color correction resources sought

hello--

Color correcting my first HD project shot on the Sony XDCAM EX1. 720/24p. Its a short; final TRT is about 6min15 sec.

Looking for advice and information (links, your reply) regarding using FCP's color correction monitors (wave form, vectorscope, histogram, etc...) as I haven't used them in the past on other projects and thinking it might be a good idea to read up on them for this one.

In the past SDV projects I did I merely made sure I didn't have any exclamation points (i.e. the excess luma) and that the clips were broadcast safe. I'm fairly convinced that HD is a different beast and would likely require I pay attention to some of these monitoring tools.

I've been editing picture and sound at home but will be taking my drive to school to color correct (theres an HDMI connected monitor there and though not ideal, I'm thinking I'll get "truer" color than my basic LCD monitor connected to my Mac Pro at home)

Any links or info regarding these monitoring tools? Am I worrying too much about this?

Maybe I'm a bit too cavalier about this, but I don't use any other devices like waveform monitors or vectorscopes. Once I am sure I can trust my preview monitor, I'm fine. I trust my eye...granted, I've been doing this for 15 years.

I've gotten into disagreements with people over things like this: they say "but it looks right on the scope", and then I say "but look at the picture", and they say, "but it's right on the scope", and I say again, "but look at the picture".

That's just me, though. I probably should be chastised for not using scopes, but "look at the picture"!

Casey Petersen
www.unitedvideoinc.com

With half of the experience that casey has i SECOND her motion.

Scopes are nice when trying to see the exact color scale you need to effect but in the end the question is, " does it look good to you when viewed in an external monitor?"

BTW in FCS2 they have a great tool call COLOR and it is quite powerful.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Actually, I'm a guy, but don't worry...I'm used to it in forums (definitely not in person though!).

Thanks for your validation though...I'm normally a little bit nervous about telling people I don't use scopes, because the people I have told think I'm crazy for not using one.

I usually just use the 3-way color corrector...I haven't used Color much...though I probably should for clips that are completely off.

Casey

A vectorscope is handy when you're trying to figure out exactly what move to make to improve a look. Putting the waveform monitor in parade will help you balance out a picture, if that's what you're going for. And that little spike on the vectorscope that says "flesh tones" is useful for making people look natural. Again, if that's what you're going for.

But the scope is a tool, not the end product. I'm with Casey et al. Make it look good. Use the scopes if they're useful to you. And if you're color-correcting for broadcast, recognize and come to terms with the fact that beyond a certain point, there's nothing you can do about Ma and Pa's 19" Zenith anyway.

other than the baking of nest,.motn, stills, and key-framed elements in your timeline color is absolutely wonderful.

The scope often tell you that your whts are over and being the "light spill king" i sometimes leave the whites for effect. sometime removing whites makes the picture look way too dark.

sometime i dont mind a bit of over saturation either.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

I disagree. The scopes are there to help you stay legal. If you're out of legal, you risk getting rejected in Quality Control for broadcast.

The way it looks is important, but if your whites exceed 100 (in Australia) or your saturation is too high, you'll get the program kicked back and your deadline (and reputation) will probably suffer.

If this is just for school, you don't need to worry, but it's an important thing to understand how they work if you're going to be going on to broadcast.

Also, they can help you do things like see when you've got optimum contrast, and this is a big part of what makes pro vision 'pop'.

Ask your school to teach you how they work. That's what you're paying them for.

I totally disagree with corbett & anyone not using scopes for any reason. IMHO, I would not listen to anyone telling me not to use scopes as they are as essential a part of your edit gear as your keyboard / hard drive / NLE / etc. LEARN THEM = USE THEM. There is a reason why they exist.

Especially for Broadcast...don't ever leave illegal whites "for effect". Anyone ever watch a bad commercial on your TV and a white screen pops up and your speakers buzz? That's illegal white. You ever see a bad commercial that has an actor wearing a red shirt that is bleeding so badly it looks like he was shot in the chest with a shotgut? That's illegal chrominance. It is obnoxious, incorrect and will be rejected by most Broadcast airing facilities worth their salt. Unless your "effect" is intended to annoy everyone seeing your work, comment about poor production quality and make folks reach for the remote, keep Whites at 235 and the colors in the boxes, IMHO.

Not enough "editors" even know how to read & use a Waveform or Vectorscope or even know what they do...and they should. ALL editors should:

WAVEFORM MONITOR

VECTORSCOPE

HOW TO READ VIDEO SCOPES

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Creative editors might not need to be bothered with using the scopes. But ONLY if they aren't the final link in the chain. If someone else is color correcting, then they will be the ones using the scopes...and really, they would be the ones who are determining the LOOK of the show as well.

