- Now there's only a few things that are guaranteed in life.
One is death, two is at some point your gonna get some
wet socks and your gonna be miserable,
but don't worry you'll get through it.
You'll eventually be able to take them off and put some
new dry ones on and feel much better.
And three is that you'll eventually need to buy
a computer monitor.
So today we are gonna take the time to learn the difference
between a really great monitor, and a monitor you just
need to take outside to your yard and just throw a ladder
at it.
(monitor crashes)
(distant laughing)
(monitor smashes)
Don't worry, this wasn't working in the first place.
The display broke while we were moving, so we decided to
have a little fun before we recycled it.
(laughs)
(cool beat music)
Alright, it's time to come clean.
Let's all do it together, shall we?
We all can admit that we know less about monitors
than we probably should.
We spend all this time and effort on cameras and lenses.
And on the final steps of touching up your photos
or color grading, you're looking at it through a monitor
and you're not a 100% sure how accurate it is.
And color grading is a very subtle art of just tweaking it
in one direction slightly or another.
But with the wrong monitor you could be pushing it in
the complete wrong direction.
And then you send it over to your client and they look at it
and they woo!
And I always found it very frustrating.
I would color grade it on my monitor, and then I would cast
it to the TV in the living room,
and it looks super magenta so then I'll make it so that
it looks good on that screen.
And all of a sudden it looks terrible, super green
on my phone.
And I'm like what the (beep).
And then a little while ago Asus hit me up
and they were like, "Hey you wanna try out our new
ProArt monitors that are specifically designed for
photo, video, designers, creatives like you."
And then I was like, "Ehh I don't know I already have
another 4K external display, I don't know
if I need another one."
They were like, "Trust me bro, you'll love this."
So they shipped me this monitor.
It's a 32 inch ProArt series,
and it is phenomenal.
Now one thing I always find interesting was that big
professional Hollywood movies they look good on projectors,
they look good on TVs, they look good on computer monitors,
they look great everywhere.
And I always kept thinking, why am I having so much trouble
making it look good on more than just one screen.
And what I'm realizing now is that most consumer products
aren't perfectly calibrated.
They're shifted in one direction or another.
Sometimes they're more contrasty, sometimes they're
more saturated, sometimes they shift more magenta,
more blue, more warm.
And like legit colors will use super perfectly
calibrated monitors so that they're kind of
there in the center and each monitor has like a slight
deviation from it, but it all generally looks good
because it's not like heavily shifted in one direction
or another.
Opposed to before I realized my computer monitor was
heavily tinted green, and that my TV in the living room
was heavily tinted magenta,
and I kept just doing these circles around trying to find
the center.
And now that I have a truly accurate monitor, I can
just grade it exactly how I want it.
In every little display there're slight variations,
but nothing major.
It's all within the real of acceptability.
So first of all, thank you again Asus for sending me
this monitor and showing me what I've been missing out
on, and also sorry I've been call you A-Suhs my entire life.
A-Soos, I'm pretty sure that's how you say it.
A-Soos.
Not A-Suhs.
What kind of computer do you have?
- It's an Asus.
- An Asus?
Kerry's had this laptop for six years,
and been pronouncing it wrong the whole time.
So I don't feel as bad anymore.
(grunts)
Alright, let's start with the most common types of panels
that you'll see when you shop.
You'll see TN and IPS.
There's a few others that are more brand specific,
but generally speaking we wanna go with an IPS type display.
Now TN panels are popular because they're less expensive
to make and they also have a very very fast response time.
Now realistically most of us can't even tell the difference
in lag between the TN panels and IPS,
but there's competitive gamers out there that say
that slight slight millisecond of a difference actually
matters to them.
So TN panels tend to be more popular for gamers.
But they also have a very bad viewing display.
So if you slightly lean over one direction or another
you can start looking at an image
that's a little more contrasty.
So we wanna limit as many of these variables as possible.
And also you're gonna find higher resolution
in a IPS monitor, which this is.
This has HDMI ports back here so I can actually plug
this camera into here.
Would that be trippy, let's find out.
Ahh there we go.
So check this out.
Even when you're looking at this monitor from that much
of an angle you're still generally able to see what this
frame is, which is amazing.
You don't wanna do that but-
IPS monitors are gonna be able to show you much more
beautiful, truer, richer, higher resolution colors.
