Kimberly, I share your interest and at least part of your puzzlement on this topic. I've viewed the referenced, archived video from the previous post and I've read Glenn Chan's excellent web pages on color space, and become quite confused. I've also visited the Vegas Help section, and still come up lacking.

Problem is, I don't see anywhere where there's a comprehensive breakdown of the parts of the scope. What do the green horizontal lines represent? Presumably, they're some kind of visual IRE level guidelines, but what about the IRE checkbox at the bottom? If someone sends you a video file, can you use the scopes to check the IRE setup, or does that add an IRE setup to the preview window and/or the rendered video output? How does one tell if a provided video clip is RGB or SRGB? Glenn Chan gives some guidelines for some file types and encoders, but suppose you don't know? Can the scopes tell you this?

These are rhetorical, but represent the questions and confusion that I have on the subject. I'd love to see a webinar that takes an in-depth look at the scopes and allows us to ask realtime questions on some of the parts that make my head hurt.

The green lines are for matching 601 color bars for DV. A bit outdated.

Mike:

Thanks for the link! I saved it as a PDF so I can digest now and later refer back to it.

Kimberly, I'm glad I could help.
Glenn Chan has a few articles on his site at http://www.glennchan.info/articles/articles.html dealing with scopes that may be of some help.
I know he's talked about the Vegas scopes and their quirks on here in the past so do a search on his name (Vegas username GlennChan) and see what you can come up with .
For example, http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=750281 can be rather technical :)

Mike

Problem is, I don't see anywhere where there's a comprehensive breakdown of the parts of the scope. What do the green horizontal lines represent?
Tektronix has some information on scopes on their website:
http://www.tek.com/Measurement/App_Notes/NTSC_Video_Msmt/vectorscope.html

However, that information applies to their hardware scopes. Vegas' scopes aren't hardware scopes (therefore there are some things it cannot do), and the design of Vegas' scopes sometimes doesn't make sense (e.g. there is no marking for 7.5 IRE if you check that checkbox in the settings).

Some things to note:
1- What's displayed on Vegas' waveform monitor and vectorscope depends on the settings.
2- They usually/sometimes aren't helpful in figuring out if your levels are correct or not.

Presumably, they're some kind of visual IRE level guidelines, but what about the IRE checkbox at the bottom? If someone sends you a video file, can you use the scopes to check the IRE setup, or does that add an IRE setup to the preview window and/or the rendered video output?
The scopes show what the analog signal would be if your digital signal was converted to analog. Because Vegas does not know what your digital -> analog converter is doing, you have to tell it what it does via the settings.*

*(This can be problematic for people who live in NTSC countries with 7.5 IRE setup because there are a lot of non-standard digital -> analog converters out there (the majority are non-standard...). So if you need to make analog masters, get a set of hardware scopes. Vegas' scopes are no substitute for hardware scopes in that situation. If you're making digital masters then this doesn't affect you... you just need to make a digital master with correct digital levels. )

2- Digital video files have no "setup" / it makes no sense to talk about digital files having setup or not. There is only one set of correct levels for digital files. Setup only matters when you convert from digital -> analog.


How does one tell if a provided video clip is RGB or SRGB? Glenn Chan gives some guidelines for some file types and encoders, but suppose you don't know? Can the scopes tell you this?
One way to find out is...
Crop out the edges of the video source, make it fill the whole frame. This is because the edges may contain illegal blacks... you want to ignore them. Get rid of black edges in the video preview window by making the video fill the frame.
Look at the histogram (the settings for the scopes don't affect what they show).
The histogram will show you the range of values in that particular video source.

If this is what my vectorscope looks like, according to the article, I should increase the saturation of just the reds, so that the dots extend into the R zone, correct? And if so, how do I do that? He mentions the secondary color corrector, but no instruction on how to use it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l46ppmhg618g1v3/vectorscope.PNG

sorry I can't figure out how to make the image appear with the img tag on here

Have you tried the "Color Balance" plugin? Also keep in mind that just because a color isn't shown at it's max saturation doesn't mean it has to be corrected; it is an indication how much more you could increase it. In the end, the image should look natural.