like 90% of the sweetfx configs out there, which butcher games just to get vibrant looking colours e.g. look at this:

http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/screenshot/33069/

Same goes for people that turn in game brightness right up despite being told that they should "barely see the test logo"...

As for "no idea about pixel data", I know what you mean about "pixel data", I have "no idea" about pixel data regarding this particular scene as I didn't bother looking into or messing with the gamma etc. hence "I had no idea".... Until my last post when you brought up about the "screenshot"


And yes, with your gamma turned down, you might get closer to how he wants the scene to be viewed but like you said, it completely messes up your display for other things i.e. in your lagomn black level test. Again, something that I pointed out, which Sowa said, there is more to this than just gamma tweaking, something that Panasonic engineers have been working on. You're not going to get the same results as a £8000 OLED TV on a basic £500 LCD monitor just by adjusting gamma (and not messing the display up for other scenes with said settings)...

 

[andybird123]

"the very left edge of his face" is darker in your image than each of his cheeks near his nose which are more visible (actually a lighter colour) and you can't see his EYES at all in your image, you can see a reflection in his sunglasses, his comments make absolutely no sense when applied to your image

thats what I mean, looking at the actual pixels of the image you posted and his comments on what should or should not be visible are completely impossible - I thought you'd taken an image from something he was actually talking about, but you've not, you've just grabbed a random frame from the movie and trying to force your opinion of his words and a random unrelated image together

you keep saying "he said he said he said" but its totally irrelevant what he said when you don't have the correct image to go with what he actually said

screen grab, screen shot, whatever you want to call it, you've used third party software to generate a PNG from a Bluray, he absolutely did not have that one image in front of him when he made those comments

 

[Woodsta888]

Thanks for your write up, insight and emptying your wallet on our behalves to have experienced all those expensive display options.

But what I want to thank you most for is I can blame my 4K monitor for my less than pro scores on FPS online multiplayer games!!!! I can tell my buddies I am on the harder difficulty due to my monitor! What 4k does do well is display movement in the distance, where lower resolutions would miss it out.

I do love my 4K and dont do bad on it and had it for a couple of years powered by 7990, 980ti and 1080ti. I play a lot of FPS single player games too which I do love for which 4K is awesome. Mostly play BF4 and SQUAD which does very well since I got a 1080ti and finally a card that will do many games in 4k @ an acceptable level. I dont like motion blur so actually turn some stuff off and antialiasing doesn't need to be as high at 4k. Competitive fps you aren't really spending time studying the detail in the scenery so some detail can be turned down and some stuff there isnt much difference visually anyway.

High refresh, high res, G/Freesync would be possible now if SLi/Xfire setups were better supported not just at decent scaling (+75%) profiles but just getting games to work is quite a faff. I'd have thought multi GPU setups would have advanced with VR and high resolution becoming more popular. Instead it seems they have taken their foot off the gas on that side of things though it's probably more on the game side of things.

Thanks again for write up.

 

[Nexus18]

"the very left edge of his face" is darker in your image than each of his cheeks near his nose which are more visible (actually a lighter colour) and you can't see his EYES at all in your image, you can see a reflection in his sunglasses, his comments make absolutely no sense when applied to your image

thats what I mean, looking at the actual pixels of the image you posted and his comments on what should or should not be visible are completely impossible - I thought you'd taken an image from something he was actually talking about, but you've not, you've just grabbed a random frame from the movie and trying to force your opinion of his words and a random unrelated image together

you keep saying "he said he said he said" but its totally irrelevant what he said when you don't have the correct image to go with what he actually said

screen grab, screen shot, whatever you want to call it, you've used third party software to generate a PNG from a Bluray, he absolutely did not have that one image in front of him when he made those comments

Watch the scene yourself (and preferably not via youtube but by an untouched blu ray). I have watched it countless times and you will see for yourself there are only so many "scenes/moments" shown i.e. that last one I showed (where the match is lit) and the rest are like the first image (where his match isn't lit). You are acting as if I have taken a completely different scene to what they are discussing...

where he lights a cigar and then his face disappears into the darkness.

