The Offset Podcast - The Offset Podcast EP050: Multiple vs. Single Display Color Suites

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

It’s our 50th episode!  When we started this project a few years ago, it was mostly out of a desire to ‘make something’. We never thought we’d build up a library with hours of audio and video content. A huge thanks to all our listeners and viewers, we couldn’t have got here without you!  We’re also extremely grateful to our amazing sponsors including Flanders Scientific who have been with us since day one and our newest sponsor Conform.Tools.  These are both amazing companies, with fantastic people and outstanding products - please consider them the next time you need a color critical monitor or workflow tools for your next big project.  We’re excited for the next 50 episodes, but can always use your help - please like and subscribe were ever you find the show, tell your friends and colleagues and if you have an idea for a new episode please consider using our submission form at offsetpodcast.com—————In this episode of The Offset Podcast we’re taking a look at an often debated topic:  Using multiple monitors or a single monitor in a color suite.It used to be in color suites around the world a single top tier CRT monitor was the only one in the room.  But as time went on and CRTs were phased out, a new paradigm emerged - the operators reference monitor and a larger client monitor.  This kind of setup has persisted in color suites for over two decades.While the reference/client monitor setup is ubiquitous, it’s not without issues.  Room setup/positioning becomes vital, managing metamerism issues when using two different display technologies are used can be a battle and perceptual matching between monitors can be challenging.  But what if you could eliminate multi-display issues and depend on a single large reference monitor - well thats not without its own issues!In this episode we’ll explore this topic including covering some specifics including:Recap on traditional color room monitoring setupsGrading theaters - a model for a single display roomMimicking the living room and challenges that presents What’s metamerism and why its such an important topic in multi-display setupsIssues mixing display technologiesThe importance of room layoutsPerceptual matching - what is it and does it work?The downsides of perceptual matchingAnd more!  Check out www.offsetpodcast.com for our entire library of episodesBe sure to like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you found it and be sure to check out our growing library of episodes.  If you like the podcast it'd mean the world to us if you'd consider supporting the show by buying us a cup of virtual coffee -https://buymeacoffee.com/theoffsetpodcastSee you in about two weeks for a new episode.

Hey there, and welcome back to another episode of the Offset Podcast, and today we're exploring sort of a classic subject, the idea of using multiple displays in a room or a single reference display in a room. Stay tuned. Support for this episode comes from Flanders Scientific and the XMP 270 and XMP 310, the accessible, lightweight, and versatile monitors helping to bring HDR monitoring on set while also being very well suited to post-production work. Learn more at Flanderscientific.com. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Offset Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Robbie Carmen. And with me as always is Joey Deanna. Hey, Joey, how are you, buddy?

Hey, everyone. Hey, Joy, I got exciting news, man. This is number 50. This is our 50th episode of the Offset podcast, man. Can you believe that's crazy? I can't believe that our little project we've gotten to 50 of these things. Awesome, yeah. Thanks everybody for listening.

And, yeah, we're excited. 50 is a big number. Yeah, well, next stop is, I guess, well, next big one is 7075, then 100. Yeah, we'll keep on rolling. As you said, huge thanks, huge thanks to the audience for the encouragement, for listening these episodes, the comments. Of course, every little like and follow that you do is great. Sharing it with your friends and colleagues is great.

In case you missed it last week, we actually forgot to do a sort of a shout-out, but we have a new sponsor of the Offset podcast. That is conform. Tools. The previous episode was their first week sponsoring. A warm, warm welcome to those guys. And they're doing yeoman's work in terms of helping to try to make the conform process, specifically from Premier over to resolve much, much easier. So we encourage you to go over to conform.combs and check out their offerings.

They're going to be making a big push around April and NAB, of rolling out the platform. But go over there, check it out, sign up for more information, including when to be notified when the full rollout has taken place. And of course, as always, a huge thanks to our OG sponsor, Flanders Scientific, who is going to dig this episode, I think, because we're talking about something right in their wheelhouse, which is monitors today and multiple rooms set up

and perceptual matching and all that kind of fun stuff. As we know, if you've never checked it out, go back and check out the couple episodes we've done done with Brom Desmond from FSI, as well as we did an episode or two with Dave Abrams from Ava Cow slash Portrait Displays, as well as Nate from Dolby, where we talked about some of this stuff around the edges. But today, I think we're going to go a little deeper, some preference stuff, some things to consider about multi-monitor or single-monitor setups and the things to pay attention

there as well. Of course, you can always follow us on social media. Just search for the opposite podcast on Instagram and Facebook. You can follow us on YouTube. And just a reminder, wherever you find the show, give us a like and subscribe. Every little bit goes a long way. All right, my man. Well, I want to talk a little bit about this issue.

This actually came up for me this past week. I was talking to a colleague and we were talking about, you know, the client monitor, reference monitor, lines of sight. And as these things tend to go sometimes, people have, you know, opinions. And I'm an opinionated person. And we got into a little bit. And it was just funny to me, like thinking back about how many times over the years I've had this conno. about room set up and monitoring. I'm sure you've had similar conversations at nauseam.

