Using Blackmagic UltraScope
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Histogram Display
Histogram Display is most familiar to graphic designers and camera operators. Histogram Display
shows the distribution of white to black information and lets you monitor how close the detail is to
being clipped off in the whites or blacks of the video. Histogram Display also lets you see the effects of
gamma changes in the video.
Black video is shown on the left of the display, and whites are shown on the right. All video should usually
be found between the 0% and 100% intervals of the Histogram Display. Your video is being clipped if it
moves below 0% or above 100%. Video clipping can be really bad, when you’re on a shoot, as detail in the
blacks and whites must be preserved if you subsequently want to perform color-correction in a controlled
environment. When shooting, keep the video above the black clip, and below the white clip, so you can
have more freedom later to adjust colors without whites and blacks appearing flat and lacking in detail.
When color-correcting, you might decide to clip your video, and in which case Histogram Display will
show the effect of clipping the video, and how much it is being clipped. You can even use gamma to
create a similar look, with less clipping, while retaining more detail.
You cannot really use Histogram Display to check for illegal levels although you can use it to see illegal
blacks and whites. Histogram Display does not show colors and so the histogram might appear to show
legal levels, even though your video may contain illegal colors. Again, RGB Parade Display provides the
best way to watch out for illegal levels as it shows them in both the color and luminance elements of
the video signal.
The HIGH and LOW buttons simply control how bright the histogram appears on your computer display.
If you find the white area of the histogram is too bright in a dark studio, choose LOW for a more
comfortable brightness level.
Histogram Display
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