why color bars on tape?

D

dhffhd

Active member
Another in a line of stupid question. I've read somewhere on here that you should shoot a few seconds of color bars at the beginning of each tape for whomever edits the tape. What are the color bars for and what does the editor do with them (since I'm gonna be the one that has to do it!)

thanks
 
Re: why color bars on tape?

If you calibrate your monitor to the colour bars, you'll see the video as it should be, according to the broadcast standards. This is needed in particular when colour-correcting, or affecting the image in any way.
 
Re: why color bars on tape?

This was just discussed in length here in the last couple of weeks, so search the forum. Short answer: it's a holdover from the analog days and really doesn't ahve all that much relevance in the DV era.
 
Re: why color bars on tape?

ok one last stupid color bars question, if you get the bars on tape once, do you ever need to do it again?

can't you just save the bars forever unless you make some massive change to your camera?

would modifying the scene files change the bars?

matthew
 
Re: why color bars on tape?

Nothing changes in the bars, which is why they're kind of superfluous in a digital recording format. The color bar generator is great for generating a signal to calibrate a monitor to, but there's not much point in recording them to DV tape as a reference to how the camera is recording.

You would put bars on tape for something you're sending out to someone else though, so they can make sure their monitor is calibrated.
 
Re: why color bars on tape?

And for something targeted at broadcast. Most networks will require bars at the head of their tape for pre broadcast setup.

I worked at a major cable network doing broadcast evaluations and any vendor tape that came in without bars was an automatic failure and was sent back to the vendors for corrections.

A tape without bars can't be reliably corrected before broadcast.
 
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