But I wanted to just revisit it because we're at a weird time, I think, for monitors, right? Like, it used to be that you could pretty much make the choice of like, oh, you do a lot of video, TV work. Well, that means you're going to have a, you know, 24 to 32 inch reference monitor sitting on your desk. And then somewhere out by the couches, you're going to have a, you know, 50, 60, whatever, you know, 70-inch, you know, client monitor, which was oftentimes more of a consumer TV. These days, that's not really the only choice to be had, right? And I thought it would be

worthwhile to explore that particular subject, single versus multiple, but then also dive a little bit on some of this layout stuff and also this idea of perceptual matching, as you guys will hear in a little bit. There's some strong opinions either way. I'm in one camp. Joey's likely in a different camp. The colleague that I mentioned, he's in a different camp. So we want to explore that as well. But Joey, let's start out talking a little bit about that traditional, that traditional setup, explain it to us. What do you see as that traditional setup? Where its advantages? What is its downsides? Yeah, I think a lot of grading rooms, you know, in the very beginning in TV world, right, we had one master CRT reference monitor, right? And that had the advantage

of, you know, everybody could look at it. Everyone would essentially perceive it the same way. Viewing angle wasn't really an issue because CRTs had excellent viewing angles. But there was a lot of downsides to that too because even the biggest CRTs were only 32, 31 inches. Right. So you'd end up having either clients sitting right next to you

or clients relying on a really low quality consumer display where they were sitting, which was fine for like edit rooms or online rooms, but for color really wasn't appropriate. So as the consumer displays started to get better, and as we kind of moved away from CRTs to the next generation of reference displays, as in this also kind of coincided with the transition to HD, although we did have some very excellent HD CRTs back in the day.

But, you know, the HDCRT did not last long, right? We moved towards LCD-based or other, flat panel technologies for both our reference monitors and our consumer monitors exceptionally quickly. And what that looked like in most color rooms was a smaller reference monitor, 24 inches ish or more, a little bit less, depending on which manufacturer you went with, that was your gold standard calibrated reference monitor. And then usually a consumer-based television that we calibrated as close to reference as we possibly could. Initially, those were Panasonic plasmas or pioneer plasmas.

They were really calibrateable and really high quality, but they kind of lacked in resolution and connectivity. So it was always a little bit of a hassle to get them working in a suite. And then as consumer LCDs got better, sometimes those were utilized, but it was pretty tough to calibrate them. But really the gold standard for using consumer monitors as what we're calling client monitors

came with the advent of the W-O-led displays from LG. They were very calibrateable for SDR, very good, almost out of the box. Like, you could even in a pinch, basically, I match it to your reference monitor

with the internal controls and have it be 95% of the way there, because they came out of the box, if you just set them to the right settings, I believe it's still, to this day, on the LG monitors, warm two, and the defaults on like saturation and stuff like that. You know, if you set that... Filmmaker mode, right, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, set at the filmmaker mode expert, whatever, turn off all the nonsense. It's almost dead on right out of the box. So that became how I think most rooms were built. Expensive reference monitor from a Flanders Scientific or Sony that the colorist looks at. consumer TV that in general a client or group of clients look at because with modern LCD reference monitors or some of the other technology that was out there like the LMLs, things like that, that 24 inch reference monitor now has a lot more viewing angle issues and it's a lot harder to build a room around multiple people looking at it.

So you needed a client monitor and that introduces the biggest problem that we've ever had as colorists with clients in the room, which is the dreaded phrase, what monitor do I look at? Or this one looks different than that one. And that's where layout becomes really important. Yeah. Now, before we go into that, I just want to express some nostalgia in a little bit of just warm, reminiscent feelings for the old Sony BVM D-32 E1WU. and yes I did have to look up the full model number

because I couldn't remember it on the top man that is the mythical I had one and the tube died if I still had it I could sell it to a retro gaming enthusiast for like $10,000 yeah so that was the first like legit reference monitor that I had on my own that I bought with my own money

I bought it used and it was still really expensive and if you've never seen this thing in person not only is it well I mean I'd have to estimate it's probably 300 pounds maybe something like that 200 pounds and it's probably it's at least as deep as like a modern like you know rack server it's probably you know 25 to 28 inches depth and I the first place that I rented the first office that I ever rented was a walkup right and I was on like the third floor of this walk up and I just remember to this day like my wife and like I don't know we had some friends with us like like four of us struggling to carry this thing.

thing that we were also worried about dropping up the steps to make it into the room. But I digress. At least Sony was nice enough to put handles on them. Yeah, that is true. There was some handles on the side, but I have some warm feelings for that monitor. So I think you're right. Around that time that OLEDs came to, you know, W. OLEDs and some sort of, you know, on the desk, 24 to 32 inch monitor came the normal

everywhere else. Don't forget for a long time. Before that, you know, the grading theater was. also a thing, right? This, of course, are projection setups, you know, most commonly around DLP cinema style projectors from, you know, Christy, a Barco, maybe a Sony thrown in here or there. But, you know, these are pretty much the norm out in, you know, big markets like Hollywood and Bollywood, et cetera, where, you know, the name of the game was theatrical grading, right? You want to mimic the black box theatrical setup as most as you can because that's where those eyeballs are going to

see it. And so a lot of those facilities set up these very big. very expensive, but very performant grading theaters using that. And the only one thing I want to point out about them is what the kind of the setup generally was with those, where it's kind of like, you know, you see some wide, you can look it up on Google or whatever as well, where you'll see an operator's desk sort of at the back in the middle of the room, generally speaking, you know, panels in the middle, UI monitor spread off to the left, but it's a dead ahead, no obstructions, straight view to the big projection screen right in front of them, right?

