Is it time to edit videos in ultra wide?
Hey, my name is Matt Johnson and this is the Gigabyte M34WQ.
And today
I'm going to be reviewing this monitor from the perspective of a video editor
and answering the question of whether you should consider getting
an ultrawide monitor for video editing, of course, before we get started
for the sake of ethics.
I want you to know that this video isn't paid or sponsored by Gigabyte,
but they did send me this monitor for review.
They have no control over what I'm saying in the video, though,
and the first time that any one gigabyte sees
this review is the same time the you see it whenever it's uploaded to YouTube.
So why should you consider an ultrawide monitor?
Well, if you've ever used any video editing software, I personally use Adobe
Premiere Pro.
You will quickly learn that having a larger screen is always better.
You can see more details.
The tools you need to use are clear, but most importantly,
video editing software has a lot of panels.
The bigger your panels can be, the more information you can have
and the better your editing experience will be.
So because of that, bigger is pretty much always better.
Whenever it comes to having a video editing monitor, enter ultrawide monitors,
and I must say that it's rare for me to find a piece of technology
that feels like it's so perfectly suited for video editing.
See, for the most part, video editing is a horizontal experience.
You have this massive horizontal timeline that takes up a ton of space,
and the more room you have for your timeline, the more clips from your video
you're going to be able to see and manipulate.
So having a wide monitor is great, and having an ultrawide is ultra great.
Now let's talk
about this gigabyte monitor in the context of ultralights.
first thing you'll notice here is that this monitor is huge.
It is definitely ultra in every sense of the word.
I've never had a monitor
where I actually had to turn my head from side to side to look at all of it.
But it's awesome and incredibly immersive.
Also, unlike some of its competition, this monitor is not curved.
There are many ultrawide
so you can get that have either a subtle or more extreme curve to the monitor.
But for me, as a video editor, I really didn't want that
because I'm oftentimes dealing with footage
that I want to make sure is straight and not crooked.
And any time you're introducing a little curve to your monitor,
there's a greater chance that you may end up
creating a curve in your footage as well,
which can make things look really weird
for anybody that doesn't have a curved monitor
to keep you on this curved monitor, talk for a second .
Another reason many manufacturers choose to offer curved ultrawide monitors
is because many of these monitors use what is known as a VR panel.
This is a screen panel technology that offers really great contrast,
but comes at the expense of viewing angles, meaning that if you're not looking
at the monitor straight
on, you'll start to see the color shifting from one color to another.
A curved monitor can help offset
some of this color shift, and if you're using your monitor for gaming,
that isn't a very big deal.
But if you're doing color
critical of video editing where you need your colors to be as accurate as possible.
Using a VA panel is really not ideal.
The good news is that the Gigabyte Im 34 WQ uses an IPS panel,
which is widely considered one of the best options for creative work,
with much wider viewing angles
that do not have the color shift issues that you get from a VA panel.
Also, because this is an IPS panel, even with the panel being very wide
and not being curved, the viewing angles are still good enough
that it doesn't cause a dramatic color shift.
To be clear, there is still a subtle color shift, especially if you're
sitting very close to the display, but it's still very usable.
That said, if you want to use it for color grading,
which
I think it's definitely good enough for, I would recommend positioning your head
right in the center of your preview where you're going to want to be color grading.
So if your preview panel for
you can see the results of your color grading is a bit to the right.
Move your chair and head a bit to the right.
See, you're looking directly at the right part of the panel.
OK, viewing angles out of the way we touched on color quality
a little bit for this monitor, but let's dove deeper and talk
about color accuracy and the overall quality of the panel.
The first thing you need to know is that this is a eight bit panel, not a ten bit,
but that really isn't a big deal
unless you want to edit color grade and deliver videos in HDR,
which in that case, you're going to spend a lot more money on a different panel for
the vast majority of filmmakers, myself included, that are not delivering in HDR.
The eight bit color of this panel is plenty.
Incidentally, Gigabyte does advertise this monitor as supporting HDR 400,
which means that it can reach the bare minimum brightness needed for HDR.
But that eight bit panel is going to prevent it from showing
all the colors that you would need for HDR.
So like I said, I wouldn't use it for HDR color grading
next in regards to color accuracy.
In my testing out of the box, this monitor is pretty color accurate
with a subtle shift into.
The Blues and Greens, but once I used my color calibrator on it,
it got incredibly color accurate with 100% coverage of the SGB color space.
And I would have zero issues recommending this monitor for color grading.
Now let's talk resolution and aspect ratios.
As someone that films pretty much everything in 4K resolution in the past,
I've always prioritized having a 4K screen so I can see a one
to one representation of what my video will look like when editing.
I've been using a 27 inch 4K screen with a 16
by nine aspect ratio, and it's worked great.
But if you start looking into ultrawide monitors,
you're very quickly going to realize that the aspect ratio
is not going to be 16 by nine because it's so wide horizontally.
