Hey guys and welcome to another HitFilm tutorial.
This week we've got Mike Miller back again - you may know him as Triem23 from the forums
to tell you about a highly requested feature that we added to HitFilm Pro 2017.
Scopes!
And understanding them.
Over to Mike!
Hey, everybody, Mike Miller here, with a useful Hitfilm tutorial!
I’m sick as a dog, so, after this tutorial, you’ll probably want to use hand sanitizer.
Today’s tutorial is about scopes--one of the new features in Hitfilm Pro 2017--what
are scopes, and why do we use them?
Scopes are tools to visualize the color levels in your video, and the reason why is use them
is that your monitor is probably incapable of displaying accurate color.
Broadcast monitors used by professional colorists can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars,
and must be calibrated on a regular basis to maintain accurate color.
There are several types of color spaces used to define color in video.
The only three we need to worry about are Rec 601, Rec 709 and Rec 2020.
Rec 601 is used in standard definition broadcasting, Rec 709 is used in high definition broadcasting,
and Rec 202 is used in 4k broadcasting.
So let’s jump over into Hitfilm Pro 2017 and take a look at the scopes.
So, here we are in Hitfilm Pro 2017, and you can see on the right side of the screen I
have the “Scopes Panel” open.
If you can’t see the scopes panel, you’ll want to come over here to the “Workspaces”
menu, open that, and make certain the Scopes panel is selected.
The scopes panel can be configured to display one, two, three, or all four of the scope
types.
Right now I’m only going to be looking at the Parade and Vectorscope.
Scopes can be added as an effect to any layer by coming over to the effects panel and searching
for “scopes.”
The difference between the scopes panel and adding scopes, inline, as an effect is that
the scopes panel always shows the final output after the entire layer stack has been processed,
where adding a scopes effects shows the media at the point at which the scope has been inserted.
Other advantages of using the scopes as an effect are that the scopes can be rendered
to your final video, the scopes can be limited to read only certain areas of the frame, and
since the scopes effect can be figured to show only the scopes themselves, this allows
you to use the scopes as a graphic element for motion graphics.
There are four types of scopes in Hitfilm Pro 2017.
The first is the histogram, and, if you’ve used the “Levels Histogram” effect, then
you may already be somewhat familiar with it.
A histogram shows a general distribution of tones in a channel from left to right.
The left side represents “0,” for the channel, and the right side represents “full
value,” for the channel.
This is an HD color bar setup would be used by a colorist to calibrate, and, over here
on the histogram we can see a big spike of black representing these areas down here,
and a few smaller spikes of white, representing this square, and various other peaks representing
the luma values of each of the color bars.
If we open up the controls for the histogram effect we can see that I can select from several
different types of channels to read out.
The default is luminance, but I can choose to read RGB, RGB parade (which displays the
red, green and blue as separate lines), just the red, green or blue channels on their own.
I can look at Alpha.
“CbCr” stand for “Color Channel Blue,” and “Color Channel Red.”
These are not typically used in Hitfilm, unless you are using the new YuV color correction
effects, however, these represent the way your television sees color.
A television uses a luminance channel and a spectrum running from blue to yellow and
a second spectrum running from red to green.
We’re going to stick with luminance for now, then open up
the options underneath.
“Analysis Downsample” shows how much of the image the histogram is sampling.
I currently have that set to “Quarter,” which is less accurate.
I could go up to “Full,” which will be more accurate, but will render more slowly.
Beneath that is the “Color Space.”
I can choose between Rec 601, Rec 709 and Rec 2020.
Since I’m working at 1080p I’m going to leave this at Rec 709.
If I come over to the scopes panel and click on the settings cog it opens up the exact
same controls as in the effect.
However, the effect version has this entire other group of controls: “Render to Layer.”
And if I change this blend mode from “none,” to “normal,” then our histogram is rendered
on top of the viewer image.
If I open up the next set of controls that appear underneath, I have controls for “position,”
“top left,” and “bottom right.”
These are used to limit the area where the histogram is rendered.
I can make this larger or smaller onscreen.
I’m going to go ahead and turn histogram off and go straight down to “waveform.”
The waveform is a two-axis display.
Reading across the bottom of the waveform left to right corresponds to the position
of the image--left to right.
The vertical axis corresponds to the intensity of the channel the waveform is measuring.
In this case we are still looking at luminance.
This is where the standard color bar setup becomes helpful.
The most important things to measure in a waveform are minimum and maximum values in
a channel, represented by 0 and 100.
Reading a waveform can be intimidating at first, but there isn’t that much you need
to worry about.
The important thing is to make sure an image is not “flat-lining” too much at zero
(black) or too much with pure white.