Now, occasionally, you would still see those rooms set up sometimes with, you know, either a roll-in client monitor, like, you know, like a big, you know, 65 or 70-inch monitor. They'd also do the same thing with the on-the-desk reference monitor. Because, you know, you have this big expensive grading theater. You don't want to just let it sit when you're not doing, you know, non-theatrical work. So they were able to. Yeah, and I think it's important to recognize, too, that a theatrical grading suite is not really an appropriate place to grade television, right? It's not an appropriate place to grade a TV commercial. Right. And you would also see for the same reasons that we'll talk about in a second. You know, sometimes colors did prefer, you know, even if they're grading on a projector, they would still want something close up to evaluate things like grain patterns, noise, etc, because it was closer and not all that far away with them. So, you know, there's a whole bunch of rigmarole and perceptual matching on that side of things, too, where it's not even about, you know, sort of client monitor versus it's more projection screen to what's on my desk. And people will do all sorts of wacky things. And surprisingly,

in those situations, it wasn't always necessarily even the best of the best video reference monitor that they paired with the projection screen. Oftentimes, it was like a pretty mid-level generic LCD screen because it matched the black level performance of the projector much better. So from a contrast point of view, they just felt more on, even if it wasn't maybe necessarily as accurate as the big projection screen. But my point is, in those rooms, the big unobstructed view straight to head. head to the big monitor was a thing. And I bring that up because as we'll talk about in just minute, that in terms of a room layout thing is something that I've really gravitated towards

in the past couple years, but not obviously using a projection screen. So we'll talk about there. Now, that's kind of the two different sort of main setups, right? The multiple model room, whatever, the grading theater. And I would argue the hybrid now is sort of the single monitor video room, which we'll talk about in more depth, but the idea of using one larger format reference monitor, like those ones that are available from Flanders and others, as a single monitor in the room, while not, I can't say as popular, I think it's gaining traction, right? Because really, that's never, this is sort of in the past four or five years, really our first opportunity to do that with confidence. Sure, people were taking consumer LGs and consumer monitors all

sorts and just putting that, oh, it's calibrated, I'm going to pop. I would never suggest that. To be clear, what I'm talking about is a single large format, grade one reference monitor being used in the room as the only monitor. I'm not talking about going to Best Buy, calibrating a monitor and throwing that up there. And that's the biggest change we've seen recently is that now it's possible, right? And we've seen, I know we're going to get emails, we're going to get comments. My LG is the perfect LG. It's been, quote, calibrated. I can use as a single monitor room.

And yes, for some stuff, that does work. But I am never comfortable using a consumer monitor as my only point of reference. Because as we've talked about in the past, that can lead you down routes of trying to chase problems that aren't problems that are monitoring issues. And that can affect your grades. So the advent of large format QD OLED reference quality monitors, that can actually be, you know, 55 inch, 65 inches or more and fill the room size requirement for a single monitor room is really new.

And I think a lot of colors are having to kind of rework their brains because we think 24 to 31 inch reference, 55 to 65 inch, quote, client monitor with the current batch of technology, not necessarily the case. Yeah. And I think part of this comes up to with the idea. and I think it's always been a thing in the world of color is the idea of sort of mimicking the living room experience, right?

And I think that presents a lot of challenges because I think in a lot of the dual setup rooms, it's sort of true but not fully true, right? So people work, oh, we got nice comfortable couches, we got the coffee table, we got the plants, oh, and look, we got the TV. But that's like kind of like one room, and then you have like the operator's version of that room,

which is not that, right? It's very technical. It's got all the computer stuff, the control surfaces. Oh, and then it's got this smallish, you know, 24 to 32 inch monitor on the desk. And it always seemed to me to be a little divorced from the idea of trying to mimic what people are viewing things on. So here are the pros for doing that kind of setup is its proximity.

Pixel Peepers of the world love to see. Oh, look, see, I can look at, I can see every pixel on the screen because it's three inches from my face. Okay, it makes sense, grain, noise, whatever, totally get that. I would make the argument, too, that one of the big restrictions or reasons people haven't gravitated more towards the single reference monitor in the room is because it's just what they know and feel comfortable with. Just like, you know, you feel comfortable with a Wacom versus a mouse or you like, you like, you. you know, your scopes on the left and your UI on the right or whatever. Like, we just get into these sort of inflection patterns. So every person I've met who I've said, have you tried the single display thing?

And they go, no, no, no, I would never do that, blah, blah, blah. And every reason they give me is mostly just because of what they're used to, right? And what they're done and they're nervous to try it out. I also think that the other thing that's a factor here is that the dual, sort of the single room that's kind of split into two halves does make a little bit of sense just because it's less room that you have to worry about, you know, ideal lighting conditions, back, you know,

bias lighting, etc. And when you have the whole room acting as sort of a living room, it can be a little more challenging for the operator sometimes too, you know, if people are turning lights on or whatever. There's issues there. But let us jump to something else that we've talked about before.

I think if anybody wants to go, I think probably the best explanation of this, and I'll put this in the show notes is years ago, Brom Desmond, again from FSA, a friend of ours and sponsor the show, they did a video on what is metamorism, and it's a pretty must-watch, as far as I'm concerned, if you're interested in any of this kind of stuff. Support for this episode comes from conform tools.

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The issue when you get to the dual monitor setup is that almost always in those situations, you're mixing display technologies, right? Yes. Right? Like, it hasn't really been a thing until really recently that you could have, say, a small format and a large format of the same display technology. Forever it's been, oh, look, our small format monitor is one technology. The large format is another technology.

And you work your ass off to calibrate those, and people go so walk in, they look a little different, right? So what is metamorism in a high, like a high 50,000 foot view of it, Joe? Yeah. So, you know, like you said, in multi-monitor rooms, you're almost always mixing and matching display technology. Whether that's, I have two L. It could be as simple as I have two LCDs with different backlight technologies,

one with a CCFL, one with an LED, right? Or it can be I have a, like in my room, I've got an OLED client monitor and a active dimming LED backlight LCD reference monitor. Or, you know, go back a few years when the small RGB OLEDs, the 25-inch Sony panels were very common. You'd have the 25-inch Sony panel, which was an RGB OLED or the Sony X-300, which was an RGB OLED and something like a W-O-LED as a client monitor. Very different technologies. But they all do essentially the same thing. right, they make red, green, and blue light, and they combine those in different levels to make colors.