Instead, in the case of this gigabyte monitor, you're getting 21 by nine.
Because this wider aspect ratio, you're 4K videos
that you film in 16 by nine resolution are not going to completely
fill the screen, and instead you're going to see black bars on the sides.
In my experience, though, this isn't a deal breaker and still totally usable.
And there is one super cool benefit of this aspect ratio
whenever it comes to filmmaking.
And that is if you shoot and deliver your films with a 2.35 to one crop, a.k.a.
if you put black bars on the top
and bottom of your footage to make it look more cinematic, you are going to find
your footage is going to completely fill the screen from edge to edge.
And this looks gorgeous.
You can't get footage like this on a 16 by nine screen.
You are going to have to have an ultrawide and is truly
a fantastic way to watch this kind of video .
So if you typically crop your videos,
this is another reason to consider an ultra wide.
Now, back to resolution for a minute, because one of my fears
that has kept me from getting an ultrawide monitor in the past has been
the general lower resolution that comes with an ultrawide remember.
I love 4K resolution because I film an edit in 4K,
but there really aren't any 4K resolution ultrawide monitors on the market.
There are a few rare five K resolution ultra wise that are also 2160 ppi.
But considering the rather eye watering price tag of those,
if you're like me, you may not feel confident in taking a leap of faith
and not only trying an ultrawide, but also spending that much money on a monitor.
Looking at the gigabyte, it has a resolution of 3440 by 1440,
which definitely isn't 4K, but is a very nice jump over ten
hp as another plus with my older 27 inch 4K 16 by nine screen.
I have to use Windows ten is less than stellar scaling feature to upscale
everything on my desktop by 150% so I can actually see what I'm looking at.
Otherwise, things look way too tiny at the native resolution.
This scaling can sometimes cause issues with my apps that don't properly
support scaling and make the text in control super small.
It's a pain.
Anyways, I said this was good news, and it is because the Gigabyte Monitor
has a great screen size for its resolution,
meaning that you don't need to do any scaling to the image.
You can leave it at the default 100% scale, and it looks great.
Moving on, I feel like this will not be a comprehensive review of this monitor
if I did not at least touch on some of its headlining features.
As Gigabyte has focused significantly on this monitor's
capabilities as a gaming monitor,
namely Gigabyte put in a 144 hertz refresh rate panel,
which means, of course, that your mouse is going to look buttery smooth whenever
you are scrolling around and any higher frame rate videos that you playback
like something you filmed in 120 frames per second will playback very smoothly.
But more importantly, if you want to play any sort of game
on this monitor, it is going to look fantastic and ultra smooth
as long as your graphics card is capable of handling higher frame rates.
The monitor also includes AMD FreeSync Premium,
which although I'm using an inferior GPU, I was still able to enable in videos
G-Sync with this monitor to remove screen tearing, and it looks fantastic.
Unfortunately, I do not have the most powerful
graphics card, but whenever I relived my college days and tested Halo Infinite,
I did find myself being able to hit around 120 frames per second,
and I can tell you that it looks very smooth,
so I'm sure that 144 FP s would look even smoother.
Incidentally, if you want to play Halo with me,
I do need some more friends to play online with,
so I willing to buy Steam Account and Xbox Gamertag down below.
Anyways, the monitor includes a USB hub and a built in KVM switch, meaning
that you can plug a lot of accessories into the monitor if you need to .
And if you want to use two computers with this monitor,
say you have an editing desktop as well as a laptop to use interchangeably.
You can plug both of them into this monitor
and use the KVM to switch your mouse and keyboard between the two computers.
Wrapping things up now.
Overall, I really have fallen in love with this monitor
and in ultrawide in general, and it's really hard to.
For me to imagine not using an ultrawide monitor for video editing moving forward.
That said,
what was seeing a huge chunk of my timeline visible on ultrawide is great.
There still is a part of me that wants to see my videos
that are recorded in 4K in their full screen,
one to one pixel resolution that you can only get with a 4K screen.
So while I do think that investing in an ultrawide monitor
like the Gigabyte in 34 WQ is great.
If you have room in your budget and you're crazy like me,
I think that pairing an ultrawide monitor like this with a more traditional
4K 16 by nine monitor is the best of both worlds.
You can use the ultrawide for editing
and put your timeline and all of your tools and settings on it.
And then whenever it comes, time to preview how your videos will look.
Having that secondary 4K monitor will enable you to do that.
So is it time to edit videos in ultrawide if you have the budget?
And considering this monitor is retailing for 499 at the time
making this video which I think is very reasonable for an ultrawide monitor,
especially one of these specs in that case,
I think that is definitely time to edit videos and ultrawide.
And using a monitor like the Gigabyte M 34, WQ is a great choice.
With that, thank you so much for watching.
I really hope this video has been helpful to you
if you've been considering getting an ultrawide monitor for video editing.
Also, it would be a huge help to me if you would consider liking this video
and subscribing if you want to see more videos like it in the future.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.