Are you interested in viewing scopes in Final Cut Pro?
Of course you are. Let me show you how.
Video scopes are essential for color balancing and correction.
To view them, navigate to the top right of the viewer, click on "view," and choose "video scopes."
Or use the shortcut "Command+7."
And we'll open it in the viewer.
First, we'll show you how to read this graph.
On the y-axis, we have values going from -20 to 120.
This is the luma measured in IRE units.
It represents the percentage of light to dark in our image.
So 100 IRE would be 100 brightness or pure white.
And 0 IRE would be 0 brightness or pure black.
Ideally, we'd want to keep our values between 0 and 100.
Any values above 100 will cause the light values to be blown out.
And values below 0 will crush the black values.
Also, a higher contrast image will have a wider range of values, whereas a low contrast clip will have a smaller range.
Generally clips with higher contrast are great for action flicks or moody scenes.
From left to right, each graph lines up with the image in the viewer.
So if we change the graph to "RGB overlay" and compare it to our viewer, we can see that the bright values in the middle represent the light glinting off the actress in the clip.
Now let's go through how to read each view one by one.
Brace yourself because we have a lot to go over.
First, "RGB parade" shows three side-by-side waveform displays for red, green, and blue components...
...so we can use it while color balancing our image.
In certain clips, it may be good to keep all the colors as even as possible, but sometimes you want one color to be more dominant.
In this clip, if we increase the yellow hue, it will make the clip feel more warm and inviting.
To change our display, we'll locate this icon, which looks like a miniature graph.
"RGB overlay" will combine the waveforms for red, green, and blue in one display.
It's essentially RGB parade, but combined into one graph.
We can also view just red, green, or blue channels of the clip.
"Luma" displays the amount of light in the video...
...which helps when balancing the light and dark values.
"Chroma" is the actual color values of the clip from left to right.
We'll apply a change to the overall hue of the clip to show how the chroma graph changes.
"YCBCR parade" shows us the native color values for our clip.
Essentially, Y, CB, and CR are the values by which virtually all videos are stored and transmitted, saving more space than RGB values.
Y represents luma.
And the color values are shown as CB, which is blue minus luma, and CR, or red minus luma.
CB and CR store all the color information, while Y stores the light information.
In case you want to adjust the units, you can switch to millivolts or nits instead.
We'll keep it as IRE because it's easy to read.
Mental break for you so you can catchup with us. ~
Please rewind and watch again if you need to. ~
Next, we'll show you the vector scope display.
The vector scope shows the distribution of our color in an image circularly as red, magenta, blue, cyan, green, and yellow.
The colors in our clip are represented by the waveforms in the center.
And the closer the color is to the outside of the ring, the more saturated it is.
With vector scope activated, we can see the different options in the menu.
We can choose to display the vector scope at 100% scale, or zoom in to 133% scale.
Generally, it's more practical to keep it at 100.
"Vector" shows a normal orientation with red near the top.
And mark 3 rotates the graph 90 degrees.
There's no other difference, so choose whichever works best for you.
We'll keep it as vector.
And "show or hide skin tone" indicator shows or hides the diagonal line that represents the ideal human skin tone between yellow and red.
This is useful when color correcting clips with people in the scene.
To show a practical application. we'll mask out some skin.
Then, we'll see how close the skin value is to the line on the vector scope.
Using hue and saturation curves, we'll adjust the value of the skin to get closer to that line.
Pay close attention to the values in the vector scope.
Once finished we'll remove the mask.
Then we'll zoom back out.
Here's the before and after.
I just blew my own mind.
Finally, let's check out the histogram displays.
We'll start with "luma."
The luma percentage is now on the x-axis...
...and we can see how many pixels are present at each luma value.
Watch what happens when we select the clip, open the color inspector, and adjust the luma.
A high contrast image shows a more even distribution of values across the graph...
...whereas a low contrast image will cluster the values closer to the center.
We can also view our histogram in RGB overlay...
...RGB parade...
...or the individual color channels.
These views provide a great way to check the amounts of color in your image.
Watch how they change as we adjust the colors in the clip.
And we're not done yet - one more thing.
Finally, we'll show you how to adjust the view of your video scopes to suit your workflow.
Click on the view pop-up menu above the video scopes display.
To choose the video scopes layout, click one of these 12 layout icons representing the view.
And we can choose a 2-up display...
...or divide it up in multiple other ways.
To move the scopes from left to bottom, we can check vertical layout.
The view menu will be down here.
Uncheck vertical layout to return to normal.
"Show guidelines" displays quantitative data and guidelines.
We can check that on or off as needed.
We also have the option to view our graphs in monochrome instead of color.
Let's see how that looks on RGB parade.
To switch back to normal, simply check it off.
And if we want to adjust the brightness level of the video scopes, we can drag this brightness slider at the bottom of the menu.
Hopefully we've demystified the video scopes.
If you have any questions, ask us in the comments section below.
There's our little introduction to video scopes and Final Cut Pro. We hope you enjoyed it!
Don't forget to check out Pixel Film Studios, where you can find Final Cut Pro plugins designed for beginners and professionals alike to take your projects to the next level.
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