Now, when we calibrate, we measure the ratio of actual red, green, and blue light together, and add it up to a color value, essentially, and we check that against the reference standard, and that's how we calibrate the display. Well, this is where metamorism comes into play. Metamorism is how the human visual system, the combination of our eyes optically and our brain that does the interpretation of the data coming in from our eyes, actually perceives color. And as it turns out, this is not the same for everyone, and it's not the same for every display technology. What I mean by that is, let's say you have an LCD and an OLED right next to each other. They could read the exact same values on a colorimeter of this much red, this much green, this much blue, and calibrate exactly the same. Come with the same delta E values. On paper, they look exactly the same.

But because internal to those kind of red, green, and blue subcategories, the actual wavelengths of light, what we call the spectral power distribution. If you look at, you know, light as a visible light as a range of wavelengths, the makeup, of how you get to that red, green, and blue with different wavelengths of light is slightly different for every display technology. And some have, you know, more spiky distributions where the red, green, and blue are very narrow wavelength. Some are much, much, much wider with more or less fall off. So you can have two monitors that calibrate identically, but to any viewer might appear slightly more red or slightly more green or perceive it with a slightly different white balance. And the weird and difficult thing about this is these trend, these metamorism changes or differences, trend pretty similar among observers or viewers, right?

Like for example, with the Sony RGB OLED versus a W. W.O.L. Most people see the Sony as a little bit more green and the W.O.L. as a little bit more red. But how far that goes and, you know, how much difference there is and the actual perception, one, is very difficult to quantify because I can't see what you see. And two, seems to vary pretty drastically from viewer to viewer. And age and sex and all that's where it gets really tricky.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think that's a great explanation. I think about it sort of two things about what you just said that I'd add on to. One, I think of metameterism as being sort of a different path to the same result. As you said, you could have two monitors that are, you know, their X, Y, Y values that they're reading on any given patch are identical, but they still seem the same or whatever when you take it on aggregate because, you know, you can, you know, two plus one is three, but also four minus one is three, right? Like you can still get to the same result with just a different formula to get there.

And I also think about- And you really only see what this, what we call metameric failure if you have them next to each other, right? Right. We'll get to isolation. They don't look wrong per se. We'll get back to that part in just one second because it's really important. The other thing, the way I like, well, if, you know, you look at an SPD, you know, sort of graph, it always reminds me of like mountain ranges, right?

And so it's like, yeah, you have two mountain ranges. they are mountains, but they are different ranges, right? And they, so like, it's the different spikiness, whatever. They're both mountains, but slightly different the way, where their peaks and valleys are. And that's an important part. Right, the topology of it. That's a good way of saying it.

And, you know, there's a lot of hard, hardcore image science that goes into some of this stuff explaining meterism, metamorism failure, anomalous viewers, why this one guy always thinks everything is purple or whatever. Like, there's a lot of really intense visual signs about that. But where I think it matters for this discussion is particularly in the idea of a multi-room or multi-display room where you let off the show going, hey, which one do I look at? That is a question that we get all the time.

And you talk to some colors, like my colleague who I talked about earlier at the top of the show, he goes, I just shut that down and be like, that's right for you, this is right for me. And a lot of people do a lot of work in room setup, for example, to minimize the ability for a person to do that easily. Because you're right. Our brains are very good when they're comparing two things side by side. You have, you know, reference monitor A, reference monitor B. You're looking at the same image sitting by side by side. You go, oh, that one feels more red.

This one feels more green. Our brains don't really work that way if you're looking at a single display. Like, if you looked at a single display and looked at it for a couple minutes, visual adaptation comes into play and all of a sudden your brain goes yeah that just looks normal right you walk into another room it might be totally crazily different calibration and you look at it and with a matter a few minutes you go yeah that looks normal and that looks fine right i get that and i understand how it works my issue with this is that it used to be it used to be that everybody was making decisions in a calibrated environment with displays that had gotten some care towards them.

So metamorism, while always an issue in those rooms, really actually sort of mattered less, right? Because if there was ever really a question about it, right? Hey, why don't you come around and look at my, you know, colorist reference monitor and see it's not really, like, and the fears and the problems would be, you know, just put put to bed, right? Now in the world where we live with asynchronous reviews, streaming reviews, people watching on their iPhones on their back deck in the middle of the day, making critical decisions, these problems sort of amplify themselves, right? And so I, you know, the pushback I always get about, like, it doesn't matter if it's

calibrated, why worry about perceptual matching? And you have this logic too. Why worry about perceptual matching? Why worry about metamorism? It doesn't matter. it's their correct. And like people make the argument all the time that like, hey, even if somebody's TV is a little off, it's their, they're off, right? They're used to looking at it that way. So even though it might not be technically the right color or the right white, it doesn't matter because of the way

our brains work. And I get that, man. I really do. I'm not, I'm having a hard time articulating this to people. But I do think if we are working towards reference and we are trying to make decisions based on what the actual truth is, is that in a single room when you have monitors that look different to most people, right, that there should be some work that goes in to eliminate that difference as much as possible. Now, I'm fully understanding,

it is impossible without using the exact same display technology, maybe even the exact same monitor from the exact same batch, right? It's going to be difficult to get them 100% perfect on we win with. But my point about this next thing we're going to talk about, perceptual matching, is that's important to see, like, I don't want two displays to look different. I want them to look as close as possible, even if that means, air quotes, messing up one of them to match whatever the hero display is a little bit.

