As far as I understand V4, Scopes are added as a Viewing-Tool, to an event that is already on the T/L. Where in the capture menus could such a Viewing-Tool be accessed? I don't see an option. I could be wrong, but I think I've crawled all over VidCap - However, I've been wrong many times before, and am willing to learn. I know we can "Review" tapes and do a batch capture selection. But I haven't seen what you request.

On another tack, David, why would you want to do this? If the footage is "outside" the parameters, you then need to edit it "out" OR correct. So you'd need to have it on the T/L. If it is inside, then no problem. If it is an excercise in ensuring your footage is up to scratch, prior to taking up time and HD space, then I can understand. You may need to be looking at some other high-end kit and software to attach to your camera/s. But maybe you, and others, have other demands that need to be meet. Interesting question - at the very least it maybe a wish-list item email to SoFo developers - I look forward to reading the repsonses,

Regards,

Grazie

I'm only guessing, but if DV capture is just an information transfer, it may be hard for software to analyse what it contains until it's "wrapped" into an avi file.

If you really want to see a scope as it's playing, I guess you'd need a hardware scope, connected to the analogue video out of your camera/ player.

Thanks Peter. Your observation about the data needing to be "wrapped" in an AVI prior to Scope work, would put it outside the "scope" of V4. Hence my comment about a wish-list to SoFo would be both non-sensicle and irrelevant.

Yup got it! How many years you been doing this stuff? Woah, lot more to learn.

Grazie

> "How many years you been doing this stuff?"

not all of these are true ...

1.Since a couple of years before it was invented.
2. Not nearly long enough. There will always be more to learn .....
3. 10 years as a business, VHS hobby before that, Super 8 cine before that,
... ooh, almost forgot - merciless sweep across europe before that
regards,
Attila

HAH! Attila . . that's a "keeper"! I'm gonna use it in the future too.

Grazie

This would be a very useful feature and I have heard that vother apps may already have it available. I need to check FCP.

Let's say that that you render some smpte bars in Vegas to a DVD. Now you'd like to check if the render worked out either a) to see if the right pluge bar problem not being 11.5 IRE in Vegas has been fixed yet (which I don't think it has) or b) to check if your own DVD player is anywhere near putting out a proper NTSC signal.

Right now you have to recapture. If we had real time scopes, we'd be able to tell straight away and not have to take the DVDs to work to test them on Waveform monitors.

That's why...

Al

I understand. But the original question was about at the time of Capture. What you are suggesting is for a method of "checking", having got the DV into the pc and presumably edited. Interesting point you make.

I don't have V4DVDA - just V4 - are you thinking of SoFo getting the Scopes at the point of PC to DVD burner? As the "stuff" is inside the pc? This might be a possibility for the SoFo techs to explore - maybe THIS is the email to send to SoFo wish-list? What do you think? - You can only ask . . .?

Grazie

Yipes!
I think an aweful lot's been overlooked here.

1) VV4 has no scopes on capture, this was discussed quite some time ago. AS others have said I really cannot see much advantage to it and I can see a lot of down side to it. There's a lot of souls out there trying to capture using PCs that barely make the grade. Getting VV to decode the data stream and render out a set of scopes is really going to help the process.

Having said that most capture using firewire, even if somethings out of whack what are you going to do anyway? If you've got a component capture rig with the ability to tweak on the fly you're probably not even using VV, even though you should.

2) Then there was the comment about playing a DVD made with DVDA in a player with a scope on the output to check it was all legal. What are we checking here? What output from the DVD player are we looking at? Is the DVD player calibrated?

And even after all that if somethings wrong where did it go wrong? When it was converted to mpeg? I just breath a sigh of relief that the bloody things plays full stop!

This all sounds like a lot of worry over nothing. If your worried about footage looking OK when it goes to air most stations have a magic box called a legaliser, does much the same as the filter in VV. Most commercial stations don't seem to give a damn about it, our national broadcaster does and I have it on good advice that a large part of the footage they get isn't legal. Why is that, well graphic artists in particular like to push the envelope and the clients probably like the hot look of it. Unless you're watching it on analogue TV it looks fine anyway. For anywhere its a drama it can be easily fixed. And as far as I know the legal color space is different in NTSC and PAL.

And just to confuse you even more all of this is irrelevant if your watching your DVD on a PC or a TV with component feed from the player.

