Quick Look: Ikan D7w portable display with waveform monitoring

Usability and Performance

The D7w makes a very nice image, and with its IPS screen, off-axis viewing is quite good by LCD standards. As you get well off to the sides (past 45 degrees or so, you’ll see the overall brightness decline, but – this is the critical part – there’s almost no change in black level, tonal scale rendering, or overall color.

It’s a vast improvement over some of the older Ikans I’ve used. I was especially impressed with the depth of the blacks; true blacks are often difficult to achieve on an IPS screen, but the D7w did a fine job.

Visibility suffers under full sunlight, as you might expect. Ikan makes sun hoods for the D7/D7w (and also offers a separate line of sunlight-readable high-brightness monitors).

You can assign four of the various display modes to the four function keys. I chose pixel-for-pixel, peaking, false-color, and ’scopes.

For the most part, these are push-on, push-off functions, but the ‘scopes are cyclic: as you push the button, you run through full-screen WFM, vectorscope, and RGB parade, then quad-split, then overlay mode, then back to a normal picture. This six-stage cycle means a lot of button-pressing when you want to quickly check a ‘scope then return to full screen pictures.

I’d have liked a fifth button for Clip Guide; as it is, it’s a toss-up as to whether I’d prefer Clip Guide over false-color or vice versa, as Ikan’s false color is a little bit too busy for my taste (your preferences may vary, of course). Either way, both Clip Guide and false-color give you valuable exposure information at a glance, and Ikan is to be commended for letting you set the over- and under-exposure warning levels.

Pixel-for-pixel is especially helpful given that you can scroll it to any position using the thumbwheel, so you’re not limited to seeing just what’s dead-center in the image.

Peaking works well for a binary, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t indicator, but it takes a fair bit of clicking and turning to get to the menu for adjusting the peaking level. Focus-finding with peaking often requires fine-tuning peaking strength on a shot by shot basis (sometimes even take by take), and having to dive deep into menu-land to do so limits its usability when under pressure to get the shot.

Switching inputs takes a long time: four or seven seconds (I wrote it down, but I’ve misplaced that note), long enough to wonder if something’s gone wrong.

My biggest usability issue with the D7w is the lack of labeling on the front panel, sides, top, and bottom. I always had to flip the monitor around to figure out which of two identical connectors I wanted to plug a cable into, and while I could find buttons by feel, I often wound up pressing the input select button instead of the aspect button (incurring that maddening wait for input switching… twice!), or pushing the function button next to the one I really wanted. I’d recommend getting a label-maker and adding the front panel labels that Ikan left off.

Then we get to the ‘scopes.

Neither the traces nor the graticules are adjustable in their intensity. Fortunately the default (fixed) settings seem appropriate for most circumstances. There’s also no magnification mode or variable-gain mode on any of the ‘scopes.

The WFM and parade displays range from −40% to 120%, an appropriate range for an analog composite NTSC signal complete with sync pulses. With digital, though, the signal can’t exceed the range of −10% to 110%, roughly speaking, so space is wasted to display nonexistent signals.

The vectorscope graticule includes a differential gain / differential phase measurement grid, which would be quite helpful when timing an NTSC analog facility, but is of questionable utility on a digital field monitor, especially since there’s no variable gain on the vector display that would make such measurements possible in the first place. While it certainly has nostalgia value, it seems to be about as useful as a spare tire on a speedboat.

But all this is quibbling. Here’s a digital video monitor with built-in ‘scopes; there isn’t even the calibration problem with analog ‘scopes and termination: these ‘scopes should be dead-nuts perfect, first time, every time. Right?

Wrong.

I bought the D7w on the first of June. Being a geeky sort, when I got it home, I thought I’d check out the ‘scopes, so I took an image of 100% bars (rendered from FCP 7), threw it into FCP X on my MacBook Pro, and sent it out SDI and HDMI using a Blackmagic Design thunderbolt Mini Monitor.

 

Ouch! I got this result via SDI and via HDMI. At least it was consistently wrong.

Then I tried putting in a full-range signal, all the way up to 109%, using an overexposed feed from my GH3:

The WFM, R, and G signals are peaking at around 106%, and the B channel is clipped at 99%. Further measurement showed that the luma range of 0%-100% was rendered on the WFM and the RGB parade as 1%-99% (in parade, that held as long as a grayscale signal was sent; with any color in the image, parade accuracy degraded).

Now how much would you pay? But wait, there’s more: the ‘scopes were affected by the D7w’s saturation and tint settings! And whenever the quad-split or overlay modes were selected, the picture didn’t show the selected color temperature, but went both warm and magenta.

It appears that the ‘scopes didn’t look at the signal as received; rather it was computed from the image rendered into the display frame buffer. I noticed that as I toggled the aspect ratio between 4×3 (pillarboxed), 16×9 (letterboxed) and full-screen, the ‘scopes showed the letter- or pillarboxing as lines at −10% in the corresponding areas.

