Broadcast Legal

MichaelS wrote on 7/21/2007, 3:54 PM
It's a gorgeous Saturday afternoon! Since I like fishing, I figured I'd open up a can of worms.

I'm trying to determine the best (easiest, fastest, best quality) way of maiking clips "broadcast legal'. Techniques vary from using color curves, levels, broadcast color filters...etc.

When producing commercials, I generally adjust each clip individually using levels (bringing luminance into 16-100) then color correct as necessary. Then, I drop a broadcast colors filter (extremely conservative) on the video bus.

Can anyone offer a better suggestion?

Thanks!

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/21/2007, 4:08 PM
i've never worried about it to much as many TV's aren't "correct" anyway (TV in my bedroom is very different from the one in the living room no matter what, for example).

But I normally either use CC or just the broadcast filter. With digital broadcast being used & digital being received "broadcast legal" may start being equal to the computer setup too.

I've NEVER made DVD's broadcast legal, ever. Even if they were bright/dark. Never had an issue.
John_Cline wrote on 7/21/2007, 4:55 PM
It's been a long time since I've used the Broadcast Colors filter. As I remember, the reason I stopped was because it clipped the offending values instead of scaling them. When necessary, I generally use some combination of the Color Curves, Color Corrector and Levels filters.

John
GlennChan wrote on 7/22/2007, 8:21 PM
Drop the broadcast colors filter on the viideo preview FX. If there are illegal colors, it may munge them / make them look bad.

Use the other filters to handle that (Levels, Secondary CC). If the video is overexposed, you can use levels or color curves to bring the highlights into legal range where they won't get clipped.

If saturated highlights de-saturate too much, use the secondary CC to bring luma down (turn the gain down; target saturated highlights with the controls on the bottom).
vitalforce wrote on 7/23/2007, 11:06 AM
I get better results for most clips by using a specially set Color Corrector (Secondary) rather than Curves, as the latter tends to wash out contrast and even color if there's a significant amount of luminance over the 100% line in Scopes. But sometimes I use Curves first, then fine-tune further with CC(S).

My settings for what I call my "clipping filter" in the secondary corrector are as follows. At the bottom of the dialog box there are three sliders for three sets of parameters.

Under 'Limit luminance' all 3 sliders all the way to the right (255).
Under 'Limit saturation' the bottom 2 sliders all the way right (162) but the topmost slider ('Low') at zero.
Under 'Limit hue' all 3 sliders all the way right (360, 360 and 180).

Then click 'Show mask' to see what you're reducing. By moving the 'Smooth' slider under the 'Limit luminance' section you can enlarge or contract the affected area. I often tune that down to about 165.

At the top of the corrector next to the color wheel, I generally only use "Gain" to reduce the luminance--the Scopes' waveform will show the blownout area moving down below the 100% line as you move the slider left--rarely farther than 0.600, I often go to about 0.722.

This is done without picking a color--just luminance generally is being limited.

Sometimes the Saturation slider needs to move down as the selected luminance darkens, but not lower than 0.500 or so.

Works for little blown-out spots on faces, bright reflections on clothing, and windows especially. If you don't overdo it, it rescues a lot of detail.