Also, keep your photos on a separate track and put a color correction filter with a cRGB to sRGB preset on it. Photos play back at too intense cRGB color levels if you don't do this.

Thanks Musicvid! Yes, it makes sense now that it goes on the bottom because the higher tracks take priority over the lower, yes?

I also figured out that I had to mess around with the opacity of the NewBlue Reflection FX so that the legal blacks would match between the NewBlue background versus the Generated Media background.

There is soooooo much to learn.

Kimberly, are you prepping for broadcast? Because that's the only place "legal" colors makes any sense at all. Outside of actual broadcast signals, no one worries about this stuff. Not even Hollywood.

Well, for DVD analog delivery, which is still the preponderance, it always made more sense to put the right levels on the disc, rather than let the variety of players out there make clamping decisions for me.

Any time it is going to show on a TV: be it old CRT or new HD LCD or plasma, I use legal colors. I do this whether it is being played via DVD, Blu-ray, or some sort of media player. TVs look too contrasty otherwise. Computer playback is different. sRGB can look a little washed out on a computer. One way to get around this is to render to sRGB colors in .mxf format and play back the file using the free Sony .mxf player:

https://www.servicesplus.sel.sony.com/%28S%28qiolrm55l0g3uw3rsaopap45%29%29/sony-software-model-PDZVX10.aspx

This player does the best job of both deinterlacing and correcting sRGB colors that I've ever seen. Just don't forget to go into the preferences and enable hardware graphics card acceleration or you won't see the proper level of quality. Unaccelerated playback looks terrible with this player, but accelerated playback is outstanding.

The only thing I've ever corrected for DVD is computer generated content. Anything I've shot with my camera I've never cared about adjusting unless it looks bad.

But with LCD/etc. TV's I don't even adjust CG any more. It looks good on my LCD monitor & my LCD TV.

Speaking of generated content, Vegas defaults with text at a white of 255,255,255 which is too bright. I always go in and bring it down to 235,235,235, but I'm sure that a lot of people don't. Does anyone know why Vegas defaults at these levels and if this is something that can be changed?

I saved my white-on-transparent and white-on-black text presets to S-RGB levels (there, hope that sets the abbreviation apart from sRGB!) long ago. However, it would be a nuisance if one was applying the colorspace filter as an output FX, which I sometimes do. So keeping the default templates at C-RGB makes sense as the baseline behavior.

Anything I've shot with my camera I've never cared about adjusting unless it looks bad.

REC 709 for HD assumes 16-235, but permits shooting outside that gamut as wiggle room. Choosing how much of that highlight and shadow detail, to bring into gamut, and how much to sacrifice, is one of my first and most important decisions in DVD production.

Prepping for broadcast? Ha. No way, not at my level : )

It's more a case of what Musicvid and Lawrence said. And I also read in my latest DSE book that you should pay attention to this stuff.

But the real reason is that I reworked some footage because my husband's coworker, a non-diver, wanted to see some diving videos. It looked great on my computer but it was truly hideous when I played the DVD on Ye Olde Tube TV. So then I thought well this legal colors stuff might be important.

I made some changes. It looks a lot better on my computer. I am rendering now to burn a test DVD. Will know shortly if it's any better on the tube.

Will know shortly if it's any better on the tube.

Oh, it will be.

It's important to note that some DVD players also have user-settable black levels controls, which normally shouldn't be changed.

>It looked great on my computer but it was truly hideous when I played the DVD on Ye Olde Tube TV.

Yes, that is exactly what we are talking about.

Here are the things you need to do:

1/ If you are previewing in a window on your computer monitor, put a color correction filter with a sRGB to cRGB preset on. Leave it bypassed when you are editing and rendering, but turn it on when you want to tweak your color. This is a preview compensation filter so you need to do your actual color correction with filters on the video tracks or events, and not this filter.

2/ Set all your generated text whites to 235,235,235 instead of the default 255,255,255. Your text will still look white but it will be a little crisper as it won't be overdriving your TV.

3/ Keep any photos on a track that is separate from your video tracks and put a color correction filter with a cRGB to sRGB preset on that track.

4/ Put an extra track below the rest of your tracks and put a generated media black of 16,16,16 on that track, stretching it the full length of your project (plus I put two seconds lead in and lead out time)

Those steps will keep you in the proper color range on an HDV project.

Or, compose and edit everything in a C-RGB space, and apply the S-RGB levels filter as an Output FX. Quick and "mostly" foolproof, unless the footage needs a little tweaking, which would make for a longer render.

>Or, compose and edit everything in a C-RGB space, and apply the S-RGB levels filter as an Output FX. Quick and "mostly" foolproof, except the footage sometimes needs a little tweaking.

To do that, put a sRGB to cRGB on the HDV video tracks and leave everything else au-natural.