Sorry to nag, I just read through most of this and my engineering brain kicked in.

So try to enjoy what you do, when I started out with VV I got all neurotic about this sort of stuff and my friends who have many years in television just said, don't worry, if its got colour and it moves its television.

You can monitor the actual capture, or capture during recording, with the capture feature. If the video scopes worked in real time, then you could use them to set the camera up. The waveform would be much better than guessing. And vector scope would tell you if your white balance was off. In cameras with color saturation and phase adjustments (GL2, DVC80, DVX100, XL1s) you could also make adjustments there.

A cheapest hardware waveform analyzer at B&H is $1700, cheapest vector scope $2100, and combined unit $2900 without a screen and $3900 with. This would give us these tools if we took our laptops along.

During capture, a video scope would assist in preparing batch capture lists. You could see the quality of the image graphically, possibly discarding images that will be too much work in post or have too many artifacts.

David

David,
good idea and i think thats been mentioned before, sorry about my rave before, I hadn't thought of that and I should have as I read a post about it months ago.

Your still going to need a way to get the video from the camera into the laptop and that must introduce another factor but I guess with experience you could make allowance for anything a bit off happening there.

I'm not that much into high end cameras with all the fine adjustments but from what I know doesn't proper use of white balance and zebra take care of most of that?

Wouldn't a decent monitor be a be a better tool, not that they are cheap either!

BTW where i work sometimes, we have a neat but hardly used box called a Hamlet, it'll insert scopes into a video feed, saves the cost of the built in monitors in normal scopes.

The point of being able to check incoming video is that if you can be certain that your source is legal and that your render in Vegas is legal and that your DVD is legal and that your monitor is legal, then when you have a part that isn't working properly you have a better chance to find out where that problem is than if you really don't have a clue.

Here's an example:

People have mentioned previously that their DVDs appear too dark. If you could render smpte bars and know that you could accurately set up your monitor with them because you knew that your DVD was sending out a correct level of signal and the Vegas right pluge bar was at 11.5 IRE which I don't think it is, then you could make a test DVD as David alluded to that could save you several thousand dollars of test equipment and you might find that your player wasn't putting out a signal with the correct black level. This is very obvious with a waveform monitor.

I've played the Vegas smpte bars and apart from the pluge bar thing, they are very very good. I have a problem with one of my monitors and I hope to use the test disc to sort it out but if I didn't have access to a waveform monitor at work to check that the disc is correct or close to it , then I would be jolly glad if Vegas could show real time scopes.

Sorry to drone on but I wish that people who don't think that something is important wouldn't infer that those who do are worrying about nothing.

I don't mean to be critical so if I am then I apologise..

Regards...

Al

It would be totally POINTLESS to view incoming capture to monitor levels, hue or anything else for that matter since there isn't a damn thing you can do about it until it is on the timeline. The time to make corrections is after you drop the captured material on the timeline. All the BS about if or not the source video is off, your monitor isn't legal, blah, blah, blah, is meaningless UNTIL to make any corrections. End of story.

BillyBoy

Sometimes you talk a load of drivel. If the incoming video is far enough off, you can't make corrections and if it's right and you know it then you hopefully don't have to make corrections.

Still, since you said "End of story", I 'll start looking for another job since you obviously know better than I in all things video.

Have a nice day...

Al

Billy Boy,

You capture all your video to disc? I create capture lists and run in batch. I have multiple takes, stuff I know is junk, stuff that is junk but I don't know it yet.

There is something you can do...leave it on the tape. You can also use it within a clip to set start/end capture points.

The way to look at color is with scopes. During recording, capture, and editing.

David

Some people have no sense of humor...

I can make adjustments/corrections WITHOUT any expensive lab equipment some haven't even dreamed of and couldn't do with a room full of equipment even if they knew how to use it properly. I do try to share how. Sometimes I wonder why I bother sharing what I've learned.

As I said there is nothing to be gained seeing a capture in progress so one could "adjust" while the capture was in progress. Why? Because you can't do anything to it. If you think color/level correction starts and ends with color bars you've got a awful lot to learn. You're welcome.

BB - "Sometimes I wonder why I bother sharing what I've learned" - . . . and then you do! Keep it up Pal!

