2009

Make Sure You Have the Right Setup for Color Correction
If you plan to do your own color correction, it’s important to make sure that you have
the right room and equipment for the job. Remember that you will be the last word in
how the picture looks, and the audience is going to see exactly what you render. When
deciding how to equip your room, keep the following essentials in mind.
• A color-critical monitor: Because every adjustment you make is based on your
impressions of the image on your broadcast monitor, it’s important that, at the very
least, you have a monitor with the following capabilities: an accurate color gamut,
appropriately deep blacks and a wide contrast range (so black doesn’t look like gray),
user-selectable color temperature (typically 6500 K or 9300 K, depending on your
region), adherence to Rec. 601 and Rec. 709 standards as necessary, and controls that
are appropriate for regular calibration to keep your monitor standards-compliant.
• A compatible graphics card and video interface: Color uses the graphics processing unit
(GPU) of your graphics card to do its processing, so you need to make sure that your
graphics card meets the Color requirements. For monitoring in either Final Cut Pro or
Color, you also need a video capture card or broadcast video interface that’s compatible
with Color and that can output a signal that’s appropriate for critical monitoring.
Appropriate interfaces include Y′P
B
P
R
, SDI, HD-SDI, and HDMI.
• Hardware scopes for quality control: The video scopes that Final Cut Pro and Color
provide are excellent for creative decision-making and basic quality control. However,
if you regularly submit video masters for terrestrial and satellite broadcast or cable
distribution, it’s also important to analyze the actual signal coming out of your video
interface and being recorded to tape, as there can be excursions in the output signal
that aren’t apparent from an analysis of the internally processed signal within your
computer. If intensive quality control is part of your business, a hardware scope can
also provide other types of signal analysis that are beneficial.
• A room that is properly set up for monitoring: Lastly, it’s important that the room you
use for color correcting be properly set up for unbiased viewing of the image on your
monitor. The wrong room can make it difficult to judge an image even if it’s displayed
on a great monitor. No direct light should spill on the front of your monitor. Ambient
room lighting should be subdued and indirect and should match the color temperature
of your monitor. The viewing area behind your monitor should be a neutral gray and
should be illuminated to be no more than 10 to 20 percent of the brightness of the
monitor displaying pure white.
84 Chapter 5 Finishing