Response to Purpose of Color Bars...

I do not own any digital recording equipment yet, but I do have several years of experience directing and editing commercials. STMPE color bars are a standardized color bar pattern that will appear as a specific pattern on a waveform monitor and a vectorscope. You should ALWAYS lay down bars on the front of a tape so you can match the camera's "idea" of what true colors are, to your editing system's "idea". Of course if you don't correctly white balance or filter your camera for the scenes you shoot, then throw that out the window. Once you match these on a vectorscope and waveform it really doesn't matter what your monitor looks like because they are identical electronically. TO properly set your monitor so you can see these actual colors, most professional monitors have either "gun controls" or a "blue button" With gun controls you turn off the red and green guns with color bars on the monitor. With a "blue button" simply push the "blue button" The result is a black and blue alternating pattern. Adjust your hue control until the black bars and the blue bars match each other corresponding bar in color and luminance. Even though the XL1 doesn't have STMPE bars still lay bars down on the front of each tape. While the bar patterns will not be as exact as STMPE bars, they will still get you closer to actual color matching than eyeballing it. Trust me, your eyes can see whatever color they want, you will drive yourself mad trying to eyeball your monitor to a correct solor bar sheet.

[ Previous | Next ]