The trouble with that approach is that you lose smart-rendering on your HDV or EX footage. Plus, what you end up with is video that is going through two color corrections: one from sRGB to cRGB and a another one back again. In addition to the extra rendering time (on my Core2Duo at least) you have the issue of unnecessary errors that may be introduced by the double conversion, not to mention that both these conversions are at 8 bit precision (on Vegas 9 and earlier) and also going through an extra RGB/YUV color conversion stage.

Another approach is to put a Broadcast colors filter on the output (which will reign in your blacks and generated text but you will still need color correction on photographs), but again this approach loses any smart-rendering.

I really think that doing it the way that I outlined is the best for these reasons.

Laurence:

In the plug-in chain is this at the beginning or the end? I'm guessing it is the beginning and then I uncheck the box when I render for Vegas Pro 10?

1/ If you are previewing in a window on your computer monitor, put a color correction filter with a sRGB to cRGB preset on. Leave it bypassed when you are editing and rendering, but turn it on when you want to tweak your color. This is a preview compensation filter so you need to do your actual color correction with filters on the video tracks or events, and not this filter.

The preview color correction is my one and only filter on the master video bus. I only use this when I'm adjusting color. I turn it on when I'm making adjustments, and turn it off immediately afterwards. If I had a faster computer I might leave it on all the time I was editing.

I do any actual color correction on either tracks or events. I do it on tracks if I'm matching cameras for instance. In that case I want to do a common color correction to everything shot by a certain camera. By putting it on a track I can do all the clips on that track at once. If I'm doing color correction on a certain shot, I'll stick it just on that clip.

Actually on the preview color correction, I set it more for a sort of hybrid approach, with my blacks going down to 0,0,0 instead of 16,16,16 and my whites maxing out at 235,235,235. This looks good on my particular laptop. You can experiment with this correction. Remember it's just for you and your eyes. What you want this correction to do is compensate the difference between your computer monitor and an average TV. It is just so that when you tweak the color with the track or event correction filters, you are seeing what you will end up seeing on a TV. If what you are seeing on your preview window looks different from your TV renders, tweak this correction until it looks as close to the same as you can get. No this isn't the equivalent of a adjusting your colors on a broadcast monitor, but it works quite well for me.

The only time I leave this filter on during render is when I am hosting the video myself rather than using a service like Vimeo, Youtube or Facebook. In that case, I'll leave the preview correction on during the render since it won't be going through something like the Vimeo "one size fits all" sRGB to cRGB levels expansion.

One more thing, I always do any color correcting with a combination of scopes and my eyes. I use the scopes to keep me in the ballpark and my eyes to fine tune it.

"To do that, put a sRGB to cRGB on the HDV video tracks and leave everything else au-natural. "

I can see that we are talking about very different "qualities" of HDV footage. If everything I got was thoughtfully exposed (as I'm sure yours is), with all the detail I wanted in-gamut, and a candidate for Smart Render, your method of leaving the video untouched and conforming everything else to 16-235 makes perfect sense. In fact, I rent one shooter whose work looks like this (with very few exceptions):



However, as often as not, the footage I get from hired guns (and I suspect Kimberley's too) tends to look more like this. In these cases, it is far more expeditious to compose and edit everything in RGB space, and slap the C-RGB --> S-RGB filter on the output. No muss, no fuss, and the DVD will look as good as it can without getting into the "silk purse" business. As I mentioned early on, I won't hesitate to take either approach depending on what the footage warrants (or merits):

"...it is far more expeditious to compose and edit everything in RGB space, and slap the YUV filter on the output. No muss, no fuss, and the DVD will look as good as it can "

works for me.

Yes my footage definitely looks more like Musicvid's latter shooter than his former!

And I've discovered that (for now) putting the sRGB to cRGB filter on the Video Bus track means than I must again rework the color correction that I just reworked to remove the illegal colors. I'm not complaining, mind you. I have learned a ton in just a day's time. But I might stick it on the HDV track and see if I can take the cheater's way out for now. I owe my husband a DVD for his friend.

What is interesting though is that large blocks of my footage looks like the former shooter. I attribute this to Good Luck. Right now I am reworking some footage of a large green sea turtle. As I followed him around, the Video Scopes range from blocks of legal to illegal. I'm guessing this is due to the ambient light shifting from above and my position relative to the subject, aka Good Luck.

Oh, the test DVD did look a lot better with most of the illegals removed. Now for the rest.

Kim,
If the footage you're working with looks more like my second example, you want to apply C-RGB to S-RGB, not the other way around. You should only put one levels set on your footage, because more than that will (often as not) destroy native bit depth

Does this look familiar, Kimberly?

This is another short HDV clip I frequently use for rendering tests and fine-tuning levels.

It's Ducks : )

Those same ducks still live at the little pond down the hill. They are various Easter ducks that people have dumped plus a few hybrids. Don't even get me started on people to turn their pets loose when they are tired of them.

I will try the cRGB to sRGB filter. My output is typically on a DVD and users will play it in a new flat screen TV but some may still have tube TVs.