Because I do think that it does cause problems for confidence. I think it causes problems at the worst, if it's really, really out of whack, right? there could potentially be made incorrect decisions made, right? So we'll talk about this in a second, but why don't we begin with you telling us, what is perceptual matching? Like, what is, what is it do for us when we talk about multiple monitors? And also add to that, why you're not a fan.

Yeah, and it's funny because, you know, we put out a little while ago, and it's still actually there, and we're still hoping for a couple more responses. We put out a kind of a viewer, listener survey, And it's funny, one of the things that we got as feedback was, you guys agree too much. You should argue more. We should disagree more. This is one that I think, I think you and I differ on pretty clearly, although we're so in the weeds here. I'm not going to dogmatically be like, you're wrong. I'm right or vice versa, right? There's a lot of other factors that go into this. But let's talk about rooms with multiple monitors.

Like you said, unless they're identical, and that'd be pointless to have multiple monitors that are identical, you're going to have metamorism differences from display to display. And my mentality on this is that's a room set up problem. I, in basically any room that I set up or layout, I might have multiple monitors, but I make almost a billion percent sure that in, that in, basically, any room that I set up or lay out, I might have multiple monitors, but I make almost a billion percent sure that in, Unless you really try, you can't get two monitors in your same eye line at the same time. Because that's where metameric failure will rear its ugly head. If I'm looking at my LCD and I like stand up to look at my client monitor that is that direction, but completely out of my direct view, yes, I can see a little bit of perceptual difference in the white balance. but I never ever work like that. And I never have a client who's looking at that OLED client monitor,

which is calibrated and very accurate. I never have them look at my 30-inch LCD. I just don't do that. I think for consistency purposes and for sanity purposes, for all the reasons that you went over about how having multiple displays can be a canna-worms, I engineer the room as much as possible, so two displays are never in the same eye line. So what is perceptual matching? Perceptual matching is, let's say you have two displays that are in the same eye line.

Essentially, what you do is you pick one hero display, put a white frame on it, and you kind of use your color controls on the secondary display. So you're not adjusting the color. Yeah, you freeze it up. on one to freeze the signal. And it could be kind of a hassle because sometimes you might need two systems to do this. Or you might need some way of freezing the input signal on your hero monitor. But that one never changes.

Then you use kind of your game wheel on your color system. And as you perceive it, make the white match on the secondary display to your primary display. So here's a really important point. So if you start looking into this, you're probably going to eventually find the phrase of, a CMF or a color matching function, right? And this is a whole bit of science that we are not prepared to cover in depth because we would get probably 98% of it wrong. But the CMFs generally work with this whole idea of color matching functions.

And you've heard of some of these before, like the Judd Offset that was such in lingo years ago, truly is a CMF, but Sony who made it popular, they weren't using the entire Judd CMF. They were just doing a white point adjustment, right? So what Joey's talking about is not implementing a full CMF. It's literally white and gray balance of the monitor, perceptually matching that to whatever your air quotes, Hero monitor is, right? And you can do that just on a white patch as well as a lot of people do it on a gray patch as well.

With the idea that you're simply adjusting sort of the white gray point of the monitor, you're not going into the yellows or the reds or the greens or whatever. and doing a full CMF to match those because that's a whole other area of challenges and issues that really not what we're talking about, right? Yeah, and because of the simplicity of that white balance adjustment, in general, the rest of your calibration,

basically you then take this new white point and make that the white point you calibrate to and you calibrate the second monitor. Yeah, so the rest of the calibration will fall into place. Exactly. So after you get that white matching or that white or gray matching, you put a meter on it, you take a reading of it to get the XYY value of it, and you go, oh, okay, here is my new white.

So then when you calibrate, like in a full, let's say you do a 4,000 patch set calibration, you're typing in not the standard D65 white point as your white point, but whatever you read that matches your hero monitor as your new white point. And as you said, everything else just kind of falls in line. And as I said, Stoney did this for a number of years with the RGB OLEDs and the Judd white point of the Judd offset because they were trying to compensate for, oh, most people look at this as being a little off. It's really green. Right, not the correct white. So we're going to do this thing. So I admit that this is a little bit of a hack, right? Because it's sort of like, hey, I'm going to just try to cheat metamorism a little bit here and get it going.

Now, you made a point earlier that's really interesting about this. And it's, again, some more image science that requires probably a little diver, a deeper dive to explain it fully. But it's the idea that, okay, fine, you think that that white matches the white of the hero. What about everybody else in the room, right? There can be some variance to that obviously based on age, sex, how much time they've spent sitting in the room. before their eyes got adjusted, whatever. So I think that if you're gonna go down the perceptional matching route,

it serves you well to have a medium-sized group help you inform some of these opinions as well. And from a technical point of view, as Joey said, when you're freezing the white on one monitor and then you're sort of grading the white on another monitor, very granular steps of that can be very, like not yet necessarily using the joy ball in your control panel,

but literally going in numerically and going, okay, it's 0.99 now. It's 0.98 or whatever. And doing those small steps. But it does bring up a downside of perceptual matching is that that matching, you're looking through sort of agreement through committee, not necessarily the fact that it's going to be perfect for everybody because it's never going to be perfect for everybody the way that we do that. And that I think is the biggest,

the biggest thing that I hear. hear from detractors of perceptual matching is like, well, what's the point of doing it then? Right? Like if you're going to do this and everybody's still going to see it differently, and here's my answer to that, okay? I am not talking about people going, oh, it never happens where somebody goes, oh my God, that whole image looks green. And I look at my reference monitor and go, what are you talking about?