Regards - Grazie

I read all the posts. Interesting. I will check the operator panel of our DSR 2000 studio machine to see if there are any proc amp (level, black, hue, colour intensity, etc.) that are adjustable on output. Component Betacam's hue cannot be changed from the machine (because it is component). I guess I have to agree with BillyBoy vis-a-vis the worth of monitoring IRE levels and a vector sope while capturing. Now, if you are switching between multiple cameras and Beta or DVCAM decks for live production THEN your technical Director NEVER takes his/her eyes off the scopes, thus ensuring levels and colour are good when that source is taken. Heck, we've had AVIDs since early '96 and no operator has ever asked me to stick a wavefrom or vectorscope upstream of the AVID input. haha, let the flames fly where they will.


Peter

I think that David and others have the right to start threads or make postings without their comments being described as pointless. His comments in this thread make sense to me. I'm sorry, I've only worked in A/V for 23 years. I'm not advocating that we put waveform monitors and vectorscopes everywhere in the signal chain and run them all the time but when I troubleshoot, I work from the source down the line. If I captured something that appeared to be, for example, of very low video level, I think it would be good to be able to see if the level of the source was correct, rather than to just "correct" it in Vegas. The scopes could then be removed and returned to their customary positions. I might want to correct a problem prior to capture similar to the "leave it on tape" scenario that David mentioned.

There are many people who don't post because they don't want to come in for the type of criticism that David has in this thread.

That's all.

Regards...

Al

Oh please... Jumbo. If anyone has be critized in this forum is has been me for speaking my mind from time to time. In all the years I've been on the Internet and before that newsgroups and before that bulletin boards, I'm still amazed at how a relatively small handful of posters are overly sensitive to what someone else says and see it as a personal attack or something. Simple rule, if peple have such a thin skin they shouldn't participate in forums and newsgroups.

What I said has nothing to do with anyone starting a thread, rather if someone posts something so outrageous it invites comment from more experienced users.

Your 23 years of A/V experince is noted. That doesn't give you a license to scold me anymore than you think I was scolding somebody else. What I posted is called humor. Anyone that's read more than a few of my posts knows I like to tease. If you can't handle it, don't read my posts.

My comments about the scopes while meant as humor also has merit because as I said, there is NO WAY to do anything about the incoming steam during the capture. So seeing such a scope at that time serves no practical purpose in the context it was suggested it could be implemented in Vegas.

While I appreciate the comments of those in the broadcast TV industry and how doing certain things relates to them, one must also keep in mind the RELEVANCE to how it can/does impact on editing with Vegas which is after all what that forum is suppose to be about.

Monitoring a broadcast signal before it goes on air has nothing in common with monitoring a source file coming into Vegas prior to working on it. Period. The reason why I already stated, but I'll repeat...you couldn't do a damn thing about it so aside from seeing a 'bad' signal what would be the point?

If as you claim there are people that don't post here because they can't handle objective criticism, then perhaps we're better off without them participating.

Look at it this way. Anybody can post whatever they want. Just be prepaired to DEFEND what you say if you claim is off the wall, not factual or just plain silly. If you can't or won't than what I said at the beginning applies. People that are too thin-skinned make poor forum posters.

That's all.

To BillyBoy, Jumbo, & all posters: Don't anybody worry about the occasional flare of tempers. When the experimenter and the experienced clash, everyone benefits in the long run. I didn't know s--- about video, editing or anything else when I got involved in all this 7 years ago, and now I know a heck of a lot of unconnected trivia! But seriously though, I rely very heavily on the wit and wisdom of the SoFo Forum, long may it last. Vegas 4+DVD, a Panasonic DVX100 camera, a background in writing and an actess wife have opened the door to filmmaking for our little company--I mean REAL filmmaking. We will have a feature film completed in early 2004 using these tools (and this forum) and I can't thank everybody enough. Robust discussion is the crucible of progress. (That's what I always say just before my wife throws a dish at me.)

DECAF FOR EVERYONE!

Billy Boy,

I think still missing the point. The cameras have a lot of adjustments. Enabling the vectorscope and waveform in capture (which can be live camera operation in standby mode) would be useful in setting up the camera.

Viewing it while setting up capture lists (you never answered my earlier question, you do use capture lists, don't you?) would help eliminate unsalvageable video and maybe include something that looks bad but can be corrected.

When I asked the question I wasn't sure the feature wasn't already there.

David

David

It's on Final Cut Pro, so will probably be added to Vegas in the future.

Al