WYSIWYG and Digitizing Footage

E

edgaroso

New member
First time post here - here's my problem.

I've been shooting 24PA for the past 4 months. Everything looks great on the flip out LCD. I'm using my old (newly cleaned and serviced) SonyVX1000 to transfer/digitize my footage and the overall look is very different from what I have been seeing on my DVX100B. Is this a common problem?

It seems that my footage looks 1 to 1.5 stops darker when digitizing from my Sony VX1000 - has anyone else run into this phenomena? I'm using FCP 4.5.

I'm not giving all of my settings right now unless anyone out there thinks my set up is the problem. I'm hoping it's simply my SonyVX1000 is "reading" the tape differently from my DVX100B.

Thanks in advance! :)
 
LCD screens are not calibrated. And they're usually set brighter than reality (so you can see things when working).
 
The device you capture from doesn't matter -- it's all the same 1s and 0s. One will not "read" the footage as brighter or darker than any other.
 
GenJerDan said:
LCD screens are not calibrated. And they're usually set brighter than reality (so you can see things when working).
Click to expand...


What he said.

During my first "night" shoot, I lit everything to where it looked good in the lcd, then went and captured it, and to my amazement (and disappointment) all my blacks were beyond crushed, and the footage was too dark.

Luckily I had the actors at my disposal, went for a reshoot, lit the hell out of the place, and footage looked great in post.
 
wysiwyg and the lcd panel

wysiwyg and the lcd panel

ok - got it.

so can i assume that in post we can tweak the image to, at least, match what i saw in the lcd panel during the shoot? or is the lcd image coming directly from the lens and not from the "tape" source?

the truth is my footage is not horrible, in fact it still looks good despite the underexposure - but is this pretty much common knowledge regarding the lcd panel and it being not a true representation or wysiwyg? this is my first time shooting with an lcd panel hence my ignorance.

thanks everyone.
 
You can calibrate the LCD -- not perfectly, but reasonably. That's what the color bars are for.

But the most important thing is to be looking at it straight on.
 
SlymSkater said:
once you have the color bars how do you calibrate?

phil
Click to expand...

It's in the the menu somewhere (I don't remember exactly where, sorry).

I've found that turning all three levels down to about 2 blocks from the bottom brings the LCD pretty close to what my production monitor says is correct. So, if you don't have a monitor to compare it to, try that.
 
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