It doesn't look green, right? That doesn't really happen. What we're talking about more is somebody is looking in. sitting there evaluating something and going, God, I don't know, maybe there's just, maybe just a hair too much red in their face. And you're looking at the monitor going, I don't, I don't see that. So they walk around and look at your monitor and they go, yeah, yeah, no, this is better what you have. And I'm talking, so I'm not talking about these huge global things where it's just obvious that it's bad calibration. I'm talking about perceptual matching as being an assistant when we're in that,

minutia, right? And because of the metamorism, somebody is making a comment or a decision that you are not necessarily seeing yourself. And so what I find myself all the time doing the supervised sessions is doing what you just said you don't do. Is cheating. Is looking up to look at that client monitor going, oh, that's what they're seeing. Oh, I have to compensate for what they're seeing, not for what I'm seeing. So like I get it. Part of it's just is my fault, that I'm breaking the rules. I'm breaking that wall and not looking at the correct monitor.

But that's what I worry about. So this is why, and this is where this whole episode came out of us kind of having this discussion amongst ourselves because of the issues you ran into in a review session. This is why I am

kind of, again, unless you're in a not ideal situation where both are going to be directly eyeline, I am really, pretty anti-perceptual matching in a color suite for a couple of reasons. One, I am adamant about that don't look at two monitors thing. I really am. I feel like that is the best way to GAV consistency.

And I bake that into how the room is built if I can. Yeah, I get it. That's number one. Number two, I feel like when you do a person, and partially this is me not having a lot of confidence in my own eyesight. You know, I don't think that I, have the greatest eyesight in the world. Don't tell anybody that.

But the reason why we calibrate to a reference standard is because we don't need to rely exclusively on one person having massively Superman vision, right? So the reason why I don't like the perceptual match is you're essentially baking in your perception of that second monitor at a particular date and time with a particular person. And like you said, a better way to do it is to get a couple people in the room and And we've done this in our rooms where we've together kind of looked at it, be like, ah, feels like one point less green or one point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, dial it in that way. But to me, doing that is kind of baking in some Kentucky windage that you might end up fighting down the road when you're trying to get a grade approved with a client. But again, you got to understand that I am never, ever looking at two monitors at the same time. If I, I have to like crane my neck to do it in this room. And if I do, I absolutely do see a very slight difference along the red axis on that OLED. And that's worth a bit. And that's, I mean, to be fair. But if I walk over to my couch and sit down and hit play, I don't sense it.

Yeah, after a few seconds, you're used to it. Yeah, you're used to it. Support for this episode comes from Flanders Scientific and Gaia color direct connect volumetric auto cow. Calibration of reference displays is critical in our industry, and there's no easier way to calibrate than by using Gaia Color, which is standard on DM, XMP, and XMPC series monitors. Gaia color calibration allows supported probes to be plugged in directly to the monitor for fast, accurate, and automated calibration, with no computer or operator expertise required. You can learn more about this powerful system at Flanderscientific. I guess I admittedly, I think I have a little PTSD, especially in that red thing, right, where it's either, most oftentimes it's, this feels a little warmer than it need to be. And I'm like, I don't see what you're talking about, right?

So I do think I have some PTSD about that. Now, how did I solve this? I, look, I made the decision that, okay, even though I believe in perceptual matching as a thing, it has a lot of problems for the ones we've just delineated. Hey, you know what an easy way to fix that is? Just get rid of the second monitor. Right? Like, honestly, right?

And before, that never felt like a choice because it was like, how am I going to get five people from this ad agency around a 32-inch monitor at my desk? Like, we're all going to be like holding hands and singing kumbaya, right? It never worked for a comfort point of view. It never worked for a large group. Like, fine. You have a DP that you're working with or a director that you're working with and they roll up a chair to their desk.

Great. Work like that. No problem. So I don't have an issue with that. But the idea that like you're going to get a whole team of people, not going to happen. So what I am now firmly a believer in and have to try. And it took, I want to be clear about this. This took me the better part of a year to get accustomed to.

So I started making small changes. At home, I went to a single 55-inch. monitor rather than a smaller or 32 on my desk so I have right in front of me a 55 inch QD OLED which I love I'm probably sitting a little too close to it I occasionally have to back off and make some decisions but my space it works more or less fun at the office and for review sessions a 65 ideally I really Brahm if you're listening a 77 would be the jam for me a 77 or an 80 inch QD OLED panel you know true reference panel

be, whatever, they're never going to do it. 65 is about as big as you can get right now in the pro-level, you know, reference panels. But the way that I have it set up is grading theater style. Clients in front of me, I'm looking at the same monitor and the same eye line that they are looking at, and we are only looking at that one monitor. The benefits is there is no question about which one do I look at. I'm never second-guessing myself with any perceptual match or looking here, then looking there, then looking here, and breaking all the rules that we've talked about. Clients don't ever say which one should I be looking at.

Even if you're really a good colorist and you can break that down and stop that argument from the beginning, it's not even an argument to have because there's only one thing to look at. And then the third thing, I would say, the only detractor, the only detractor that I have from this is that it is more difficult to evaluate. noise and grain at the proper distance to a 65 or a 77 inch kind of monitor, right? It is one thing that I will admit is potentially an issue. Here's how I've gotten around it, sort of. Okay. So again, not wanting to introduce metamorism into the play, whatever, I have as my UI monitor, I have a QD-O-L-AAS-Q-Q-D-O-LED UI monitor, right?

that if I need to, I can go full screen and resolve viewer and look at things there, right? And then just switch back to my regular UI and keep looking straight ahead. So I do think that for the way that a lot of people are working, you do have to sort of, I think the single monitor room works great when it's largely a review space, right? I think there is still something to be said

about the on the desk close up monitor when that space also needs to double as a sort of working gut check evaluation QC kind of set up. But, you know, it's not to say you can't make the single monitor work. I do here at home, but that's kind of my feeling about it. Is that like, cool. Dual monitors have lots of problems. Perceptional monitoring potentially has a problem.

