Setting Black, Chroma and Luminance Level for Broadcast ???.

[Michael Gissing]

It’s a bit hard in a single forum post to outline broadcast levels and how to control them. Part of the online/ grading process is to set levels so that black levels do not go below 0 and peak whites are clamped at 100.

Open up the scopes in FCP and you will see that the waveform section shows the black to white scale. Bottom line is 0 and top line exceeds 100. Cameras are capable of shooting signals that exceed peak white of 100, which is why the scale goes above 100.

The safest way to be broadcast compatible is to create a self contained (current settings) quicktime of your final timeline. Drop that into a matching new sequence and export to Color. In Color prefs you tick the broadcast safe box. Render the file (most probably select ProRes422 quicktime in Color prefs) and send back to FCP. This file will be absolutely broadcast safe for black, peak white and chroma. Now study again the difference on the FCP scopes and you will see what Color has done to clamp black, white and chroma.

Use the sent from Color sequence as your final master to deliver to broadcasters.

[Andrew Rendell]

I prefer to send my sequence to color and use the adjustments to make everything “legal” as the scopes in color are much better than the ones in fcp, and use the limiter filter just to make sure that I haven’t missed anything (mainly because clipping changes the way it looks and the way it looks is important to me). The things that you need to watch are black level, white level (peak), colour saturation and colour gamut.

[Rafael Amador]

Use the 3W-CC filter and set Blacks and Whites at 0 and 100%. with the Waveform.
To set the Chroma, on the Vectorscope, make sure sure that the Chroma doesn’t trespass the lines linking the color boxes.

[Dom Butler] “Chroma Level: Must not exceed 120 IRE or go below -20 IRE”
That’s not really the Chroma, but the composite signal (Y’ + Chroma), but you can’t monitor that on FC.

Apply the “Broadcast Safe Filter”.
In Luma/Chroma Mode, set “Custom-users control”.
In Custom Chroma saturation:
– Set Clamp above 115.
– Max output: 120.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Chris Borjis]

It’s important that you set those levels on each individual clip with a color correction tool. clamping the entire thing may make things not look so good.

then use the broadcast safe filter and set it on “extremely conservative”.

I’ve never had a problem using that workflow.

[Dom Butler]

Hi Guys

Thankyou all for your response.
Think now I can feel safe in uploading the spot.

[Paul Keyserling]

It’s been a few years since I have edited broadcast work. What happened to the 7.5% black standard?

Paul Keyserling
Big Pictures
Beaufort, SC

[David Roth weiss]

[Paul Keyserling] “What happened to the 7.5% black standard?”

Without getting too technical let me just give you the simple answer Paul…

Digital video signals are not measured in IRE as analog signals were, so the old 7.5 IRE on your analog waveform monitor is not reflected on the digital scopes in FCP, instead black is shown as “0” (zero).

Graeme Nattress explains it as such in one of his articles:

“The Waveform Monitor in Final Cut Pro uses unnamed units of measurement in a percentage scale, so we’ll call them FCP units. You can see that Final Cut Pro puts the words “black” and “white” on it’s measuring scale that ranges from -9%FCP to 109%FCP. Black is placed at 0% and white is placed at 100%. Remember these are FCP units and not IRE.”

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[David Cleverly]

I know this is an old post but it became relevant to me today.

I uploaded a TVC (my first in a long time I have to admit) for QC’ing and then realised I hadn’t done any level checks! I went back into FCPX and checked the levels and because I had used a lot of filters to get a specific look, they were all over the place. So I started the task of adjusting. After some two hours I had a corrected file. I rang the distribution company to let them know “I had uploaded the wrong file and I am about to send the correct one” 😉 and they confirmed my file had passed QC and was ready for broadcast.

I am still shaking my head.

Let me say my ad is certainly going to stand out amongst the crowd!!

Cheers.