I wasn’t 100% certain about the validity of my findings, given my signal source, so I took the D7W to local sales & service shop VMI and hooked up their Extron VTG 400 test signal generator:

I got essentially identical results:

I contacted Ikan with these findings, and they replied that new firmware was on the way to correct things. The firmware wasn’t field-installable – indeed, there’s no way in the field to even see what the firmware version is – so I returned the D7w to Ikan for updating. The firmware was upgraded on July 1st and the monitor was shipped back to me.

The ‘scopes no longer varied as saturation and chroma were changed, and the waveforms were closer to what they should have been…

..but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

A luma range of 0%-100% was now rendered as 1%-101%, and luma values above 105% appear to have a 2x slope reduction applied, as if a knee circuit had been engaged. The blue channel didn’t clip, but the RGB parade was still clearly wrong, if less wrong than previously.

If all I need is a rough indication of levels, I can get that from the false-color or Clip Guide modes. The reason to have ‘scopes is to have an accurate, objective portrayal of your signal. The D7w, even with upgraded firmware, isn’t capable of that.

I returned the D7w to Ikan for a refund.

Conclusions

The Ikan D7 is an affordable 7” field monitor, combining a very good-looking image display with a handy selection of essential field tools: pixel-for-pixel, variable peaking, highlight clipping indication, and false color with settable over/underexposure warning levels. Its cast aluminum housing looks to be more durable than the plastic cases of other low-cost monitors, even if the fit and finish aren’t exactly up to Arri levels of robustness and quality. For around $1000, the D7 may be worth a look if you need portable SDI and HDMI monitoring.

The $1300 D7w adds three engineering ‘scopes to the features present on the cheaper D7, but sadly these ‘scopes lack the accuracy one would (and should) expect. Depending on these ‘scopes won’t help you make better images; their errors will lead you astray. I’ll happily change my opinion if Ikan comes up with new firmware that gets the ‘scopes right, but at present I cannot recommend the D7w, as it is simply not fit for purpose.

“This isn’t the inexpensive engineering monitor you’re looking for. You can go about your business. Move along… move along.” –OB Van Kenobi

Pros

• 7” IPS LCD display with good color, deep blacks, and little loss of fidelity with off-axis viewing.
• Fully repositionable pixel-for-pixel display mode.
• Variable peaking with selectable edge color on a monochrome image.
• False color display with settable over/underexposure warning levels.
• 3G-SDI and HDMI looping inputs; 1080P and PsF support.
• Monochrome and R/G/B single-channel display modes.
• 4×3 and 16×9 safe-action markers; DSLR image scaling.
• Aluminum housing.
• The D7 is only $1000.
• Runs a long time on a single battery.

Cons

• D7w’s engineering ‘scopes are inaccurate and cannot be relied on for any serious work.
• No control or I/O labeling visible on front panel; needs home-made labels.
• Painfully long input-switching time.
• Adjusting peaking level requires excessive menu navigation.

Cautions

• False color mode is extremely busy; makes at-a-glance interpretation difficult.
• Soft aluminum casting mars easily; mounting sockets may not be durable in the long run.
• Cables exit from the bottom, so the monitor won’t sit flat on a table without some sort of support (which is why it’s handheld in many of my images).

Bottom Line

D7? Maybe.

D7w? Just say no.

 

Disclosure: I bought a D7w with my own money at Cine Gear Expo. I returned it to Ikan for a
firmware upgrade (paying for shipping); I returned it again (paying for shipping) for a full refund when the upgraded firmware didn’t fully fix the ‘scopes. Ikan promptly refunded my money. VMI kindly let me pop into their service department to do a quick, five-minute test with their test signal generator, for which they deserve a shout-out; I’ve been a paying customer in the past, though I probably haven’t bought as much gear there as they’d like (grin). Those matters aside, there is no material connection between me and Ikan, VMI, Extron, Panasonic, Sony, Apple, Blackmagic Design, Cine Gear Expo, or NAB. No one offered me compensation or other blandishments for a mention or a favorable review.

About the Author

Adam Wilt is a software developer, engineering consultant, and freelance film & video tech. He’s had small jobs on big productions (PA, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, Dir. Robert Wise), big jobs on small productions (DP, “Maelstrom”, Dir. Rob Nilsson), and has worked camera, sound, vfx, and editing gigs on shorts, PSAs, docs, music vids, and indie features. He started his website on the DV format, www.adamwilt.com/DV.html, about the same time Chris Hurd created the XL1 Watchdog, and participated in DVInfo.net’s 2006 “Texas Shootout”. He has written for DV Magazine and ProVideoCoalition.com, taught courses at DV Expo, and given presentations at NAB, IBC, and Cine Gear Expo.  When he’s not doing contract engineering or working on apps like Cine Meter, he’s probably exploring new cameras, just because cameras are fun.