Zebras in camera are NOT accurate. Are they???

ripupthehwy

ripupthehwy

Well-known member
I have started a conversation on Edius' forum (or opened a can of worms) but It brought me to pose the question here.

(post: http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13447 )

I've always said if you shoot any consumer DV camera in auto iris mode outdoors then EVERYTHING will be overexposed. They don't accurately interpret video levels.

Now I wonder about the HVX (and other cameras) and if their Zebra indicators are accurate.

It seems everything that I shoot and then bring into my NLE is brighter. It reads about 10-15% higher video levels.

On a recent shoot I had an camera assistant with a high end HD monitor and waveform monitor. All footage was kept around 90% video levels. However when I imported the P2 footage (via usb cable) into my NLE it was all much hotter.

The test in the above mentioned forum also indicated that footage was brighter once in the NLE than as indicated using the in-camer zebras.

Any thoughts?

The solution I've found is to always shoot footage about 10% lower than what I really want. Or just eye it on a good monitor and iris to taste.
 
Hmm, I've calibrated the entire chain (as well as you can with LCD screens) and I can say without question that the signal level from the HPX171 is maintained.

I use the waveform and have output realitime from the 171 to Edius and compared waveforms when filming a 60% level green screen and both waveforms were the same.

Edius is one NLE that doesn't mess with the levels.

I have not tried our HVX, but I don't have reason to believe it would be different and 4 years of useage going in and out of Edius would have showed up.

Why don't you film a grey card at 80% of zebra levels, input this into Edius (DV) realtime through DV and put the waveform monitor on and see what it shows?
 
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