![]() ![]() ScopeBox monitors live video signals via a third-party capture device, or direct from the timeline within Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Adobe After Effects CC. It recreates every major video quality assurance tool, including Preview Monitor, Waveform, Vectorscope, Audio Meter, Luminance Histogram, RGB Histogram, and RGB and YUV Parade. ScopeBox is an easy-to-use, low-cost application that transforms users’ Macs into a complete video analysis suite. ScopeLink is an Adobe transmit bundle and Quicktime component that allows you to feed video directly from Creative Cloud applications directly to ScopeBox. In business for over 10 years, we pride ourselves on making well-made tools for video professionals. Other meters not shown include a YUV parade and channel plot.Divergent Media is a San Francisco, CA based software company, providing flexible tools for video monitoring, acquisition, transcoding, and quality assurance. The RGB histogram on the right shows the brightness spread of the individual colors in the video, which could indicate a white balance or saturation issue. The vectorscope in the middle is typically used to calibrate SMPTE color bars in a signal, and can also help gauge the accuracy of flesh tones in a frame. And, since you can use these scopes on previously captured disk-based clips, it's also a useful way to match new clips that you're about to shoot to clips captured previously. ![]() The RGB parade reveals how the separate channels in your video are represented in the video, which can identify white balance issues. But if all the brightness values were clumped in the middle, with no extreme whites or blacks, it usually does indicate a contrast issue.įigure 4 (below) shows some other commonly used scopes available in the product. In this case, the only black pixels in the frame are on the BowFlex shown on the extreme left, which aren't that dark anyway, so there isn't a problem. The circled area on the bottom left tells me that I have very few pixels at or near black true black, which may indicate a contrast issue. You can see a couple of significant peaks on the right those are probably my daughter's skin and the HP Z1 monitor. The range of pixels doesn't track the location on the frame like the waveform, but the number of pixels at each value. The Luma Histogram on the bottom left of Figure 3 shows the brightness values on a scale of 0 to 255, with 0 complete black on the left, and 255 complete white on the right. My two favorite scopes, the waveform and luma histogram. In this manner, waveforms are a precision tool while Zebras are a blunt instrument.įigure 3. Unlike zebra stripes (see Figure 1, in a slightly different shot), which show me all areas at 70 IRE and above, the waveform tells me that I'm right at 70 IRE, not at 80 or 90, which would be a definite problem. The circled area in the Waveform monitor is my daughter's face, and you can see that it's peaking at about 70 in this shot, which is about where I want it. Like luma zebra stripes, the Waveform on the upper right displays the IRE values of all the pixels in the frame, with values shown in their approximate position in the frame. ScopesĮvery shooter has his or her favorite scopes mine are shown in Figure 3 (below). Once you've got focus and preliminary exposure under control, it's time to fine tune your image. You can also add a graphic in the preview-say, to simulate the appearance of a lower-third title. Not shown are the audio meters, which provide a much bigger view than the meters on a typical camcorder. The rule of thirds tic-tac-toe board, sadly not available on many camcorders, is also showing, along with the blue center guides. In Figure 2 you can see the peaking controls helping assist my focus or you can display the image at 200% of actual for a focus-assisting closeup. In Figure 1, the brightness (called Luma in the Interface) zebras were set to 70, so my daughter's face is pretty well exposed. I would have preferred two sets of brightness zebras like OnLocation, so you could configure one for the face (70 IRE) and one for whites (100 IRE), though you can configure the IRE values so easily that it's not really an issue. The preview window has two sets of zebra stripes, one for brightness and one for colors. The Preview window with rule of thirds and action/title safe guides. I was working on an 8-core Mac Pro, though, so responsiveness may vary depending upon the speed of your computer.įigure 2. Unlike the version I tested back in 2008, display on the computer was just slightly behind the camera's LCD, so you can actually use ScopeBox's preview window ( Figure 2, below) to frame and position your camcorder. When shooting in an environment with room for a computer, ScopeBox's first benefit is a much larger preview window than your camcorder's 3.5" LCD. ![]()
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