![]() I found that Scopebox setup and configuration were easy, quick, and recallable, and the application was extremely stable. I found it quite easy to set up audio levels, switch between scopes for all aspects of setup, and even to achieve a fairly close match between images displayed on my laptop screen, the camera’s viewfinder, and the client monitor to allow me to use the laptop screen for critical focus and quality control of exposure, lighting, and chroma levels. In fact, I’ve used my laptop and ScopeBox as a field monitor during several shoots, sometimes daisy-chaining a client monitor from the SDI output. With ScopeBox, I was able to monitor in high definition in far finer detail and with greater accuracy than the camera’s built-in function, and it even allowed me to make a back-up recording. I only have a standarddefi nition hardware waveform monitor in my facility, so I’ve had to rely on my camera’s histogram in such situations to double check for even lighting on the green screen. I found it to be an extremely handy tool during green screen shoots, which in my case have been usually very simple, static events. I used ScopeBox in a wide variety of location and studio shooting situations, as well as in my edit bay during postproduction. An excellent feature in recording is that ScopeBox writes a coherent QuickTime file, meaning that if the recording is interrupted at any point, all the data recorded up to that point will be usable. The “Alerts” function can be activated during recording, providing a useful list of events and times that exceed preset limits for chroma, luma, and/or gamut, as well as dropped frames. Transcoding can also be performed on recording (video and/or audio tracks), providing users with the possibility of recoring in one format and codec on the camera and another format and codec from within ScopeBox. ![]() This feature does not work with every camera, so testing is necessary before using it in a critical situation. The app can record video, audio, and/or timecode from one or all of the selected sources, simultaneously.Īnother nice feature is “Lock to Camera,” which allows the user to record automatically to Scope Box each time the camera is put into record mode. These alerts have a start and end time and can be exported as HTML, CSV (Excel), or XML (Final Cut Pro and Final Cut X formats, which will generate markers in a timeline.)Ĭompleting the trifecta of feature sets, ScopeBox can capture in any installed QuickTime format from any installed QuickTime capture card. The application can also generate user-configured alerts for dropouts, audio level clipping, and chroma, luma, and/or gamut excursions above a preset level. Users can also perform monitor calibration on the preview palette, using the included blue gun feature, allong with brightness, contrast, and saturation sliders, for matching the monitored signal with the camera. These include luma and chroma zebras, focus assist (peaking), zoom (100 to 200 percent), image flip and de-interlace, aspect adjustment, a variety of overlays and masks (including title safe, center, 3 x 3 grid, masks (protecting one aspect while shooting in another), and custom image or QuickTime overlays. It also can add an optional skin tone vector and a user-positionable vector that can be set at any angle and saturation percentage to allow very precise color matching from shot to shot.Īdditional tools make ScopeBox even more useful for location or studio recording. Van Hurkman’s redesign, implemented in v3.2 and placed in the Creative Commons, simplifies the graticule greatly, making it much easier to read and compare chroma levels and vector information. The graticule is a scope overlay that shows color targets, angles, and reference lines which can help in judging and comparing color saturation, balance, contrast, and hue angles between clips or shots. This new version introduces a significantly redesigned (by Alexis Van Hurkman, highly regarded colorist, writer, and teacher) vectorscope graticule as an option. Timecode information present in the source-either live or file-based-can also be displayed with Scopebox.Įach scope can be customized for the present task-whatever it is-and layouts can be saved for future re-use. There are a wide variety of scope re-creations available, including waveform monitor, vectorscope, RGB parade, RGB histogram, YUV parade, audio meters (displaying as many channels as are present in the source), and channel plot (which assigns two channels of a video signal to X and Y axes, and is very useful for visualizing gamut errors, especially in color space conversions). ScopeBox works with virtually any video and/or audio source, or even an existing media file.
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