Portland Trail Blazers: CalMAN Display Calibration Case Study

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1 The Moda Center, in downtown Portland, is home court for the Portland Trail Blazers By Tom Schulte Portland Trail Blazers: CalMAN Display Calibration Case Study Provided By SpectraCal, Inc. October 2016

2 Portland Trail Blazers: CalMAN Display Calibration Case Study Written By Tom Schulte, Product Manager, Portrait Displays, Inc. Project Management By Tyler Pruitt, Technical Liason, Portrait Displays, Inc. Color Science & Calibration Training By Tyler Pruitt, Technical Liason, Portrait Displays, Inc. Overview Video production has always been an integral part of how sports teams at all levels promote their teams and produce revenue, from professional franchises to local athletic teams and sports facilities. Today, with the ever increasing quality of consumer displays and higher viewer expectations for video production quality, sports teams are looking more closely at the quality of their video production facilities. Recently, the Portland Trail Blazers adopted CalMAN display calibration software to provide matched color accuracy for all their color-critical reference monitors. This helped them improve the setup efficiency for each of their game productions and get more consistent, accurate color from each of their live camera and replay video feeds. About the Portland Trail Blazers The Portland Trail Blazers, commonly known as the Blazers, are an American professional basketball team based in Portland, Oregon. The Trail Blazers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member club of the league s Western Conference Northwest Division. The team played its home games in the Memorial Coliseum before moving to the Moda Center in 1995 (called the Rose Garden until 2013). The Trail Blazers franchise entered the league as an expansion team in 1970, and has enjoyed a strong following: from 1977 through 1995, the team sold out 814 consecutive home games, the longest such streak in American major professional sports at the time, and only since surpassed by the Boston Red Sox.

3 Editors in the Blazers broadcast control room switch between live camera and replay feeds to create their broadcast output feed. The Blazers have advanced to the NBA Finals three times, winning the NBA championship once in Their other NBA Finals appearances were in 1990 and The team has qualified for the playoffs in 31 seasons of their 45-season existence, including a streak of 21 straight appearances from 1983 through 2003, the second longest streak in NBA history. Trail Blazers Broadcasting The Trail Blazers Broadcasting Department in the Moda Center has two, mirrored video control rooms, one for external broadcast and the other for in-house screen shows. Their broadcast control room produces broadcast video for the local broadcast channels, a feed to NBA TV, and a feed to the NBA for replays. Their screen control room produces in-house video, such as screen shows, player info, replays, and graphics on their 650+ in-house displays and their four 15 ft. x 22 ft. Mitsubishi scoreboard displays at center court. The Blazers broadcast control room has three TVLogic studio monitors and the screen control room has two TVLogic studio monitors, for monitoring their video output quality. Each control room also has 20+ Sony computer monitors to view all the active camera and replay feeds in the arena for camera shot switching. Each Sony monitor is fed from four video feeds through a multi-viewer adapter, which produces four video feed

4 quadrant views on each monitor. The video signals from 14 studio and floor cameras are fed though their video match suite, with four TVLogic studio monitors, where a video shader operator monitors and adjusts the color and video levels from each camera before the signals are routed to the control rooms for switching. Here, a shader makes color corrections to the camera feeds during preshow setup and during on-air broadcasts. A video shader is usually shading two cameras at a time as each show progresses. The Blazers shows progress from a pre-pregame show to a pregame show, where two cameras are used on each set. When the game starts, two cameras are used for the game action for the in-house screen show. Then comes a postgame show at a floor location, followed by a postgame show in their studio, each again with two cameras. The Broadcasting Department also includes a video production suite, using Adobe Premier and Blackmagic Resolve with a Sony OLED studio monitor and a Samsung LCD client monitor, where they produce motion graphics content for interviews, promos, and videos. The Problem Bruce Williams is Technical Manager of the Trail Blazers Broadcasting Department. He has been working in the Trail Blazers engineering section for about 20 years, having assisted with the install of the Moda Center video equipment when the facility was built. Bruce is responsible for the quality of the video produced by the Trail Blazers Broadcasting Department for its TV broadcasts and in-house screen shows. When we asked Bruce what issues had prompted him to look for a display calibration solution, he replied. We saw that the TVLogic monitors in our video shading suite didn t look the same when We couldn t tell whether a camera was producing wrong colors or whether the monitor was wrong. we had the same picture up. Our video shaders were fighting what was real and what wasn t real. They wanted to be sure that their cameras were balanced correctly and that what they were sending out was correct. Bruce said, We couldn t tell whether a camera was producing wrong colors or whether the monitor was wrong. Our video shaders needed to

