JVC Autocal Software V12 calibration for 2019 RS1000/RS2000/RS3000/NX5/NX7/NX9

[Manni]

no sorry Ive just started to collect 4K

That explains why you're happy with the DI 

If you want to know what I'm talking about, please give me a list of a few titles and I'll give you an example from these.
If you want to continue enjoying the DI in HDR, don't ask.

[SirMaster]

I believe good scenes to test are in The Greatest Showman when Jenny Lind is on stage singing.  Her dress blooms out quite severely with the DI.

Time stamps are 49:25 and 49:41.  Probably a whole bunch more times in this whole scene too.

[Mark the Red]

Long read through a fascinating thread.  Just got my dedicated 100% light controlled home theater complete with a x590r projector installed.  This is my first projector ever running everything through a dedicated HTPC with Madvr.  I know this is not a Madvr thread, but I noticed my image looks a little off with the factory settings.  Still looks great, but I realized a callibration is needed, leading me here.

@SirMaster:  Can you please let me know where you bought your Spyder5?  Sounds like you got a decent one and I figured since they are all MSRP right now, I'd rather just take the pie in the sky chance that I get a good one like yours.

My second question is whether you noticed an improvement in your colors with the spyder autocal.   Manni is crystal clear in his FAQ to not be so darned cheap and buy an x-rite i2 pro for color, but I am wondering if the spyder 5 did more harm than good.     Since I have an entry level projector, I cannot justify the $1k price tag for a i2 right now if the spyder does a good enough job.

Anyway, I appreciate the great thread and look forward to a autocal'd projector shortly.

  

[Manni]

Hi Mark,

The Spyder can provide good results with color, but it’s hard to know if you don’t have another meter to check the results. So if you can’t justify an i1pro2, you might want to consider getting an i1display Pro, which isn’t supported by the Autocal but will allow you to check your color calibration with a free software such as HCFR if you don’t want to buy a paid for software, and possibly create a custom color profile to correct the Spyder errors.

Where you buy the Spyder doesn’t make any difference. It’s a lottery, and from the same reseller, and the same batch, you can get a very good one and an appalling one. Just get the best price and buy an express, not a pro, especially if you have a dedicated room.

[Mark the Red]

Thanks Manni, I did read you recommend the express, so I will go with this.  

The es-2000 can be had on ebay but apparently you need to buy a custom mount.  

In terms of color best practices, you recommend an i1 pro2 and using HFCR instead of autocal?     I've heard HFCR has a pretty steep learning curve, but I'm pregnant with the home theater at this point so I can't quit now.

On your projector using the autocal and i1 pro2, did it do a good job against HFCR baseline (my understanding of your post below).

[Manni]

You can't have just an i1pro2, it's not usable on its own for gamma. It can be used for color, but you really want a colorimeter (profiled or not to the i1pro2) to do gamma calibration. The main use of the i1pro2 is color calibration and/or profiling a colorimeter for gamma work and faster measurements.

I wouldn't recommend using HCFR on its own, even with an i1 displaypro, simply because it's really time consuming to do a good gamma calibration. But if you have lots of time, of course you can get very good results with HCFR, just not with only an i1pro2. If you use only one meter with HCFR, get an i1pdisplay Pro, as it will allow you to do gamma and color.

Here is what I suggest: wait until you feel your PJ needs a calibration, get a Spyder 5 Express and run the Autocal. If you're good, enjoy, if you feel like the color calibration is worse, or if you'd like to make sure that it isn't, then decide between an i1pro2 (supported by the Autocal) and an i1display Pro (not supported by the Autocal) to improve color.

Alternatively, only run a gamma autocal with the Spyder and forget about a color calibration.

[Mark the Red]

Thanks.  I figured gamma was my main problem.   Any HDR content seems way too dark right now.   I used Javs HDR mapping from avsforum to hopefully solve this, but instead it made it way darker.  I tried adjusting the target nits and the brightness gain was marginal to non-existent.

My plan is to run the autocal, and then use Dominic Chan's settings (who posts here) as follows.   I might just invest in an es-2000 for the color to ensure it is done right.     I can read from your FAQ you recommend this for color checking, but is an es-2000 autocal color check enough or do I need to do additional color checking with HFCR.   In other words, do you like the es-2000 JVC autocal on its own with regards to color checking.....

THanks again for responding to my noob posts.  Your FAQ is pretty thorough I am just a little confused as to what I have to do post-autocal in terms of additional settings adjustments when using the spyder for gamma, and the i1 pro2 for color.

[Manni]

If the ES-2000 works with the Autocal (I don't have any first hand experience with this, only reporting it's supposed to work, it's not officially supported) it should be fine on its own for color and there should be no need to use HCFR. At least that's the case with the i1pro2.

I'm not sure that your issue is autocal related though because HDR content shouldn't be too dark with the right settings. You're talking about target nits, so I assume you're using madVR, but that setting has little impact on picture brightness. Also Javs curves can't be used when madVR is doing the tonemapping, you need to use an SDR calibration.

I would try to get good results in passthrough first, to rule out your madVR pixel shader tonemapping settings. When using the JVC Auto Tonemapping with a disc containing valid HDR metadata (check that the JVC reports valid maxCLL/maxFALL), you should get very good results, especially if you adjust the auto slider in the PQ HDR settings to get the brightness you need.

