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Vectorscope question regarding capturing instead of color correction
Could anyone shed some light on there experience with the Vecterscope in Final Cut Pro? Every Final Cut forum on Vectorscopes I’ve searched for relates to color correction in the “Color” application instead of capturing video through Final Cut Pro. The company I’m working for recently switched from Media100 to Final Cut and I was asked about using the Vectorscope during capture process. I know how to locate the Vectorscope under video scopes but am curious to how or even if many professionals check on it prior to capturing. I’m aware there is a default setting but are there cases when one would need to make adjust adjustments?
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22 Replies
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[Mike Fox] “I’m aware there is a default setting but are there cases when one would need to make adjust adjustments?”
How are you capturing?
If capturing via firewire there’s no adjustment possible. If capturing via an I/O card or device there are proc amps built-in to the drivers for those devices.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-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.
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On capturing, the Vectorscope would be useful only if you have some Colors Bars and if you are able to adjust Hue and Chroma on importing, as David points.
i guess they want you to capture some old NTSC tapes or so.
Don’t forget to look at the Waveform too 🙂
rafael -
I would imagine it would be a far more efficient workflow to bring it into FCP as it is and then only have to grade the shots you use (with the added ability to simply copy a grade to similar shots), as opposed to grade absolutely everything manually on import.
The end quality result would be the same.
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
I wonder if anybody here shares my view about this. Color bars on tape I think meant more in the analog days than they do now. In today’s cameras, the bars are generated from a stored jpeg file in the camera, far as I can tell. They are handy for filling up the front part of a tape close to the leader, before the serious recording starts, and for having some video to look at while recording wild sound, and for making easy visual breaks between scenes… but that’s moot if you’re recording to non-tape media today. The camera bars today seem to me to bear little relation to what comes in thru the lens into the optical block to be captured by the sensors and compressed by a DSP. To my way of thinking, the way to do the job *right* these days is actually to go a step backwards, and shoot bars off of an actual color bars chart, thru the lens. At least that way, the bars you record along with your scene relate to the actual white balance of what was shot, are easier to measure and mark specific settings for correction, and you have a consistent standard of the chart to compare to when altering your colors in the grading process… Or am I off-base here?
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[Mark Suszko] ” Color bars on tape I think meant more in the analog days than they do now.”
There’s no doubt about it Mark, bars were much more useful in the analog days, as there’s no longer any lining-up to bars necessary or even possible when capturing digital sources digitally. In other words, capturing a digital source as analog video still permits adjustments via proc amp on the way in.
On the other hand however, we didn’t really have the same color correction capabilities in post we now have either. Think back to the ridiculously simple color correction in our old Discreet Edit* NLE. No wonder we adjusted things coming in via proc amp whenever possible.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-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.
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You are right Mark, this is why I think all is about recording Betacam or any other analog format.
Adjusting the on-tape Bars with the help of the Vectorscope would be the way to correct the historical NTSC hue problems.
rafael -
In the digital world, bars and tone are not needed. In the old days of film, test charts were shot to experiment with stock, processing and lenses.
I have never looked at the input scopes in FCP as I only capture digital tape formats and that has been the case for the past six years, so unless you have an I/O card with analog inputs and are capturing via analog component, vectorscopes and waveform monitoring is not important unless you are checking a camera fault.
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As the other guy said-with an Io device it is essential. I do it all the time and it helps
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[Ian Liuzzi-Fedun] “As the other guy said”
Jeeze, I’m just “the other guy” now. Guess 2011 isn’t gonna be very special.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-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.
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See, they change the banner status and immediately, there goes all the respect for the top guys
;-P
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