The fix, just get rid of that second monitor. Yeah, and honestly, everything that we've said, even where we disagree, goes out the window when everybody's looking at the same calibrated reference. And I think that is conceptually absolutely the best possibility. Like you mentioned at the very beginning, traditional grading theaters for cinema were exactly that. But, you know, the question in, you know, in a direct view sense, which is kind of more where we live, right?

You're right. Grain in detail becomes an issue, but also, you know, one of the things we were talking about is that living room experience and trying to get your perception to be while still in reference standard more in line with the consumer and guess what maybe 20 years ago the consumer was looking at something more similar size to my 30 inch or my 31 inch but today 99% of consumers if we ignore people watching on their phones but 99% of television consumers are watching on a larger format flat panel display So I think there's something to think about where you maybe should be judging things like grain and noise on a display like that because you perceive it differently than when you're right up to a 31 inch.

100%. And I will say where I've noticed it most is that I, for the first time in my life, colorist life, I have found myself not an OT overdoing noise reduction throughout an entire show. because when I'm looking at something that it's three inches from my face and whatever, I'm making very, like, you come to realize that, oh, I don't see that at all. That's not an issue to waste my time, energy, whatever. Now the argument flips out there. So sometimes the fix is worse than the issue. Right. And I want to be clear.

I am not at all saying that, you know, of course through this process, you're going to evaluate the image on, you know, iPad screen, laptop, screen wherever you see. I'm not saying that like we're just throwing that out with the bathwater. I'm just saying that the single representative screen, it represents that living room experience a lot better. It gets rid of the problem of metamorism. It gets rid of the issues associated with perceptual matching. And for the first time, you know, we have the technology in the panels, etc., to really call what's available a grade one reference monitor. Because as I said at the top of the show, I'm not advocating really doing this kind of single monitor, large format set up with a

traditional consumer monitor because there's too many things that are at play to potentially affect that. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at with it. And I, you know, listen, it's not for every room and it's not for every setup, right? I think one of the hard things, too, is that there is, you know, this conversation really weaves its way through preference and technical, right? And I, I think some of the technical sometimes gets conflated with preference and vice versa, right? And I think that from a preference point of view, I get all the pushback about the single room, not having, or a single monitor, not having something up close, whatever. But I also universally, those people who give pushback about that have straight up said to me,

no, I've never worked in a room where it's just a single large format monitor, right? So it does take a while to get used to, right? And when you, I mean, let me ask you with this, because you have, you work day to day in a room that has multiple monitors and you work in a room that has, you know, on the desk right in front of you monitor. How about making that transition to our office when there's a single large format monitor up front? Like, you've said to me, oh, it's fine. I just don't know if I could work that way all the time. And I think that's a, that's an important distinction because I said a few minutes ago. I can see the issues with the idea of a work suite, you know, where you're making, you know, all these minutia decisions wanting to see something a little closer up sometimes.

But honestly, I've gotten used to it. And, you know, I don't know, man. I think it's worth a try. Yeah, I'll say this. I have never, when I've gone from my setup here with the up-closed monitor to the office where we have the big single monitor, the good news is I've never sat there. there and hit play and be like, oh, this looks totally wrong. This is, you know, it's never been a surprise because everything has been calibrated and everything matches and it's, it's never been an issue with that.

I will say I am and again, like you said, it's a preference and it is a like almost inertia legacy thing, what I'm used to. I feel comfortable with this setup and this viewing distance and screen size relationship, which makes me fast, right? comfort and not having to think as much equates to speed in a lot of ways and productivity. But when we go into review with a client, speed isn't the name of the game, right? And honestly, one thing about that single monitor layout that I love, because we've talked about, we've had episodes before, and I've talked a lot about kind of room design and different tactics for that. I my general room design and most of the rooms I've been in I really like their layout but the downside of their layout which is usually like I said me here client in front with their own monitor that's not my eye line is it's not the best for client communication you know I can't get face to face with them as easily whereas in a big single monitor room you're right there in that living room with the client which makes communication

so much smoother and easier. And I love it for a review. I've even gone as far. And you've, you've seen this in the room. But, you know, I have a little small stream deck set up that's on, up front on the coffee table on the couch, right?

And I can hear all the colorist eye rolls here going, oh my God. What do you give control to the clients? Well, yeah. I mean, so my, we allow the clients, if they want, they could drop markers in the timeline with that stream deck. They can control playback.

Because, you know, sometimes they might want to just, hey, let's stop here and look at this for a second. But I have gone as far sometimes as, you know, if it's just one or two people in the room, I've gone and sit down on the couch with my stream deck and just watched it as they watch it. And honestly, it's a slightly different experience being a little up front behind, you know, away from the desk, way from the panels. And I just think, I don't know. And I've always done that as a QC step here.

I'll watch a film sitting on the couch. Yeah. But again, I'm never looking at both monitors when I do that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that there's, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's, Different ways to skin this cat. My feeling has, over the years, has progressed from, of course, I'm just in the default

mode like everybody else, 32 inch, 27 to 24 to 32 inch reference bar on the desk, client monitor. I then progress to, oh, it's really important for my OCD and for the small minutiae for those to match, perceptual matching. And where I've progressed to is screw that. I want a grading theater style, single monitor room where none of that becomes. an issue, right? Now, the hybrid to that, I think, is where people like you would probably be a little more comfortable. My colleague who I started talking about at the top of the show, after our discussion, he might be a little more comfortable. And that is, hey, maybe you do what I'm doing.