So we could already narrow down most of our results
by cutting out TN panels from our specific needs.
Alright, so so far we are looking for an IPS
monitor.
I'm writing this on fake ass wood.
This is actually paper.
Looking at all these clones of myself is tripping me out.
So let's turn this off.
There can only be one Potato Jet!
Another thing you might want to consider is if
you're trying to go for a glossy or matte display.
Some people prefer glossy, because it looks
generally prettier.
But this matte texture definitely helps kill a lot of
reflections.
So in my glossy display I would have times where
I literally have to shift the monitor around
or even tilt it down or up to try to get rid of some
glare that's in the background, because it's like a mirror.
You literally see every little detail.
Opposed to matte, which kind of defuses that so it's
much more pleasant to look at.
And I feel like it's much easier and less stressful
on your eyes to stare at all day.
So I personally would go for a matte display.
Now the next obvious thing is size and resolution.
And those really go hand in hand because you really
actually don't wanna get too much resolution
in a small display, because it's really inconceivable
to your eye.
And also you're using more processing power to display
that 4K, so you're really just wasting energy
from the computer.
So generally speaking, for smaller displays
HD can be enough.
Once you start getting into the mid to high 20s you
probably wanna get something like Quad HD
which ads a little bit more resolution on each side.
But really, as videographers, we're so adamant about
shooting in 4K these days.
We might as well get a 4K display.
So we definitely want that 4K resolution so we can
see what we're shooting.
I mean even our iPhones are shooting 4K.
But remember if the display's too small
you can't even conceive that 4K.
So you're just putting extra pressure on your computer.
General rule of thumb for 4K displays
is at least go 30 inches or more.
This is a 32 inch.
And that way you can conceive all 4K resolution
at that viewing distance.
This is a 32 inch, and it definitely seems a lot
sharper than my old 4K monitor which was a 27 inch.
So even though technically they may have the same resolution
I look at this monitor I go, oh this definitely is sharper
and more resolution.
But really it's just because it's bigger
so I can actually conceive all that resolution.
Now next one is Aspect ratio,
and I would actually go
for 16
by nine
The super wide displays are super sexy!
They're all curved and they look really cool
like you're from the future.
And I'll admit, I get super jealous every time I see one.
But there's a few reasons why I wouldn't get one.
The main being the resolution.
Sure they are 4K, but 4K is measured in pixels
that are horizontal.
So generally speaking, 4K super wide displays
have the same number of pixels horizontally,
but it's really just the top and bottom sliced off
of this.
So I might as well just keep those pixels and utilize
that workspace.
Now the argument I keep hearing about super wide
displays is that you can stretch your timeline
nice and wide, but for me personally, on a 32 inch display
this timeline is way more than wide enough for me.
And I personally like to have my timelines nice and tall,
because I do a lot of layering and adjustment layers.
And I also like to look at the audio waveforms a lot.
That kind of helps me speed up the process.
With this ratio, even though with this timeline
nice and tall I have a nice big display up here
and most of my videos, like this one is done in HD.
So technically as long as my frame is utilizing
at least a quarter of the frame,
I'm actually seeing the full HD resolution of it.
And as I mentioned the displays just kind of cut down
the top and bottom so then you're working with less
vertical pixels and then you have to
shrink it down even more.
So those super curved wide angle displays, super awesome
but not for me.
Now let's talk about colors.
We want lots of colors and also
accurate colors.
Now some of you may be familiar with eight bit color
and 10 bit color on camera.
Same thing with monitors.
If you shoot 10 bit color and you bring it into
a standard monitor it just kind of estimates.
For example most monitors have like a teal blue.
But this would have every little shade and variation
of teal blue and show it you a 100% accurately.
And of course lots of colors don't matter unless
they're accurate.
So the measurement Delta-e is basically how close
is what's being displayed to what it's supposed to be.
For example Delta-e of five is good,
but these come pre-calibrated with a Delta-e
of less than two.
Which is super accurate!
And each one is literally shipped with a calibration
report just to give you that insurance
that these have been through some serious quality control
and I love that.
Now next up is the brightness of a monitor.
Most monitors hover around the three to 400 range.
But this goes up to a thousand.
Super bright.
And that's a really nice feature to have if your
office, your studio is in a bright place,
because I really do not like sitting in the dark editing.
Whenever I edit, I like to open up all the windows
and get this place nice and bright.