Even if you won't be sending a show to broadcast, it is wise to know what the scopes are and how to use them, and really to keep things within legal limits. If you deliver a DVD with the overblown whites...here comes da buzz. Reds too hot? Chroma too hot. Color bleeding galore.

Get the look that you want, but know how to do that while remaining legal. It is very easy to get the blown out look AND remain below 100 IRE. And get CRUSHED blacks and still be 0 IRE...or 7.5 for SD.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

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Creative editors might not need to be bothered with using the scopes. But ONLY if they aren't the final link in the chain.

True. When I worked at The Golf Channel, we didn't have to submit tapes for Technical Approval because all signal was clipped to legal across the board on transmission (Color / Saturation). It sucked...made everything look washed out & colorless. I used the scopes anyway because turning in a good looking quality legal piece is important to me and those same pieces look BETTER on my Demo

Besides like shane says...there are ways to get the "blown out / over-saturated" look without blowing out people's screens.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Joe if you ever agree with me i will be completely shocked. Trust me.

I am not saying don't use scopes. I use scopes but not all the time. sometimes you just know especially when you have had a hand in every stage.

I leave excess luma warning on 90% of the time. This often prompts me to use the scopes depending on the zebra. I know my monitor well and i can see questionable limits. rgb parade is my friend because of some of the looks i have been experimenting with.

now i don't know how to recognize perfect contrast with the scopes but i use them.

65% of what i do doesn't go to broadcast. It goes to web or viewer or DVD. My DVDs are never overblown or over sat. Some of my web stuff is. But not by much, maybe 2-4 notches above +luma thresh. Same goes for chroma but never above 3 but not on heavy reds and blues.

I need to brush up on terminology but the scope are not that hard to understand.

2years ago i thought they were impossible but then i got LYNDA to help me. Her team of studded geeks got me up ta speed. Round Trip to color? Lynda will show you. The basics of vector scopes? Whoa, Better call Lynda.
LYNDA.com, apply directly to your browser.

Now come at me, Kieth Oberman without glasses.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

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Joe if you ever agree with me i will be completely shocked. Trust me.

I will disagree with ANYONE that posts incorrect information that I believe steers folks in the wrong direction...which you do quite often.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Thank you, J. Corbett for mentioning LYNDA. It didn't even cross my mind and I can use my school account to watch tutorials. Im sure they have some sort of FCP color chapters so I'll check those out since i have access.

This is for school but I want to make sure its legal because for the first time I'm satisfied with my movie and realistically think it has a shot in fests/getting distribution. I'll do some searching and keep reading, but everyone has been very helpful! My film professor is back in town next week and we can sit down and go through this Vectorscope/Histogram, etc. stuff (she knows all that jazz). For now I've been "Color Correct 3 way" and its been working out good, but my movie is effects heavy (blown out whites, saturated colors) so I'll take it underadvisement to be extra careful.

Thanks for your help, everybody.

...just keep your scopes window open and stay within the boxes / lines





When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Ahhh... chastisement! I was waiting for it

None of my stuff is ever broadcast...so is it as important if your product is just going straight to DVD? I haven't had any complaints yet.

Hey, I'll turn it on today and see what happens.

No - it's not anywhere near as important if you're not going to broadcast. It used to be that you could actually throw a transmitter off air if you got it too wrong, so you can imagine that it used to be VERY important. These days most stations have clippers, but a good one will still make you get it right to begin with.

The reason it would be important for DVDs is the ones others have mentioned - buzzing whites, colour bleeding and so on. Scopes won't stop them happening, but they can tell you where the problem is.

BTW, super-black is also a big no-no in broadcast, for similar reasons.

That's what I thought. I haven't had any buzzing or bleeding (on any of my TVs or monitors) for many, many years.

Thanks!

Jude Cotter Wrote:
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> No - it's not anywhere near as important if you're
> not going to broadcast.

I'll differ with you on that. If you are just doing one-offs then fine. But if you are making a DVD for mass duplication your client hopefully will be sending the master you create for a full broadcast inspection. You don't want to have ten of thousands of DVD's duplicated only to discover a problem later.

Here in LA, depending on the client, I send masters to Ascent Media, Post Logic or Crest for inspection. And they will fail your tape for the slightest reason. Thankfully.

im looking at your picture joe...

could you try to briefly deconstruct aspects of your images for me? all im seeing is some sort of astrology pattern.

I suppose I've never had a problem because I have never had anything broadcast anywhere for any reason. I do weddings and events, and most of our stuff is duplicated in the 1-75 copy range. We have had a couple things go 500-1000 copies, but those have been 3-5 minute promos for companies to send out to prospective clients.

