Hi,

Many thanks for your response. I use full HD footage from my Canon 600D DSLR and I was indeed aware of the Computer RGB->Studio RGB trick.

I would however be using the RGB Parade with the Levels in order to ensure my dynamic range is expanded across the whole spectrum without burning highlight and shadow detail as shown in this tutorial:

http://player.vimeo.com/video/24334195

There are many good points and techniques in that tutorial, however setting the threshold levels to [0,255] is entirely incorrect unless one will be rendering to an RGB codec or WMV, which is actually not that common these days. The fact that the author of that tutorial is importing (and presumably rendering) AVI suggests that he may have overlooked that simple fact.

Most of what we shoot and render these days is YUV/YV12 (or Y'CbCr), which demands 16-235 output levels to play back properly on the vast majority of players and devices in use. Also, when stacking filters, one must take the added precaution of not negating the effects of one filter with another, which can lower the effective bit depth at the output.

In addition, using the RGB Parade as one's only visual tool is not adequate, since it does not show Luminance, and individual chroma can stray outside 16-235, without taking luminance outside the "legal" REC 601/709 range. I personally prefer the Histogram, since it shows Luminance in addition to chroma range. If one tried to keep all three chroma levels inside 16-235, the results would often be quite muddy and flat, unless the distribution was nearly equal.

One of Vegas' main quirks is that the primary video preview always displays RGB range, regardless of the source or output codecs to be used. This means that the output will be clipped if we adjust the RGB Parade or Histogram to [0,255] and then render to YUV, which includes .mpg and .mp4, as well as several others. Saying it another way, the Vegas primary preview will always look flat compared to the output in all these cases.

To answer your original question, no, I know of now plugin for Movie Studio that will give you the same scope functions that are found in the Pro version.

Welcome to the forums, and you will find much provocative discussion on the Vegas Pro forums, such as here:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=754100

So I guess it's best to do all my video editing as normal and just before exporting put a Levels filter on the whole video track with the Computer RGB to Studio RGB setting before rendering.

The past 48 hours have been very intense for me getting my head around level adjustments and color correction.

I guess from now on I'll be doing the following:

- Most important thing is using Magic Lantern's histograms & zebras to make sure that I'm shooting best I can for correct Exposure and White Balance on my 600D.
- I've set my Zebras to warn when lows hit less than 18 and highs more than 235.
- In Vegas, use my eyes to get best spread of dynamic range (lows to highs) without loosing detail in both. This is where a histogram would really really come in handy but I guess you can't have everything...

musicvd, while I thank you so much for your advice so far, could you explain the difference between Luminance and Individual Chroma? I thought RGB was everything... :)
There's a setting on my Magic Lantern histogram to display "Luma" instead of "RGB" data. Would Luma be Luminance? Because in the manual they say Luma displays values for Y channel (I'm guessing Yellow?)

Many thanks!

Luma and Relative Luminance are different in that luminance is a factored composite of RGB levels (so-called "brightness" of a scene), while luma is gamma weighted. There is a fairly good explanation on Wiki, and a better one on Glenn Chan's site. Y stands for luminance, and Y' stands for luma, although the terms are often confused.

But the Vegas scopes stick with relative luminance, although not with 100% accuracy, I have been led to believe. Notice how the individual colors can go out of range while luminance is still well within 16-235. In this example the hypersaturated reds are clipped at the high end, while the blues drop off the other end. If we compressed the luminance range any more, the color would look muddy and flat. See why I like the histogram better than the parade?



Also, I wouldn't get "too" compulsive with shooting levels as long as everything you want to keep is inside 0-255 and not clipped. Definitely let specular highlights (the glint of reflected sunlight) go out of range on the zebras. You can play a little loose at the other end too. Ansel Adams is some excellent reading to get you "zoned" for highlight and shadow detail. My POV is that it's better to compress a fuller tonal range in post than expand a flat range, because you have more information (bit depth) to work with.

If you are going to apply the stock Studio RGB filter at render time, definitely shoot full range ~0-255, otherwise your video will play flat.
Oh, the best teacher is shoot, shoot, and shoot!