Color Bars_Koz?

Hey Koz,

I've been following your instructions from this Sept-05 post. Two questions...does it matter where the bright and contrast are set initially?

& do I follow the same instructions for setting my broadcast monitor for PAL? Since PAL has no Phase adj....
thanks in advance for the help...
Pons

In Blue mode adjust the brightness of the middle four bars (the ones that used to be Cyan and Magenta) for equal brightness with Hue or Phase. Adjust the outer four bars (that used to be blue and white) for equal brightness with the Chroma or Color control. They affect each other, so go back and forth a couple of times until *all eight* bars match.

None of this has anything to do with black bars.

Turn everything back on and adjust the brightness control until you can just see *one* of the three dark gray bars in the lower right. This adjustment changes with room lighting.

Adjust the contrast control for pleasing picture under your lighting conditions and go back through the other adjustments to fine tune.

That's it. You just set up an NTSC monitor.

Koz

<<<does it matter where the bright and contrast are set initially?>>>

We like the factory clicks on all the knobs. You can't start too far off or all the tests stop working or give ambiguous, sloppy results. The down side is that the tests affect each other, the up side is that on a properly adjusted monitor, you can check them all in ten seconds flat--and that's if you're holding a cup of coffee.

Put bars up.
Check Pluge Pulse.
Touch Blue Button.
Check saturation and (sometimes) phase.
Touch Blue Button.
Done.

<<<PAL has no Phase adj>>>

It does, but it's an internal adjustment and it's completely automatic. PAL "Phase Alternate Line" uses a color reference scheme that reverses itself every other video scan line. An error likely to result in green people on scan line one will give purple people on scan line two. The errors cancel out.

SECAM did it another way. Each scan line only sends one color. Zero ambiguity.

Anyway, yes, the cyan and purple bars don't do anything for the PAL people.

I'm not in front of a Final Cut machine right this second, but bars in PAL can be misleading. Some PAL bar patterns send the far left bar as Maximum Permitted White instead of colorbar gray. That bar becomes useless for color setting. In that case, push the blue button and tune so the cyan, magenta, and blue bars all come out the same. Ignore the white bar.

Contrast and especially brightness change with room lighting.

After you get this problem licked, the next most likely problem will be overall color drift. A glass monitor makes the picture up of three different colors. You can get an overall color drift if one color ages before the others. Like looking at the picture through colored plastic sheets.

[www.kozco.com]

This will get you in all sorts of trouble. Click on the first one and see if your monitor color matches the sun coming in the window around noon. This pattern has zero color so the operator color controls don't do anything.

Koz