Martin Professional Launches First-Ever Color-Calibrated Creative LED Video Products Using VisionCAL® LED Screen Correction System

The Situation
Martin Professional A/S by Harman is a world leader in the creation of dynamic lighting solutions. In 2012, Martin worked with Radiant Vision Systems to launch their VC (Video Creative) Series products, the first color-calibrated creative LED video products for the entertainment industry. The series consists of a standard color calibration for RGB, and brightness only calibration for warm/medium/cool white products. The VC Series includes three products – VC-Dot, VC-Grid, and VCStrip – all of which feature pixel-level calibration and a true video-processing engine (gamma curves, color control, synchronization and video frame rates) that gives customers an unprecedented level of video quality and artistic flexibility.

The Martin team faced several technical challenges on this project. Martin sought to incorporate new test and calibration functions for their video products into their Radiant Vision Systems VisionCAL® system, and needed to store all the raw test and calibration data in specific memory banks. Each of these challenges would require the development of new, customized test and calibration functionalities.

The Solution
Working closely with the Martin team, Radiant Vision Systems upgraded their VisionCAL LED calibration system to address each of the technical requirements. Radiant Vision Systems added functionalities to allow for custom spacing between products during calibration and to offset data in memory. They also implemented entirely new functionalities in VisionCAL specifically for calibrating white LEDs, and addressed the raw data storage requirement.

Martin is a long-time Radiant Vision Systems customer, and has been using VisionCAL since 2008. “When we started out on this project, we already  had a lot of experience using VisionCAL for our RGB applications,” said Mikael Larsen, project coordinator at Martin Professional. “We were pleased that Radiant Vision Systems partnered with us to implement the new functionality we needed to deliver this new class of color-calibrated video products.”

The Results
Martin met all of their objectives with the launch of their VC Series. They were first to market, creating a differentiator for Martin. “Other companies make similar products, but they are not color calibrated,” said Larsen. “With our solution, customers can apply our products in columns, on stairs, or around corners and put video on them. It’s very flexible while delivering the highest quality video. Radiant Vision Systems has partnered with us since 2008, together we developed and customized VisionCAL to fit our requirements. We now have a unique flexible solution creating a differentiator for Martin.”

About Radiant Vision Systems LED Display Solutions
Achieve the best possible LED video screen appearance and keep them looking their absolute best.

• Complete measurement system for LED video screen correction
• ProMetric® Imaging Colorimeter measures the brightness and color of all LEDs in the screen
• VisionCAL software manages the correction process, including: auto registration, data acquisition, computations, and direct download of correction parameters to the screen controller.

VisionCAL® automates color and brightness calibration of LED modules and screens.
A significant challenge in the manufacture and development of LED video screens is to achieve levels of luminance and color uniformity that are acceptable to human observers. The human eye is very sensitive to variations in color and brightness, especially in situations such as on LED video displays, where adjacent points (individual LEDs) and areas (LED modules) can readily be compared. Because of the inherent variability in LED performance - even under quality manufacturing processes - and the large number of LEDs used on large LED video screens, clearly noticeable variations are almost impossible to avoid, even with very careful and expensive LED binning.