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White levels out of whack?
I had a master kicked back by a broadcaster and am wondering if anyone has an explanation?
I received a :25/:05 commercial from a client, who wanted me to add a custom tag. The :25/:05 was on BetaSP. I digitized it into FCP4 via a decklinkSP from a UVW-1800. I added their tag, plopped a “Broadcast safe” filter on the project, and sent it out to their traffic house.
The tape got refused, saying my video levels were at 60 ire. News to me, since other tagged spots from the same masters are already airing.
I went back to the original :25/:05 tape and looked at it through the waveform in FCP’s capture tool. The video signal is showing as 80 ire.
When I put the footage on the timeline, the video signal showed as being 60 ire on FCP’s timeline waveform scope. I boost it to 100%, print it to tape, and when I play the new tape in the capture module, it shows at 80 ire again.
I sent it off to the traffic house, and they say the levels are fine.
I can see where I was a bit lazy in not checking the spot more carefully, but aside from that, it seems to me a problem that two different FCP scopes have such different measurements of the same footage. And neither seems to match the scope at the broadcaster.
So, aside from buying a scope, which isn’t in the budget (I’m not doing any broadcast work anyhow, except for this occasional spot tagging), can anyone suggest what’s going on in FCP or how I can use the waveform monitors with more confidence?
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2 Replies
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Dave, check in your decklink preferences to see if
“USE BETACAM LEVELS” is checked on the “video levels” tab.I noticed that can make a difference.
The scopes being off could be caused by that. (capture and output)
but they should be consistent if that is checked.Walter did some testing with hardware scopes vs software scopes and found that the software is usually just a little less than what a hardware scope reads.
If your pure whites need to be 95% then bring them to just under that
on the software scopes and it will be just fine.My experience color correcting a tv series and a feature length film confirmed this.
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I think you have to use some “old fashioned” Color Bars and check if the TBC of your VTR is set to the correct levels. You may just need to adjust the Video OUT.
Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.
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