If you can get good results like this, then your issue is more probably that you're using the wrong madVR settings, or the wrong base calibration in the JVC, but that's OT here. I plan to start a thread on the HDR calibration for madVR at some point, most likely once the next madVR public build is released. Make sure you watch this topic, I'll post here when it's created.

In the meantime, I'd relax and use passthrough with the JVC auto tonemapping, and I'd put the Autocal aside until you can assess whether your issue is calibration related or not.

[Mark the Red]

So I should reset the Projector to factory defaults and let it run stock with regards to both SDR and HDR.   

I was following Dominic Chans initial settings, and that is the only change I made.   From my experience with new displays, I've always found the avsforums had good starting points for best practices /settings for mass produced commercial products.  I am aware there is variations between units in everything you buy. 

Anyway, I already bought the Spyder5 so I might as well try that.   I don't want to hijack the thread anymore than I have, but I believe I need to get back to basics before I come back here.   My head is going to explode trying to understand some of this; I am just not satisfied right now the picture out of the box, which brought me here.  

My understanding of the consensus was that you run Natural for SDR and HDR for HDR content after running autocals.   I am way out of my league right now on this forum and will show myself out.  Thanks again.  

[Manni]

Don't worry about being out of your league, we've all been there

I only realize now that you have an old model... My fault, I didn't catch this in your first post.

All the advice I gave you is irrelevant as the x590 might not support the same meters. You should be able to use the Spyder 5 with an older version of the autocal, but it won't support V11. It might support the i1pro2/ES2000, I'm not sure. You need to check what the Autocal for your model supports.

You should really post in the old calibration thread, for the old models, where Dominic does a great job. Our whole conversation here was off topic

Good luck!

[riddle]

I use ES2000 and its works in Calman and in lastes version of JVC AutoCal too...

[Manni]

I use ES2000 and its works in Calman and in lastes version of JVC AutoCal too...

Thanks for the confirmation

[SirMaster]

@SirMaster:  Can you please let me know where you bought your Spyder5?  Sounds like you got a decent one and I figured since they are all MSRP right now, I'd rather just take the pie in the sky chance that I get a good one like yours.

My second question is whether you noticed an improvement in your colors with the spyder autocal.  Manni is crystal clear in his FAQ to not be so darned cheap and buy an x-rite i2 pro for color, but I am wondering if the spyder 5 did more harm than good.    Since I have an entry level projector, I cannot justify the $1k price tag for a i2 right now if the spyder does a good enough job.


 

I know this is late now.  I got my Spyder5 from B&H, but yeah it doesn't matter where you get it from.

As far as the results I got from color autocal, I can only so far describe it as this:

My NX5 stock out of the box low bulb mode looks great.  By great, I mean that the color in my test movie scenes that I am intimately familiar with seeing on a known well-calibrated display looks as far as I can tell, the same.

High bulb however looked very noticeably different and wrong to me.  It had a clear greenish tint to it and not enough red.  I could easily compare by simply toggling between low and high bulb and seeing the color clearly shift.

After running autocal for both low and high bulb mode, I was able to easily compare before/after results by changing my iris between -4 and -3.  -3 being my calibrated result (since I ran the calibration at iris 0) and -4 being the stock, before-calibrated result (since calibrations are done in groups of 4 iris positions)

I noted that the low bulb mode barely changed at all from the color autocal. This is a good thing as it already looked correct.

However, the big difference after autocal that I now noticed is that my high bulb mode looks exactly like low bulb mode, except of course brighter.

The fact that low bulb already looked good, before autocal, and autocal barely changed it and the fact hat high bulb went from looking somewhat poor, to looking great and looking just like low bulb simply gave me confidence that autocal and my spyder5 did their job well.


However, I cannot claim what accuracy my autocal result actually is.  Only that to my eyes (and the eyes of another seasoned veteran AVS member who was there) the results look great.  Again, these are subjective opinions on the result with the only frame of reference is having seen these movie scenes on a known well-calibrated display.

Anyways, that's my experience on it, and i would never go back to the stock color of my high bulb mode.

I do want to somehow show the results that I got and I may try to make a comparison video showing how the color changes before/after autocal.  However I do not know how well this comparison will show up on video or in photo, so I first need to see if I can get an accurate representation of what I see with my eyes vs what you will be able to see in a video that I can capture.  If it looks like an accurate representation, then I will post it.

At the end of the day, you should get a spyder5 for gamma calibration anyways.  There is no harm then in trying to use it for color calibration as long as you make sure you have your calibration backup (init) file.  Who knows, you may love the results as I did, and isn't that really what matters? (that *you* love how it looks).

[denist]

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to know if i can use the Xrite i1 Pro UVcut REV D for Jvc Autocal. I can get the device cheap just not sure if it will work for just color not gamma. I have he Spyder 5 pro for GAMMA only.

Please let me know before i purchase.

Thanks in advance.

[Clark Burk]

I believe you need the Pro2 version at least to work with auto cal. You may be able to use another calibration software to use that meter for the color calibration and use the Spyder for the gamma using auto cal. 
Manni has a great first page with just about every question you might have answered. If you haven’t try looking that over. There’s a specific section on meters.