Video Colour

[Jivemaster]

Just back from sitting in the park listening to the RPO with soloists. Three bigish screens doing live vid and graphics.

 

Is it really hard to get the colour right?

 

Soprano soloist is a caucasian colouring but looks latino on the screens, the dress she wears is about navy blue but on screen it is bright sky blue.

 

This is the fourth night of this concert series!

[broadcast_techie]

Depends on the set up used, but essentially yes it is difficult to get colour right on video.

 

In the controlled conditions of a studio it can take an awful long time to line up cameras, (all usually the same make) and usually an hour is allowed for this...

 

If the gig is being done slightly on the cheap, mixing camera brands, not using cameras that can be remotely racked (controlled) then you are often at the mercy of either the operator, or the camera's auto settings...

 

Monitors - no two monitors are ever the same, people fiddle with settings so it looks nice, but may not reflect the true image...

 

The final LED screens at a guess can all be slightly out (although recent gig with a lighthouse screen didn't need any adjustments (as far as I know)).

 

By your brief description it sounds like the saturation was a little high... (will think of something to add to that soon...)

 

Cameras are not as forgiving as our eyes, and where as lighting designers/ops work to something looking good to the eye, this can often look awful on screen... (would a little white light now and then really kill you moody red wash?)

 

Kris

[James]

yeah but no but yea but no...

 

With infinite time and infinite resources anything is possible.

 

I work in television post production where we are experienced in correcting mistakes (including colour) with video acquisition. However we have time and that doesn't address the possibility of problems being introduced at the broadcast stage.

 

Without knowing what was going on with the setup there at the concert you mention I can only speculate.

 

How many cameras?

Were all the cameras consistently out?

How many screens?

Were all the screens consistently out?

 

Without a few bits of test equipment and the ability to see the fault in situ. I can't think how anyone who wasn't there could tell you what went wrong - if indeed anything did go wrong and the hue shift wasn't intentionally introduced by the director.

 

Anyway, Did it distract that much from your enjoyment of listening to the musicians?

[Johnparrack]

also sounds like a lot of 56K lighting using...nodding buckets etc, sometimes accentuates the blues a bit. Guessing the rig would have been balanced to pretty much daylight, unless an evening gig, then ,may have been balanced for 32K and then adjusted for the blue which the nodding buckets would add to it.

 

The screens also would have had an independent colour balance set up, which may have differed from the Camera system. If these were balanced on the warm side, and then the Racks Engineer also balanced his system on the warm side then u'd get something looking heavily overchromered.

 

I work as a racks engineer in corporate and Broadcast, and also work in projection so can understand both ends of the equation.. When I'm racking a corporate gig, I leave my balance until the Screens have been "grey Scaled" then I'll balance my rig and take a look.

[Peter F]

Is it really hard to get the colour right?

 

In a word, yes.

 

In addition to the problems outlined by the folk above me, the sun goes down during the show changing just about everything you're working with.

 

Peter

[Johnparrack]

yup, as daylight goes and darkness sets in, the lighting rig colour dominance takes over....not usually too bad to handle though..most racks are able to store a number of settings or "scenes" to cope with the balance change. Some systems like thomson can even track the changes as they happen.