Do those inspectors literally go through every frame making sure that all video is broadcast legal? Is that why they fail tapes, because maybe a shot will exceed the broadcast parameter? For my projects that do get copied 500-1000 times, and if I were trying to make it broadcast legal, I should be able to monitor the project through FCP's scopes and be fine, right?

Thanks for the education!

Casey

Those are Color Bars represented on a Vectorscope & Waveform. Dude...didn't you visit the links in my earlier post? They explain Waveform / Vectorscope & how to read them.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

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casey
For my projects that do get copied 500-1000 times, and if I were trying to make it broadcast legal, I should be able to monitor the project through FCP's scopes and be fine, right?

when i print, i print 3500 - 10,000 2x a year for the pass 2 years. Thats when i worry about scopes. and then i am only worried about whts and chroma levels.


HEY JUDE

HOW CAN YOU TELL WHEN YOU HAVE OPTIMUM CONTRAST?


Joe i think i saved 2 threads where you agreed with me. The rarity made them priceless.
BTW i am bout 50/50 now on correct answers.
One day, i will disagree with you and be right.
Then you will turn to stone and light rays will emanated from the cracks in your body with a red hue. Then you will explode restoring peace to middle forum.

you are right a lot but not always.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

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casey

For my projects that do get copied 500-1000 times, and if I were trying to make it broadcast legal, I should be able to monitor the project through FCP's scopes and be fine, right?

Yep

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Joe i think i saved 2 threads where you agreed with me.

That's funny...I saved the same 2 threads where you were right

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Oh man... Even DVDs should be broadcast safe. I was watching the Euros recently at a bar (I think it was Spain in the semis), and when they brought the match back for the 2nd half, something went wrong with the broadcast, and the saturation was whacked with the reds completely bleeding into the next shot.. Everyone saw it, even the half the blokes who have *never* seen an editing software in their lives.

The scopes are a guide. You use it to maintain broadcast safe, and other stuff like balancing the colors, etc... Use your eyes on a calibrated monitor, and never fall out of broadcast safe not even for DVDs. Whites cause TVs to buzz, over saturated colors bleed... Word.

*edit: grammar



www.strypesinpost.com

Another 2¢

If you are delivering the final product, knowing how to read the scopes is the first step into making your video look really good. You can save a bunch of time that you'd otherwise spend blindly tweaking settings in the color corrector of your choice if you can learn to use the scopes properly.

Once you know what crushed blacks and blown out whites and whacked-out colors look like on the scopes, and how the scopes change when you adjust using whichever tool you choose, you'll start to appreciate the control you have over making even poorly shot video look even the tiniest bit better.

When you get stuff that IS shot well, you can start to see how you can make it look even better.

Scopes are an invaluable tool. The ability to use them is the along the path to becoming a better editor.

deb

Thanks Deb, that's probably what happened to me, even though I didn't realize it. Through the years, I learned what things would look like on the scope to the point where it wasn't as important that I used one all the time.

I know well enough by now not to crush my blacks or blow out my whites or whack out my colors. Just because I'm not using a scope doesn't necessarily mean that I'm way off all the time.

Here's a scope question though...

What do you do (if you're reading a scope) if you have footage that's awfully backlit and the face is too dark? To make the image look presentable, I would bring up the brightness to try to see more of the face, but as the shot exists, the backlight is already being blown out.

Being an event videographer means that we generally have little to no control over our environments.

What do you guys say?

> What do you do (if you're reading a scope) if you have footage that's awfully backlit and the face
> is too dark? To make the image look presentable, I would bring up the brightness to try to see
> more of the face, but as the shot exists, the backlight is already being blown out.

There are plenty of tools that can target shadows, mids and highlights individually. Just FCP's own Color Corrector can do it, or Lyric Media's free Shadow-Highlight filter. And you can do the doubled-up-clip-with-Composite-Mode trick, and clamp down on the highlights on the duplicated clip.

There's a limit as to how much you can do with a severely back-lit shot, but there are some options.


www.derekmok.com

>Being an event videographer means that we generally have little to no control over our
>environments.

Lol. I loved the montage at the end of the prize giving of Euro 2008- the colors completely rocked and the rhythm of the cuts was good, and at the speed they could get the video out right at the end of the event and make it look that great was something else...

Backlit shot.. A facelight would be an option. Alternatively, a feathered matte of the face with a 3 way zoned in on it to brighten it up would be another.. But that depends on how bad it is, whether it is a moving shot, etc...



www.strypesinpost.com

I have the facelight filters as well as highlight-shadow already.

I guess what I'm asking is if you can correct this blowout and still keep it broadcast safe.