5 In the Blazers video match suite, their video shader color corrects the camera feed signals before they are routed to the two control rooms for switching. know that if they were seeing wrong colors, that the monitor hadn t drifted; it was the camera signal feed. Bruce said that their shaders often had to rely on a waveform/vectorscope and try to tweak their monitors by hand, not being able to trust their monitors as they should. Some of their people would say, It looks good in here, but others would say, Well it doesn t look good over here. Bruce noted that problems also became apparent when they shared camera feeds with an outside mobile production truck. According to Bruce, We might say that the camera feed looks slightly green on our monitor, but they would say that it doesn t look that way on their monitor in the production truck. So we knew that there was something wrong. We also saw that when a monitor from our video match suite came back from repair, there was a drastic difference between it and the other three video shading monitors. Also, the client monitor in the video production suite didn t match the reference studio monitor, complicating their graphics content approval process. So we knew that we had to get things fixed, to make sure that everything is matched, Bruce continued. We were

6 interested in calibrating the three studio monitors in our main TV broadcast control room, two in our screen control room, one in our video production suite, and the four studio monitors in our video match suite where video shading is done. The team s colors were showing up as different colors on each of the different monitors. We were looking for color consistency between all our monitors. The Solution Bruce said that he knew the Blazers needed help to get their monitors matched because, You can do it a little bit by eye, but that doesn t really work, so we needed some test equipment. The only solution we had used in the past was to use a monitor s blue-only setting SpectraCal did a great job of helping us simplify our monitor calibration process, including creating 3D LUTs for complete color accuracy. and put color bars onto it to get the monitor into the ballpark, but that wasn t as close as what we needed, especially with high definition where the colors pop. If it s wrong, you could really see that it s wrong. We did see that there were some cheap solutions available, but those looked like toys and we didn t feel they were going to work for us. Bruce said, We needed a display calibration solution that would help us actually make adjustments and changes in the monitor. We searched the internet and the CalMAN Studio product from SpectraCal kept coming up. It looked like it had good reviews and people liked it and it seemed pretty simple to use, so that is why we went with that solution. SpectraCal did a great job of helping us simplify our monitor calibration process, including creating 3D LUTs for complete color accuracy. We can easily set up an automatic calibration for a monitor and really get an accurate calibration. We first calibrated our monitors while the team was on hiatus and we didn t have a show for about three weeks. When our main video shader then came back and turned on the monitors in the video match suite, his first reaction was Something is wrong with these monitors, the picture looks too good! Wow! They didn t look like this before. Bruce also calibrated the monitors in their video production suite with

7 CalMAN Studio. The Sony OLED studio monitor required just a slight touchup to achieve reference standards and then he calibrated the Samsung LCD client monitor to happily achieve a tight perception match to the reference monitor. The CalMAN software is a really powerful tool, Bruce said. We ll use it to check our monitors about every three months to see whether they have drifted and need recalibration. Preshow setup is now more efficient because our video shader just has some presets that he calls up for the cameras and monitors. He doesn t have to double check his work now on three different monitors to see which one he trusts the most. About Portrait Displays Portrait Displays, Inc., since 1993, is a leading application software provider (ASP) for PC, smartphone, and tablet displays. The Portrait Displays team includes SpectraCal, the world s leading provider of video display calibration software for both professional and consumer needs. SpectraCal offers a number of calibration software and hardware solutions for several industries, including display manufacturing, professional video installation, medical imaging, and video production. Their flagship software product, CalMAN, has been adopted by consumers and professionals worldwide as the go-to solution for color accuracy and display analysis. Since CalMAN was launched in 2007, it has grown into five different software families, each unique to a particular set of industry needs. CalMAN Studio, the software used by the Trail Blazers, provides dozens of color space standards, gamma targets and measurement options, as well as custom workflows. To learn more about SpectraCal and their CalMAN software products, visit All trademarks are property of their respective holders Portrait Displays, Inc. All rights reserved.