Color Bars At Head
 

I was wondering what would be the problems that I would run into by not recording color bars at the head of my tapes? If that reference is not there, along with some tone, what are my options? I'm guessing It will just simply provide me with having to do a little extra tweaking in post.

Well, I've had this posted for several days now and I really wonder why no one knows why one is suppose to record color bars at the head of each tape?
I have a slight idea as to having some reference for editing of image and sound. I guess if 48 people don't have any comment it's not that important. Thanks for looking anyway.

Hi Jim,

Sorry, I didn't see the post until today.

As you mentioned, the importance of having color bars and tone at the beginning of your tape is for sound and color correction purposes if you are handing your tape to a 3rd party. For example, if you are sending your stuff to a broadcast facility, the color bars will allow the folks in Master Control to tweak their settings according to what you had in your camera so it looks right. Sometimes they will not accept it if the colors and the blacks and the whites are off. Same with the audio...it allows the folks in the audio booth to set their controls to your camera. This is the same with 3rd party editors. It lets them know what your camera was set to.

So to answer your question, it's always a good idea to have color bars and tone. Even if it's just you editing, it gives you a reference to set your monitor's colors to and your audio as well. If you don't do it, it's not the end of the world, though...but it's industry standard.

Jonathan

Colour bars
 

Color bars are an interesting subject, pity i know nothing about them. Where can I find out how to use them? We bought a DVD cleaner for our deck and it even had a option to view color bars to help adjust your TV but no instructions. Am I just from another planet? Any help would just color my world.

Colour bars are also the industry standard method of calibrating a monochrome CRT viewfinder.

Appearing as a grey scale you use the brightness and contrast pots to set the viewfinder, basically the white bar on the left should be bright white and the black bar right should be as dark as the ace of spades with each bar inbetween being discernible and different form the one's either side of it.

As for colour bars/tone on vt, yes as explained it's to help broadcasters, 3rd party editors calibrate their VT machines, set their video levels etc. Often in conjunction with an oscilloscope or appropriate test room gear.

Search is your friend. Google "video monitor calibration" and you should have more than enough info. Or, if you have Final Cut Pro, there's a section in the User's Manual.

Jonathan

Thanks a bunch guys. This is just the info I was needing.