The more areas of pure white or pure black in your image limits the amount of highlight
or shadow detail you’ll be able to deal with during color grading.
Let’s take a look at the controls for the waveform.
Most are very similar to the histogram.
However, the “Direction” control was not in the histogram, and I’m going to open
that here in the scopes panel, to make it easier to see what it does in the display
on the right.
Direction merely “rotates” where the scope is drawn from and can be used by a skilled
colorist to further judge distribution of tones in a scene.
Once again we have our color space setup and analysis downsample.
This “standard color bars” toggle will be very hard to see, because I’m already
showing standard color bars, but if I turn off the image, we can see when I toggle the
“standard color bars” setting these markings on the waveform monitor that represent the
locations and levels of standard color calibration bars.
Here in the effects version’s controls, if I open up “clip,” this can be used
to limit the area of the screen that the scope is measuring.
Perhaps I only want to look at this gradient!
I can set the clip to isolate the area being measured by the scope to just this gradient.
To make that easier to see, let’s come down to the render to layer option and turn that
to normal.
Now by dragging these points I can return to measuring the entire image again.
There is also a set of controls for “comparison.”
Here I can select a comparison layer--a random video clip, here, that we’ll discuss later.
This will show, side by side, the waveform for the color bars and the waveform for the
layer underneath.
I can toggle this from side-by side, overlay, or single scope.
Let’s turn off comparison for now.
Underneath I have the same options for analysis downsample, color space and color bars as
in the scopes panel.
Under “render to layer,” there are more options than were available with the histogram.
I can choose to turn off and on the horizontal guidelines, which are these 0, 10, 20, etc
bars.
I can toggle the standard color bar markers off and on, and I can toggle the IRE numbers,
which are just the numbers 0, 20, 40, 60, etc.
I can change the label’s scale to increase or decrease the size of the numbers, and I
can set a background color and change the background alpha.
By setting the background color to black and turning the background alpha all the way to
maximum, I can render only the scope itself to this layer.
If I were to now render this composite shot to video, the only thing in the video would
be this waveform display.
Again, this allows me to use the waveform itself as a graphic or motion graphic element,
if I choose.
Turning off the waveform and turning on the parade display, we get this…
I won’t spend much time on the parade display.
This is exactly the same as the waveform display, except is shows the three RGB channels side
by side by side.
Where the waveform shows a single display summing up all the channels, the parade scope
is exactly the same as the waveform, except isolating the displays for the red, green
and blue.
All the controls for the parade scope are exactly the same as for the waveform, so let’s
just go ahead and move on to our fourth and final scope--the vectorscope.
The vectorscope is a little bit stranger to read than the waveform, parade or histogram,
and is probably the least important of the four for our purposes.
The vectorscope show general hue and saturation of the image in a polar pattern.
The center of the vectorscope represents tones with zero saturation.
Out here, these dots which correspond to the standard color bars here in the viewer.
For the most part, with the vectorscope all you’re looking for is to make certain that
your colors are not extending outside of this circle.
Colors outside this circle have been clipped and have lost information and detail.
In the controls for the vectorscope, take notice of this check box for the “skin line.”
This line represents a mean distribution of skin tones.
It doesn’t matter if you’re Caucasian, Asian, Latino, African or other, your skin
tone is going to lie somewhere on this line.
The skin line can be very useful when doing color correction for, say, incorrect white
balance, by showing the general distribution of where skin tones should go.
If we come over to the controls for the effects version of the vectorscope we can see that
the controls are exactly the same as for all of the other scopes.
So how do we use scopes to aid in color correction?
We’ll cover that in the second part of this tutorial.
Thanks for watching!
Wait!
Don't go!
Did you know that we're currently running our January sale which means that you can
save 15% off HitFilm and bundles, and all the other stuff we have on our store?
Want some killer stock?
We've got everything you need from stylish mattes and transitions to light effects like
reflections and leaks.
Want to expand your skillset to 3D animation?
Take a look at these shots using digital actors and virtual environments from iClone's users,
who use HitFilm alongside their iClone software.
Want to add a super sexy grade to your shots?
Our Magic Bullet Looks Bundle comes with HitFilm Pro so that you can experiment with color
correction options until you go blind.
Maybe before that though.
Or do you want to set yourself up with some pretty presets?
Our Amplify bundle lets you create impressive titling, transitions and video effects.
Or do you just want to let off some steam with some explosive visual effects?
The ActionVFX bundle includes explosions, fire and muzzle flashes.
They are 4K ready and 100% real.
Remember to subscribe, we put out new videos every Thursday.
Bye!