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Video monitor



 
 
A video monitor also called a broadcast monitor, broadcast reference monitor or just reference monitor, is a device similar to a television
Television

Television is a widely used telecommunication mass-media for transmitting and receiving moving , either monochrome or color, usually accompanied by sound....
, used to monitor the output of a video-generating device, such as a media playout
Playout

In broadcasting, playout is a term for the transmission of radio or TV channels from the broadcaster into the networks that delivers them to the audience....
 server
Server (computing)

A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs , in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also often referred to as server....
, IRD
IRD

IRD or ird may refer to the following:* Ird , a Bedouin honor code for womenAbbreviations:*Inland Revenue Department in some countries...
, video camera
Video camera

File:Sonyhdrfx1.jpgA video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well....
, VCR, or DVD player
DVD player

A DVD player is a device that plays discs produced under both the DVD Video and DVD Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards....
. It may or may not have audio
Sound

Sound is vibration transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a threshold of hearing to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations....
 monitoring capability. Unlike a television, a video monitor has no tuner and, as such, is unable to independently tune into an over-the-air broadcast.






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A video monitor also called a broadcast monitor, broadcast reference monitor or just reference monitor, is a device similar to a television
Television

Television is a widely used telecommunication mass-media for transmitting and receiving moving , either monochrome or color, usually accompanied by sound....
, used to monitor the output of a video-generating device, such as a media playout
Playout

In broadcasting, playout is a term for the transmission of radio or TV channels from the broadcaster into the networks that delivers them to the audience....
 server
Server (computing)

A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs , in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also often referred to as server....
, IRD
IRD

IRD or ird may refer to the following:* Ird , a Bedouin honor code for womenAbbreviations:*Inland Revenue Department in some countries...
, video camera
Video camera

File:Sonyhdrfx1.jpgA video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well....
, VCR, or DVD player
DVD player

A DVD player is a device that plays discs produced under both the DVD Video and DVD Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards....
. It may or may not have audio
Sound

Sound is vibration transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a threshold of hearing to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations....
 monitoring capability. Unlike a television, a video monitor has no tuner and, as such, is unable to independently tune into an over-the-air broadcast. One common use of video monitors is in Television stations and outside broadcast vehicles, where broadcast engineers use them for confidence checking of signals throughout the system. Video monitors are used extensively in the security industry with Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television

Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors.It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly transmitted, though it may employ point to point wireless links....
 cameras and recording devices.

Common display types for video monitors
  • Cathode ray tube
    Cathode ray tube

    The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen, with internal or external means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam, used to create images in the form of light emitted from the fluorescent screen....
  • Liquid crystal display
    Liquid crystal display

    A liquid crystal display is an Electro-optic modulator shaped into a thin, flat panel made up of any number of color or monochrome pixels filled with liquid crystals and arrayed in front of a Light#Light sources or reflector....
  • Plasma display
    Plasma display

    A plasma display panel is a type of flat panel display common to large television displays . Many tiny cells between two panels of glass hold an inert mixture of noble gases....


Common monitoring formats for security
  • Composite video
    Composite video

    Composite video is the format of an analog television signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulation onto an Radio Frequency carrier wave....
  • S-Video
    S-Video

    Separate Video, more commonly known as S-Video, and sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Super Video" and also known as Y/C, is an analog signal video signal that carries the video data as two separate signals, lumen and chroma ....


Broadcast reference monitor


Broadcast reference monitors must be used for video compliance
Compliance

Compliance can mean:*In mechanical science , the inverse matrix of stiffness*Compliance , a patient's adherence to a recommended course of treatment...
 at television or production
Production

Production may be:In Economics:* Production, costs, and pricing, the act of making products * Production, the act of manufacturing goods* Production as statistic, gross domestic product...
 facilities, because they do not perform any video enhancements and try to produce as accurate an image as possible. For quality control purposes, it is necessary for a broadcast monitor to produce (reasonably) consistent images from facility to facility, to reveal any flaws in the material, and also not to introduce any image artifacts (such as aliasing
Aliasing

In statistics, signal processing, computer graphics and related disciplines, aliasing refers to an effect that causes different continuous signals to become indistinguishable when sampling ....
) that is not in the source material. Broadcast monitors will try to avoid post processing such as up-scaling
Video scaler

A video scaler is a device for converting video signals from one size or display resolution to another: usually "upscaling" or "upconverting" a video signal from a low resolution to one of higher resolution ....
, line doubling and any image enhancements such as dynamic contrast. However, display technologies with fixed pixel structures (e.g. LCD, plasma) must perform image scaling when displaying SD signals as the signal contains non-square pixels while the display has square pixels. LCDs and plasmas are also inherently progressive displays and may need to perform deinterlacing
Deinterlacing

Deinterlacing is the process of converting interlaced video, like common analog television signals, into a non-interlaced form....
 on interlaced signals.

