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Vectorscope question regarding capturing instead of color correction
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There goes the neighborhood…
Happy New Year Mark!
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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I am sorry. I was on an iPhone and therefore could not readily go back to see the other kind soul who posted.
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[Mike Fox] ” 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?”
You can open up the Vector / Waveform panel in the Log and Capture window as well, but it’s just for show quite honestly. Unless you’re running a capture card that allows for adjustments during ingest, all those panels will do is show you what the footage looks like.
With the wealth of color correction tools at your fingertips, it’s much easier to simply ingest everything and fix later. I’ve used a TBC exactly twice in the past 8 years and both times was for a rental 3/4 VTR to at least get the thing to lock up to picture.
So no, with FCP we really don’t make any adjustments on the way in. Just edit, and then correct the material you actually used.
FYI, I was on Media 100 for 6 years and still miss the incredibly easy offline / online workflow and the project based settings. The big thing you have to get used to in FCP is the fact that all of your System Settings (Capture Scratch for example) are global to the application. So if you have multiple projects on multiple scratch discs, you have to manually check that the project is being rendered to the correct capture scratch. I’m hoping at some point in the near future Apple will finally fix this.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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[Mark Suszko] “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”
Thats the way all color bars work, they are designed to be a calibration so that each device can be tuned to an accepted standard. This is no different in digital- they are used the same way.
Without calibration standards there is no way to define or determine image “legality” for broadcast, you may not use it, but I can assure you that every TV and Cable station does use them.
gary adcock
Studio37Post and Production Workflow Consultant
Production and Post Stereographer
Chicago, ILhttps://blogs.creativecow.net/24640
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I do understand that, Gary, and I’ve tried to always line everything up to bars. Thing is, these days, if somebody gives you a program with bars on the front, sometimes it has no relationship to the actual video for levels or hue, etc. People more into web video than broadcast are shading and grading their footage without reference to scopes, using the TLAR method*, then pasting a file of bars from the computer’s files onto that. And a lot of the time now, files meant for server playback are spec’d by clients to just start on the first frame of actual video, without bars, tone, slate, countdown, anything. Where do you find a reference standard in that brave new world? Back in misty days or yore, bars were generated by an actual camera circuit and not just a playback of a jpeg from flash memory. I’m only saying that I would trust bars shot off a chart in actual video as perhaps more truly representational of what’s going on with the camera, over a stored image file played off a ROM and run thru the camera’s compression system. If they even do that anymore? I’m not an engineer, so I don’t really know.
*TLAR: “That Looks About Right”
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[Mark Suszko] “Thing is, these days, if somebody gives you a program with bars on the front, sometimes it has no relationship to the actual video for levels or hue, etc.”
No dispute there Mark, As I said the bars were designed to calibrate devices to each other, to establish a baseline. Adding a color chart or having a calibrated guide on your Slate is the solution to your issue, then there is a calibrated source in your shot that can be used for more standardized color controls in your shot.
” Where do you find a reference standard in that brave new world? Back in misty days or yore, bars were generated by an actual camera circuit and not just a playback of a jpeg from flash memory.”
it is my understanding that output of bars has been “jpeg playback” since digibeta came to the market, but the reference you speak of is attained using something like DSC Labs ChromaDuMonde chart https://dsclabs.com/chromadumonde1.htm to achieve accurate image calibrations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxmyZPKTTwI&feature=player_embedded
gary adcock
Studio37Post and Production Workflow Consultant
Production and Post Stereographer
Chicago, ILhttps://blogs.creativecow.net/24640
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Gary, I know you know this…
Playback of “canned” charts is really primarily for setting up displays to a “flat” known reference rather than referencing video that’s been captured in the camera, as canned bars clearly have no reference to anything that’s been acquired. Shooting a chart with the camera would be the only way to achieve what Mark is looking for.
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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Mark,
The “Colors Bars” are to video like the “periodic table” to chemistry.[gary adcock] “Thats the way all color bars work, they are designed to be a calibration so that each device can be tuned to an accepted standard. This is no different in digital- they are used the same way.
Without calibration standards there is no way to define or determine image “legality” for broadcast, you may not use it, but I can assure you that every TV and Cable station does use the”
I fully agree with Gary.
People which experience on video is limited to working on a Computer, tends to say that Color Bars are not useful today (what to say about something you don’t understand?).
As Gary said, you may use them or not but Color Bars are the “ABC” of video.
I consider a VIDEO ILLITERATE any body unable to explain the whys and hows of Color Bars.
Cheers,
Rafael -
I understand where you are coming from but can you comment on the fact that most bars are generated by some still store of sorts and not by the camera circuitry today? If you are recording onboard material (on a camcorder) how accurately can one trust the bars that would be recorded at the head of a tape?
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[Ian Liuzzi-Fedun] “but can you comment on the fact that most bars are generated by some still store of sorts and not by the camera circuitry today? If you are recording onboard material (on a camcorder) how accurately can one trust the bars that would be recorded at the head of a tape?”
People you are missing the point.
You have to calibrate the hardware on a known standard- ie: bars – So you need to make sure that each device is set at a known baseline and what that device is capable of. This is right up there with choosing a frame rate to shoot at. You have to be working to an established baseline to start. Bars were initially used so that an engineer could set in the back room and match all the cameras to each other for live broadcast under controlled studio conditions.
You are not working in that manner, so for you shooting bars and tone does NOT account for Lighting or other issues that may come up, that is what the ChromaDuMonde charts like those from DSC Labs are used for, to simplify the color correction process.
gary adcock
Studio37Post and Production Workflow Consultant
Production and Post Stereographer
Chicago, ILhttps://blogs.creativecow.net/24640
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