OLED monitor for Flame

Flame Hardware Questions
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Hello,

Does anyone have experience using an OLED monitor as their main Flame UI display?

I plan for this to be a single monitor setup for now and I am considering the LG 32EP950-B as my display. Apparently it does not have burn-in issues as it only uses 31.5" of the 32" available and can shift the image, however this info is from the marketing dept and not from a user who has spent time with the display. I think the Asus ProArt PA32DC uses the same panel.

If anyone out there has tried this I’d love to know your thoughts…

Thanks
Dan

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@finnjaeger ??

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I have that monitor but i do not use this as my gui.

Its still oled, idk if i woudl risk it as a gui its also too expensive imho to be used as gui…

i understand the desire of having a single display, but one thing to consider is that you cant judge motion judder e.t.c in the correct framerate as you can when you run blackmagic/aja output.

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I’m curious @finnjaeger … do you use that OLED as your broadcast monitor? Do you like it? I’m looking to replace some of mine so I’m looking for new ideas.

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Yes its my broadcast monitor.

Replaced the good old Sony A250 for me and its a great match to the new QD-Oled TVs.

One thing is apparently the QC at LG isnt perfect, so lots of people report bad uniformity. I got lucky mine is perfecr so i would order one with a good return policy.

I love mine, its getting support soon for light illusions colorspace so tou can upload luts directly to the monitor !!
i currently use it with a lutbox, all the calibrators are astonished by its performance its absolute class-1 reference good. Ive never calibrated a monitor with such good results its completely awesome. Its incredibly stable, ive never seen a oled this stable , it just doesnt drift even ofer 12hours of running testpatches, the sony x300 was waaayyy worse!!

Its the only RGB Oled you can buy at this moment in time (there are 22/27/32 inch versions of this all made by JOLED ) Flanders also has the 22" model if you are interested in throwing money out your window

the stand sucks though I mounted mine on a desk arm (ergotron) .

all in all 10/10 , I dont think there is any other monitor you can even buy right now at any pricepoint that checks all the boxes for SDR as well as the LG does. (There is a asus version of the same panel, thats like twice the price but comes in a nicer case, i havent seen that one, but i doubt itll be much different, maybe better QC, who knows) . There also is a 27" version.

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Wow! @finnjaeger Thank you so very much for this detailed response. I am very appreciative. Would you mind if I asked you what kind of lut box you are using to feed it? I’m currently rethinking all of our monitoring / calibration here. I don’t want to just do what we’ve been doing simply because we’ve done it in the past.

Once again. Thanks so much!

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I use a blackmagic micro converter 12G bidirectional.

Its great. its cheap. it hold 33^3 luts and works in either rgb or yuv both full or video range. I use this on all our broadcast displays with great success.

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according to the tech specs, that only does YUV 4:2:2

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I use two 27" Eizo ColorEdge CG monitors for UI and a 24" FSI for broadcast. That combo works pretty well. The FSI is pretty stable in terms of calibration, and can re-calibrated by yourself or FSI easily. The Eizo’s have a self-calibration mode, and are considered the gold standard for still photographers (like FSI for video). When configured to their Rec709 profile they match the FSI very closely, so you don’t get distracted by wonky GUI color, but can trust your broadcast.

I also have a Dell 31" HDR monitor - not a class A reference, but I don’t do enough HDR work to justify that expense at present. Not in the market for a new monitor, but I would consider the FSI OLED now that they have one again. Generally good experience with their products, and it’s then one less thing you have to worry about.

And don’t forget the rest of the suite treatment in terms of wall color, overall light levels, white points, bias lights, etc. That final mile in color isn’t just the monitor.

And agree that having a dedicated broadcast monitor is the way to go for color critical eval. You want to take the OS and all the apps that may monkey around with the signal out of the equation. Only way to know for certain that what you get is what you see, and large enough to spot any issues.

At the edit desk I also have a 55" LG on the wall, and there have been numerous times where I spotted 1px line issues on the big screen that were hard to make out on a 24" or 27". And yes, you can zoom in and look for things. Still not the same. Reality is you’ll miss details. Plus it’s good for eye health to change the distance of what you’re look at throughout the day.

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the specs are off, it works in 4:4:4 and RGB and all its weird, liftgammagain and avs forum are full of praise for it.

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Always have to take BMD specs with a grain of salt in my experience. We dug into the downscaler of the various DeckLink/UltraStudio two years ago, and the specs are not very clear on which works what way.

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totally the 12G converter i mentioned above also does downscaling… without telling anyone

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Right, but that’s the part you have to be careful about. Some BMD devices downscale by simply skipping pixels (there’s a term for this type of SDI signal, which escapes me at the moment) whereas others have an actual downscaler circuit that avoids aliasing in the downscale. Half of BMD devices are one way, the rest the other. And they don’t make that clear in the specs.

