absolutely unacceptable until they tie it all together with just one click

Who's "they"?

Until "they" is one single person or company, and "they" manufacture and produce all cameras, all encoders, all editors, and all forms of delivery, there will never be a "one click" solution.

And probably not even then.

Rob

>>Why the huge rant against digital?<<

... because we're all going digital and they're carrying over the traditional analog colour problems into this brave new world and there's no reason for it ... for better or for worse, they're gonna digitize this planet whether we like it or not.... I see no reason to struggle with colour anymore in this new digital age.... they'll shove content down the digital pipes and load content creators up with voodoo and software to correct their failure to address the fundamentals of simple colour consistency....

>>Until "they" is one single person or company<<

...they can compete on features ... it should be a crime to tie proprietary colour algorithms to their equipment ... anyway, look what Microsoft did for computing .... knock them all you want but I'm happy they dragged/forced/corerced the planet into a set of standards.... why should the digital hardware world be any different ....

Assuming that your camera is at all capable of accurately rendering all the colors it sees. None of them are, and so we usually look for a pleasing look rather than an accurate look.

For your agency, you'll have to do your best but remind them that not all TVs will render that red in exactly the same way. End consumers may not get that same color.

Rob Mack

>>You could say that the whole field of video isn't quite ready for people to use it yet<<

...that's exactly what I saying .... it's the resignation and acceptance from video creators that this is the way it must be that poses the biggest obstacle to getting these yahoos off their butts to do something about it....

Actually, Microsoft usually didn't drag anyone into a standard. Often, they diverged from standards and went their own way.

Anyway, let's entertain this for a bit. At the delivery point we have CRT TVs, LCD TVs, Plasma TVs, Front Projection, Rear projection, Etc, Etc.

All of these need to have some way of delivering a precise value to each and every pixel, maybe compensating for ambient light in the viewing environment.

Given that requirement I suppose we can throw out CRTs since it'll be very hard to sense the values there. For LCDs and plasma I imagine it might be possible to measure the actual value of a pixel if you can get a sensor in front of it. Maybe your best bet is in projection screens. I'm sure for a few tens of thousands of bucks you could build a screen that measures what's falling on it and compares it to the digital values and then tweaks the projector pixel by pixel on the fly. This way you could shine a flashlight on a spot on the screen and it would compensate. Cool.

There's a start for you.

Rob Mack

>>At the delivery point we have CRT TVs, LCD TVs, Plasma TVs, Front Projection<<

...and at the front end we have a zillion camera makers interpreting what their version of red is .... I understand the complexity involved in "standardizing" a colour space across all equipment from end to end but do you really believe it's impossible...? ... I don't ... there will be absolutely no effort on their part to resolve this if we take colour shifts lying down.... a march on Panasonic/Sony/Nikon with pitchforks and torches will get them to do a little research.... just fooling but you get the picture (with a blue shift, no doubt..)

Well there is a standard, DV25 and a standard tape size. Beyond that I think you're expecting a bit much. If Stalin ruled the world we might have a chance but while marketing departments keep telling the engineers to make the image 'brighter' cause it sells more cameras what chance do we have.
Kodak make heaps of different emulsions for 35mm and each one looks a bit different, thats why film is color graded. Same goes for video but it's worse. Each manufacturer either is trying their best to create the most accurate rendition or else push it as far as possible so the guy in the shop has an easier task to sell the camera.
Hopefully we'll see more cameras that shoot in RGB and we can forever get rid of the YUV nonsense, that'll help for sure.
But even IF all cameras were identical that's only a very small part of the problem. Lighting has a bigger influence than anything else on how the recorded image looks. Even IF you manual WB, within many locations the lighting can change both accross the space or over time so CC is still necessary. This isn't so much a technical limitation as a human one. You can accurately record the colors under tungsten light but reproduce that on a tele and the TV stations phones would be running hot.

Bob.

I'm just waiting for a Spelling Czar to standardize the way we spell "Color".

I vote for "culler".

The world won't be safe until each and every one of us has the same finger on the same button at the same time.

More coffee, warden?

Rob Mack

>>Beyond that I think you're expecting a bit much<<

... you mean why should I expect to to see a blue shirt, record it, digitize it, encode it and show it on a TV and it should come out the same colour...? ...I must be mad.... call the people in the white coats.... :-)

... anyway, thanks for all the feedback ... I realize that this can't be resolved here .... that's why it was simply posted this topic as a rant .... but I'll tell you this now ... one day, a prominent video content creator is gonna wake up after screwing around with colour correctors for weeks on end for a two minute blurb and is gonna slap someone to get things going in the industry ... it shouldn't be too long ....

I vote for "culler".

Wait until Grazie wakes up!!
He'll be all over you - and your neighboUrs too, for spelling coloUr incorrectly :-) No more favoUrs for you.
Next thing you know, you'll be telling us 30 (Celsius) isn't a hot summer day or that going 100 (kilometres/hr.) is going too fast.

(Canadian) Mike

I realize that this can't be resolved here

Clipman;
Until all manufacturers agree to one codec standard for video production I honestly don't think this will ever be resolved - and I seriously doubt that will ever happen.
In the analog days, colour bars was "the" reference. Didn't make any difference whether it came from VHS or BetaCam - that was an accepted standard.
These days, after you've firewired the footage into your computer, you've opened up a Pandora's box of codecs. Every single one is slightly different and will mess with the signal in some way, shape or form. For example, should you use the 0-255 range as some advise or the 16-235 range as others advise? Which codec? Some will go several generations before any loss occurs and others show problems after the first render. No wonder confusion reigns.

Mike

I vote for "kuhler" cuz it looks so kewl.

I'm adding it to my spell checker dictionary now! I love seeing the language grow and change!

Rob Mack

DO the shot reseach first before shooting, as stated above, DV Rack appears to be a big step, especially then used with multi camera shots, in reducing post work. Still, its the artist "view" of the shot, enhances and fx are added, then the sound track, ..... actual footage reaching the public viewer is non-existence. Even "realtime New" boardcasts are modify.

DV Rack is a HUGE step forward. Some of it's setup is Time consuming, but we used it recently on a 3 camera shoot, and it allowed us to match all the cams pretty dang close prior to the shot. GL2's simply have a different red than the XL1, and you can't fix that at the cam, but everything else was the same. Dropped all 3 cams into Vegas, used the 6 point color corrector tool to pull some red out, and BAM! done in just a few seconds. Nothing more to do.
I'm a monster fan of RACK! In fact, I'm the host of the DV Rack forum on the DMN site.

For the yonger video geeks. And those like myself who use to spend easily an hour matching 4 tube cameras before each nightly newscast and anytime the temperture changed a few degrees......

NTSC- Never The Same Color Twice!

Spot - I mix my GL1 and Sony 200 & 300s all the time, Sony goes blue, Cannon Red. Trial and error has us now shading the Sony's more red, atleast under stage lights, for outdoor natural ight we tend to shade more towards the Sony cooler Temp.

Oh the joys

Phil

I often read the threads on this and other forums and see all the gripes, and think to myself 'Hang on, we can shoot on a DV cam, edit it on a PC, and burn a DVD, all at home, at, when you think about it, and very reasonable price.' It amazes me still!

Having siad that, I just did a 3 camera shoot for my 6 y.o. son's circus, using a Hi8 camera (sony), a DV Camera (Sony), and a MiniDV Camera (Panasonic).

The difference in the colours between the cams was eye opening to say the least, so I can now see why there is all the fuss about colour correcting.

Should there be a quality difference between DV and MiniDV? Is the size of the tape the only difference?

Andy