And then I can just crank up the brightness on this
and it's not an issue.
So,
I want it to be...
Bright.
I'm running out of space here.
I started off really big, and I slowly realized
oh crap oh crap and now I'm at the very bottom
of the frame.
We will also keep in mind that even the best monitors
slowly fall out of calibration over time.
So no matter what you have,
calibrate your displays.
I just calibrated my laptop for the first time in two years
and I was like, holy crap.
My old profile was way off so I feel better now.
Calibration tools aren't super expensive,
so definitely worth doing once in a while.
Another thing you might wanna consider is HDR.
Especially with the growth of HDR content.
Having a HDR capable monitor can really future proof
your monitor investment.
'Cause typically you don't really buy monitors all the time.
You usually get a good monitor and it should last you
a couple cycles of your computer.
And then now there's contrast ratio, but there's so many
ways to measure contrast ratio that it's become
one of those things that manufacturers are always
tryna kinda cheat the numbers a little bit.
Contrast ratio is basically how bright is the brightest
pixel compared to the darkest pixel in the same frame?
So this has a contrast ratio of a thousand to one,
and it's good.
But because of the different ways of measuring it's harder
to judge how good a monitor is by the number
that the manufacturer provides.
Another bonus thing to have is a blue filter.
This one has one built into the display right here,
and definitely don't have it on while you're color grading.
But if you're editing a sequence,
and it's getting late, you're definitely gonna wanna pop
this on, because blue light basically tells your brain,
"Hey it's daytime, stay awake, don't go to sleep!"
So with this on, just because you're editing late doesn't
mean you're gonna spend all night just like
tweaking out of your bed.
(chuckles)
And finally, but not least and this one's kind of obvious.
You want one with a cool design.
It's gonna be sitting on your desk,
you're gonna be spending a lot of time looking at it.
This one has a nice thin bezel all around it.
And my goodness, I love the way it looks.
We can swivel very easily a it can go up and down.
Also more for photographers, but you can always go
vertical and who knows if vertical video from like
IGTV starts getting popular we might start needing
to do more in this vertical display so you might
wanna consider that.
But yeah, there you go.
This is the Asus ProArt
32
UC.
It's a professional monitor so it is definitely higher
up in that price range,
but it should be one of those things that if you were
to buy it, it'd be a long-term investment.
I don't see a need to upgrade any time soon,
and it checks all off all of these requirements
for what I need in a monitor.
So awesome.
I'm gonna set this back on my table and let's
read some comments.
Fake wood.
Real wood.
So my last video was the best $500.00 YouTuber camera.
Canon M50 versus
Panasonic Lumix G7.
Let's see what you guys had to say.
Matti Haapoja says, "I could watch you all day,
wait is that creepy?"
Yes, Matti.
You are the creepiest guy I've ever met.
(laughs)
I'm just kidding, he's super chill.
Can you compare the Canon M50 with a speed booster
to an EOS R?
And yes, I can do that.
Let's do it.
I'm gonna put it on the list of my 20 other videos
I wanna do right now.
I will try to get to it though.
The Red Dragon versus Canon M50.
I haven't done a comparison with the red camera
in a little while, huh?
I gotta get back on that.
It's just been sitting here, just chilling, looking pretty.
Actually I did just record a video yesterday using it
a whole bunch.
But it's a whole video about how many setups you can do
with just one light.
It's a lighting video so I know they're not super popular,
but hopefully it's a video that's very useful to a lot
of you guys who only have one light.
You guys don't wanna do the three point lighting
or five lights at a-
None of that stuff.
One light and a reflector.
That's it, and how much can you achieve with just that one
in a little space like this.
I love Canon auto focus system.
Me too, like I can just get right up here.
Focus on my face.
And this isn't even a native lens.
This is a Tokina 2.8 lens and even with after marking lenses
it focuses so fast.
Oh also a winner has been chosen from the thousand dollar
camera set up video that we posted a few weeks ago.
The winner was chosen randomly, and the winner is Lucas
so congratulations you've got a Canon SL2,
a couple lenses, a the camera bag, tripod, glide cam.
All this crap coming towards you.
And for the rest of you, don't worry, there's still many
things up for grabs like a Canon M50, a Lumix G7,
and a few more things coming up that
I'm very excited about.
So don't jump off a cliff just yet,
you can still win something in the near future.
So see you guys later.
See ya!
(slow chill music)