That is an approximate summary of the scene, those 2 images I showed are exactly about the scene/moment he is referring to, unless there happens to be another part in the film where he lights another cigar and has his face disappear into darkness..... which it doesn't.

Like I said, I think that the guy who wrote this article has possibly mixed up with the "left" and meant to say "right" and that the latest image I posted could be the scene, which he is referring to but again, his description does not match it and the first image is closer to what matches his description, at least on my monitor and plasma TV, no point telling me what it looks like on your screen as by the sounds of it, you haven't got anywhere close to correct calibration settings and/or you have your displays setup purposely to show more detail in dark areas when you shouldn't be seeing said detail.

So either his description is wrong and he meant to say the right edge of his face and thus is referring to the second image I posted or his description is correct and he is talking about the first image I posted.

Again, before you say something along the lines of a "random" image... watch the scene/film yourself before making this comment. As you will see, there is little to no variety in the entire scene "after he lights the "cigar" and is in "darkness".

You are basing this entirely on the pixels (and as has been said, just because the data is there doesn't mean it should be seen), yes I see what you mean but again, you are doing this on a crappy basic LCD display, do this on the £8000 OLED TV that they are basing their findings on and it will be a very different outcome, not to mention you are completely butchering the scene by messing with gamma etc. just to be able to view the pixels of which won't be visible when viewing it on a £8000 "professionally" calibrated TV.... Our LCD displays are not capable of handling/showing that scene as it was meant to, without messing with settings and not harming the quality for other scenes or things outside of the film.

 

[peterpies]

What GPU would be needed to run games at max settings on a PG279Q ROG Swift 27".

 

[andybird123]

Watch the scene yourself (and preferably not via youtube but by an untouched blu ray). I have watched it countless times and you will see for yourself there are only so many "scenes/moments" shown i.e. that last one I showed (where the match is lit) and the rest are like the first image (where his match isn't lit). You are acting as if I have taken a completely different scene to what they are discussing...



That is an approximate summary of the scene, those 2 images I showed are exactly about the scene/moment he is referring to, unless there happens to be another part in the film where he lights another cigar and has his face disappear into darkness..... which it doesn't.

Like I said, I think that the guy who wrote this article has possibly mixed up with the "left" and meant to say "right" and that the latest image I posted could be the scene, which he is referring to but again, his description does not match it and the first image is closer to what matches his description, at least on my monitor and plasma TV, no point telling me what it looks like on your screen as by the sounds of it, you haven't got anywhere close to correct calibration settings and/or you have your displays setup purposely to show more detail in dark areas when you shouldn't be seeing said detail.

So either his description is wrong and he meant to say the right edge of his face and thus is referring to the second image I posted or his description is correct and he is talking about the first image I posted.

Again, before you say something along the lines of a "random" image... watch the scene/film yourself before making this comment. As you will see, there is little to no variety in the entire scene "after he lights the "cigar" and is in "darkness".

You are basing this entirely on the pixels (and as has been said, just because the data is there doesn't mean it should be seen), yes I see what you mean but again, you are doing this on a crappy basic LCD display, do this on the £8000 OLED TV that they are basing their findings on and it will be a very different outcome, not to mention you are completely butchering the scene by messing with gamma etc. just to be able to view the pixels of which won't be visible when viewing it on a £8000 "professionally" calibrated TV.... Our LCD displays are not capable of handling/showing that scene as it was meant to, without messing with settings and not harming the quality for other scenes or things outside of the film.

Oh dear.

If two pixels have the same value they should either both be visible or both not. What you are saying is complete gibberish.

Several pixels that YOU say should not be visible in YOUR image have the same value as pixels YOU say SHOULD be visible. If that is the case on your monitor then I'm afraid my friend that its you who doesnt have his monitor calibrated.