Professional video broadcast monitors also display on screen, the current video signal format, they might be receiving i.e.: standard definition formats like 576i
576i

576i is a standard-definition television video mode used in PAL and SECAM countries. In digital applications it's usually referred to as "576i", in analogue contexts it's often quoted as "625 lines"....
, 480i
480i

480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the United States NTSC television Television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics....
 or high definition
High-definition video

High-definition video or HD video generally refers to any video system of higher than Standard-definition_television, most commonly at display resolutions of 1280?720 or 1920?1080 ....
 formats like 720p
720p

720p is the shorthand name for a category of High-definition television video modes. The number 720 stands for the 720 horizontal scan lines of display resolution , while the letter p stands for progressive scan or non-interlaced....
 or 1080p
1080p

1080p is the shorthand name for a category of HDTV video modes. The number "1080" represents 1,080 lines of vertical Display resolution , while the letter p stands for progressive scan ....
. They also have mechanical buttons to toggle
Toggle

Toggle may refer to:*Toggle Mechanism*Toggle switch*Toggling harpoon*Toggle , a download website*A type of textile closure, like an elongated button...
 common aspect ratios like (4:3 or 16:9), and underscaning or overscan
Overscan

Overscan is extra image area around the four edges of a video image that is not normally seen by the viewer. It exists because television sets in the 1930s through 1970s were highly variable in how the video image was framed within the cathode ray tube ....
ing a picture to see lines in the vertical blanking interval
Vertical blanking interval

The vertical blanking interval , also known as the vertical interval or VBLANK, is the time difference between the last line of one frame or field of a raster display, and the beginning of the next....
 (VBI) of video, and check if subtitles in VBI were inserted properly or not. Modern broadcast grade professional monitors also have safe area
Safe area

Safe area is a term used in television production to describe the areas of the television picture that can be seen on television screens.Older televisions can display less of the space outside of the safe area than ones made more recently....
 grid generators, to help position television
Television

Television is a widely used telecommunication mass-media for transmitting and receiving moving , either monochrome or color, usually accompanied by sound....
 graphics, lower thirds
Lower thirds

In the television industry , a lower third is a graphic placed in the lower area of the screen, though not necessarily the entire lower third of it as the name suggests....
, within their respective areas i.e. graphics safe, title safe or action safe.

Common monitoring formats for broadcasters
  • Serial Digital Interface
    Serial Digital Interface

    Serial digital interface refers to a family of video interfaces standardized by SMPTE. For example, ITU-R BT.656 and SMPTE 259M define digital video interfaces used for Broadcasting-grade video....
     (SDI, as SD-SDI or HD-SDI)
  • Composite video
    Composite video

    Composite video is the format of an analog television signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulation onto an Radio Frequency carrier wave....
  • Component video
    Component video

    Component video is a video signal that has been split into two or more components. In popular use, it refers to a type of Analog signal video information that is transmitted or stored as three separate signals....


Features


Professional Video monitors have various features that consumer monitors lack such as:

  • Conforms to colorimetry
    Colorimetry

    Colorimetrycan refer to:* the quantitative study of color perception. It is similar to spectrophotometry, but may be distinguished by its interest in reducing spectra to tristimulus values, from which the perception of color derives....
     standards such as the SMPTE
    Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers

    The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers or SMPTE, , founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is an international professional association, based in the United States of America, of engineers working in the motion imaging industries....
     C, Rec. 709
    Rec. 709

    ITU-R Recommendation BT.709, more commonly known by the abbreviations Rec. 709 or BT.709, standardizes the format of High-definition television, having 16:9 aspect ratio....
    , or EBU primaries.
  • SDI
    Serial Digital Interface

    Serial digital interface refers to a family of video interfaces standardized by SMPTE. For example, ITU-R BT.656 and SMPTE 259M define digital video interfaces used for Broadcasting-grade video....
     inputs / outputs.
  • AES/EBU
    AES/EBU

    The digital audio standard frequently called AES/EBU, officially known as AES3, is used for carrying digital audio signals between various devices....
     Audio decoding.
  • Genlock
    Genlock

    Genlock is a common technique where the video output of one source, or a specific reference signal, is used to synchronization other television picture sources together....
     input.
  • GPI interface - For receiving external triggers.
  • Modular expansion card slots that support SD-SDI
    SMPTE 259M

    SMPTE 259M is a Standardization published by SMPTE which "... describes a 10-bit serial digital interface operating at 143/270/360 Mb/s." The goal of SMPTE 259M is to define a Serial Digital Interface this interface is usually called Serial Digital Interface or SD-SDI....
     or HD-SDI
    SMPTE 292M

    SMPTE 292M is a Standardization published by SMPTE which expands upon SMPTE 259M and SMPTE 344M allowing for bit-rates of 1.485 Gbit/s, and 1.485/1.001 Gbit/s....
     single link or dual-link HD-SDI
    SMPTE 372M

    SMPTE 372M is a Standardization published by SMPTE which expands upon SMPTE 259M, SMPTE 344M, and SMPTE 292M allowing for bit-rates of 2.970 Gbit/s, and 2.970/1.001 Gbit/s over two wires....
     cards.
  • Safe area
    Safe area

    Safe area is a term used in television production to describe the areas of the television picture that can be seen on television screens.Older televisions can display less of the space outside of the safe area than ones made more recently....
     cage.
  • Rack
    19-inch rack

    A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple electronics modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide, including edges or ears that protrude on each side which allow the module to be fastened to the rack frame with screws....
     mountable.


See also

  • Computer monitor
  • Composite monitor
    Composite monitor

    A composite monitor is any analog signal video display that receives input in the form of an analog composite video signal through a single cable ? in contrast to multiple-cable or multiple-wire video sources such as VGA cable....