Legalize Video in FCP

[Arnie Schlissel]

There was a thread on this topic just last week (and there’ll be another next week, too ;-). Scroll down to find it. I think it was called something like “Broadcast Safe”.

Short answer, though, is that legalizing is much more than a matter of dropping a filter or 2 on your clips. It requires work, a trained eye, and careful attention to the video scopes & your properly calibrated broadcast monitor.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Sebastian Leda]

I did read the post, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I tried everyhting I could in terms of color correcting and video levels. But this problem is beyond that. I have some motion graphics that are already composed with live action that are all over the place and no matter how much I desaturate it and try to bring the levels down, it seems like FCP filters can’t affect certain levels that are way outside of a normal range. I can clip luma over 700 mV or below 0 mV, but the problems are the chroma undershoots. No matter what I do I still have spikes under 0 mV on the 601.

I wish there was a filter that can hard clip chroma undershoots.

Sebastian Leda
Editor
Digital Post Services

[Tony]

You should contact the graphic artist and inform them they have created work which is not broadcast safe.

It is their responsibility to comply with established broadcast standards.

Also why can’t you just correct the footage overall manually via the color correction filters.

Look at what is the hottest whites, blackest black, and most saturated colors and set the levels manually.

Tony Salgado

[Sebastian Leda]

The graphic designer is long gone and the graphics are way to many to re-do in a proper timeframe. But I agree 100% that is their responsability!

I tried setting the levels manually but it looks like the range of the animation is way bigger than the film’s live action range (from black to white) and when I have the animation’s black at 0 mV the live actions is milky and way too bright.

Sebastian Leda
Editor
Digital Post Services

[Rick Dolishny]

Proc amp may yield better results than the colour corrector, this time.

– R

[Sebastian Leda]

I already tried, it won’t work. The problem is that I have two elements that weren’t properly corrected before they were mix together. Now I don’t have the original elements and I can’t correct one without ruining the other.

Sebastian Leda
Editor
Digital Post Services

[Walter Biscardi]

I just finished 7 episodes of a broadcast series in HD and use a combination of the following:

3Way Color Corrector
Broadcast Safe
Levels
Proc Amp.

You need to apply these filters and set them up correctly for your particular project. You need to manually set up each shot for proper color correction and legal levels.

I save off the filters so I an just drag them down to similar shots as I go along.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Tony]

I hate to say it but you are screwed.

The best option may be to run it all thru a proc amp which will clip all illegal video and chroma levels.

But you may suffer from excessive video and chroma clipping which will be ugly.

Or else you are looking at a color correction session with power windows and lots of extra money spent on cleaning up someone else’s screwups.

I would refuse to pay the graphic artist who created this whole mess in the first place.

This should be a complete redo.

Best of luck,

Tony Salgado

[Sebastian Leda]

I agree. This should be a complete redo, but the client wants the best out of what we got. I’m going to clip the hell out of this thing and pray that it doesn’t get rejected.

Sebastian Leda
Editor
Digital Post Services

[Sebastian Leda]

I added to that combo the anti-aliasing and that helped but made everything a little blurry.

Sebastian Leda
Editor
Digital Post Services