Maybe you have a GUI monitor that is, you know, UI monitor that is also same display technology as that reference monitor, you can flip over. I have an ASUS QD OLED monitor. Works the same way, just flip it over. Or, you know, you can even even think about like, you know, they have, I have not, I've not tried this to be clear, but I'm curious to try it. You know, if you go on Amazon or whatever, you can buy 13 to 15 inch OLED panels, right? And you could just plop that on a desk next to your panel, right, and have like, if you require that little close up, I got to look at some grain. Yeah, look at some grain. Maybe they could be calibrated. to be acceptable and that's just another way of doing it.

So I think there's a lot. My point, my overarching point is there is no reason to be afraid of the single monitor set up. There are reasons to juggle the perceptual stuff and to juggle the due monitors. And there's just as much on the other end just to not give a crap about it and just go, yep, the numbers say they're both calibrated. Go with God and we're just going to run the speed. I get the whole spectrum. I really do. I do.

Two things that I just kind of want to close to wrap up on is that like we talked about comfort in your environment is really important. It goes to client confidence. It goes to your own efficiency. It goes to speed. It goes to consistency. So if you can see those two monitors in the room and you need them to be perceptually matched to feel confident, do it. Do it. The amount of changes we're talking about are such fractions of percentages that your comfort and your confidence, I think, matters more than a 0.01% push towards green, for example, right?

That's the first thing. The second thing is, when we're talking about these big single monitor rooms, one thing we haven't mentioned that I think is honestly really critical here is the impact on your equipment budget, right? Because it used to be, I'm going to buy a super expensive small reference monitor. I'm going to buy a relatively expensive consumer client monitor and a bunch of other stuff to calibrate that to make it all work. One, the price of these QD OLED reference monitors has gone down and down and down. So the barrier to entry for a really good HDR reference monitor is now drastically lower. But because these bigger sizes are available, you can get away with only buying one monitor and arranging your room around that. and you can end up building a absolutely premier calibrated grade one viewing environment

for a lot less money than you used to and yeah when you fat when you're really valuable and when you factor in let boxes one thing's going to sci one's going htimi so you need converters like all of that kind of stuff and all of the problems that that can introduce totally totally it all it all adds up so like i think i would just wrap on just saying that like i i i think it might have to be this reputation that I'm like anti-mole-like I get it like a lot of rooms just need two monitors right I just think that if you think about this in you know if you're OCD like me perceptual matching might be your thing and the way I just got so sick and tired of all of it I got sick and tired of the questions I got sick and tired of my my own discipline of not being able to pay attention to

one or the other right and looking at both and I got sick of you know the challenges of perceptual matching and making that work for everybody The only solution that I ever have not, like, not ever, the only solution that I've ever found that makes me the most comfortable for all of the reasons that you pointed out is I just got this one thing to look at and it's the same thing that the clients are looking at and it just makes me happy. Does it have maybe some potential downsides? Sure, but they seem addressable to me.

Right. And so I would just say, you know, before you knock it, try it kind of thing, right? And I think that, you know, you might find that, oh, this is a different way to working. It's a little weird at first, but let me give it a shot. And to be clear, the first time I ever stepped foot in a grading theater, I thought that was really strange too, because now I'm like, this is really, I have this massive image in front of me. What, what do I do now?

Like, it just felt overwhelming in the same way that it just felt a little weird if you're going from a direct view on the desk to, you know, a bigger monitor. So something to consider. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to, like I said early on, I don't want to be massively dogmatic about this. I think it's just important to understand all of the potential issues of different layouts with different display technologies and figure out what works best for you. Because when you're in an environment that works best for you, I think you work your best. That's a generic truth of all kind of artistic endeavors at all.

If you're comfortable, you can focus on the creative. And that's what really matters. And all of these factors, I think, go into making you comfortable with your viewing environment, which is. really important for what we do. Awesome. All right. Well, everybody, thank you for joining us on our 50th show. Hard to believe that the Offset Podcast has made it to 50 episodes.

Again, we couldn't have done it without you guys, our audience and all the great support, kind words. It's really, I don't know, it's really just been sort of magical to hear everybody's story about, you know, you're listening to the show in a car on the way to work or, you know, at the end of the day and you feel like it's like just having to catch up with friends. all of those things just mean the world to us. And we're going to keep going, making shows. We hope you keep listening to them and keep checking them out.

A huge thanks to our sponsors, Flanders Scientific and Conform Tools for making this happen, especially Flanders who has been with us since day number one. Your guys' support really just means the world to us. And honestly, they've taught us so much about these monitoring subjects. Totally. Totally. Thank you, Brom, for the midnight phone calls and the talking me off a ledge when we're talking about, you know, the thousandth place of decimals in X, Y, X, Y, Y reading and stuff like that.

It means the world. So for those of you who don't know, you can always check out the show on YouTube. That's where the video portion of the show is released. We also are on all major podcasting platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can also head over to offsetpodcast.com. That's where we have some additional show notes. You can check out our whole library of episodes over there as well. And at the very top of that page, at the very top of Offsetpodcast.com, there is a submission

button. So if you have an idea for a show or a subject you want us to tackle or something that's just been on your mind that we can improve on or do better at, you can use that for feedback as well. And if you don't mind heading over to this link on screen here to buy us a cup of virtual coffee. That's one way that you can support the show. And, you know, any amount goes a long way. It helps us with advertising costs, pair editor, et cetera.

So we really appreciate that. And then lastly, huge thanks to our editor, Stella, who makes us sound intelligible. So that's always a good thing as well. All right, Joe, I think this was a one one for number 50. I love talking about some of these technical issues that are near and dear to our hearts. And it's, you know, why we started the show in the first place. But thanks again to everybody for checking out this episode. And until next time, I'm Robbie Carmen.

And I'm Joey Deanna. Thanks for listening.