Two pixels of identical value should, in an ideal world, look identical. Screen uniformity aside.

Mike is talking about a scene in general, a collection of many frames, he isnt talking about a cherry picked single frame that he didnt even pick.

His biggest gripe seems more to be a reference to being able to see the back wall behind Morgan, but again your image doesnt have any background unless you completely max out gamma and brightness and even then its just a dark brown smudge, not a "wall behind him". Theres just too many details he references that are completely missing from your image for it to be even vaguely credible.

I mean, thanks for the laughs, but no I dont want my first 20 levels of grey to all be crushed in to black on my IPS monitors

I mean, i get it, you wanted those of us with reduced gamma to say we saw nothing at all, but as that didnt happen you are trying a bit too hard to be "right" about what someone said about an image he's never actually seen.

 

[Nexus18]

Oh dear.

If two pixels have the same value they should either both be visible or both not. What you are saying is complete gibberish.

Several pixels that YOU say should not be visible in YOUR image have the same value as pixels YOU say SHOULD be visible. If that is the case on your monitor then I'm afraid my friend that its you who doesnt have his monitor calibrated.

Two pixels of identical value should, in an ideal world, look identical. Screen uniformity aside.

Mike is talking about a scene in general, a collection of many frames, he isnt talking about a cherry picked single frame that he didnt even pick.

His biggest gripe seems more to be a reference to being able to see the back wall behind Morgan, but again your image doesnt have any background unless you completely max out gamma and brightness and even then its just a dark brown smudge, not a "wall behind him". Theres just too many details he references that are completely missing from your image for it to be even vaguely credible.

I mean, thanks for the laughs, but no I dont want my first 20 levels of grey to all be crushed in to black.

*double facepalm*

Read up about dark scenes, black levels, contrast ratio, luminance etc. and read that article again....

Just because the data is there DOES NOT mean that you should see it.

There is far more to this than just you sliding a gamma slider up and down in photoshop, you are not a professional colorist just because you can achieve the same results as him by doing this lol.... If it was so simple, then the likes of Panasonic etc. wouldn't be asking him to work with them on producing these TVs and getting the colours, blacks, luminance amongst many other controls spot on. Heck, people wouldn't be paying hundreds and in some cases thousands for "professional" calibrators to come out and calibrate their displays (of which when done to this standard, it will take longer than a few minutes, you are talking about hours) if it was something that you could do yourself with changing one setting in the space of a few minutes...

My monitor is not "professionally" calibrated but my Panasonic plasma TV is "professionally" calibrated. From everything that you have said, it sounds like you have just eye balled your settings and changed settings just to be able to see more detail in dark content because your main usage is dark content/gaming.

The fact that you are having to adjust gamma etc. to be able to achieve what he has said but as a result degrading the calibration for other scenes/things shows that your display (same goes for every basic LCD monitor) is not capable of properly handling/showing dark content correctly, it's as simple as that.

Are you one of these people that turns brightness right up in the game menu because you see more detail even though you are not suppose to?

I take it you still haven't watch that scene then? Because if you had you will see that there are only 2 frames/scenes which are in reference to that, the rest of the "frames" from that scene are the exact same (in terms of the angle as well as the darkness) as the 2 images posted in this thread.

If you can't grasp that then I don't know what else to say. It is up to you to learn about what impacts dark scenes etc.

Who am I more likely to listen to, a top colorist that has worked on tons of Hollywood films and is also working closely with the likes of Panasonic to get the "correct" image being produced from their TVs or some guy that thinks adjusting a gamma slider is the same as what the engineers/professional calibrators do and thinks that a £500 LCD panel will match a £8000 OLED TV because of this?

So yes thanks for the laughs

And again, my original post on this was "tongue in cheek", the only serious posts on this matter/image/article have been in discussion with you.

You certainly live up to your signature anyway:

Increasingly as I go through life I say things purely for my own amusement.