At the surface there is no rhyme or reason when you look at the product line-up. I assume those are limitations of the FPGAs they use, and they do it right if they have space left on the chip, and not if they don’t. Side effect of optimizing for cheap parts, rather than logical product roadmap and specs.

The UltraStudio 4K does downscale, but the cheap version. The DeckLink 12G Extreme has a proper downscale circuit.

Got into a long thread with Bram from FSI on that two years ago on MixingLight Slack when we dug into that.

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Inhave a love hate relationship wirh flanders.

One one hand they are the only company really specialising in post production monitors on the other hand they are extremely small

The company that develops all the monitors is zungheng, flanders is pretty much just a reseller/partner. They definetely have big issues with replacement parts and stuffand getting announced monitors out of the door…

For example, the DM250 was great, it was the same panel as the sony PVM-A250/BVM, with internal LUT support and all - epic.

The DM240 on the other hand, reslly isnt this great we have maybe 10 of them and they all drift apart constantely. ok we dont have issues with panel quality, but now we cant get replacement panels for them anymore and are stuck buying the inferiour DM241… ?! oh we can replace the pkanel but they only have a few left so itll be like 3000€ or something ridicolous. (we break monitors like every other month,… they go on set)

Next, we bought a 42? inch flanders am240 and it sucks, its so bad, it flickers when it turns on and whatnot half the osd controlls just dont do anything, hate that thing 0/10 .

Then comes calibration, custom lut format needed (why?!) dm240 has no colorspace support so i cant upload luts directly to the monitor, it has gaia autocal but that ONLY works with the flanders branded i1Display probe :man_facepalming:…

Next , you have to keep the original shipping box to be able to ever send it back to flanders for service??! we are stacking them ceiling high, storage costs money.

Next that menu, its … weird? I dont know mean its fine at least it makes sense unlike smallHD…

then comes rhat weird 22" oled, why did they need to create a HD version special sauce , why did they just keep it UHD .

We have been waiting for the 5000NIT hdr monster for $15K for years now and its still vaporware.

Would I still buy a JOLED based 27-32" Model from flanders? Probably … but its not like I have much choice.

I just dont get it, we will probably switch to smallHD down the line for onSET as we also want brighter monitors for focus pullers and whathaveyou.

At this point the only negative thing about the LG oled is lack of quality control and a pretty shitty lightweight chassis (which doesnt matter in post) , so if I get a flanders build monitor with awesome QC and stuff, Ill buy it.

that said for me there is nothing remotely interesting for postproduction in flanders lineup at all.

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I don’t think they’re just a reseller/partner. But they do rely 100% on 3rd party parts and assembly, which in the current environment has become unsustainable. I agree that their current line-up and delays have cost them a lot of lustre and good will.

For on-location work SmallHD seems like a solid choice. I sometimes still take my otherwise unused DM170, but otherwise use SmallHD for location.

I think Eizo (although they don’t have a huge line-up) is a brand I would put the same trust into as FSI as they have a long history in color critical applications. They also have the Prominence HDR display, if you needed one. Sony has a long history in broadcast, though I think they approach this more from a broadcast perspective than a color critical post perspective, the way we look at it.

There are not as many displays that have good SDI connections. Though converters and LUT boxes have gotten better, so you might be able to get away with a solid HDMI monitor that has the right specs and put a converter on it. SDI is convenient, no longer required I think - at least in the suite. HDMI is still a no-no on set due the connector issues.

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Yea hdmi actually preffered now due to hdr metadata.

Eizo is good , no doubt i just havent delt with their customer support before at all.

Sony has completely lost it for me , they sent us a x2400 for evaluation and we had to ask them if it was broken because it was so bad. No lut support, nothing, i cant take them seriously.

fun fact that color prominence display is the same as the sony hx310, just with a different coating. its sadly not made anymore as panasonic has stopped making dual layer lcds. :frowning: I passed on getting a used eizo prominence because flanders promised us the 5000NIT monster thats why i am so salty about it.

Right now i am waiting for professional QD-OLEDs, my QD TV is so insanely good, i want a QD reference HDR display now.

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I’m thinking this might be the year that OLED arrives for the desktop. You might want to have a look at the new Phillips 27”. Just started shipping to the US this week. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1741852-REG/philips_27e1n8900_27_16_9_4k.html

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cool, another one withe the joled panel nice!

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Hi Finn,
Thanks so much for replying in such detail. I still want to get this monitor but I think I’ll use it as a broadcast monitor as you do and not risk the burn in problem. Time for me to to go dual monitor on flame. Dan

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didnt want to scare you, might be totally fine.

tbh once I can get 27" oleds for like sub … $800 i will probably go and use then as guis :rofl:

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