Waveform monitor for 4K, 5K and beyond...?

[Simon Dunne]

Do people still use waveforms in hardware form? When working with 4K footage, how would i get a 4K signal into a waveform to monitor my signal accurately?

TIA, Simon

 

[Shane Betts]

It's not a video camera. Not sure what a waveform is going to tell you. Best you could hope for is to run the video tap out but why? You're recording 4k RAW files. A waveform has no relevance.

 

[Greg M]

hardware scopes are still relevant, all of our editors and colorists rely on them every day. Are you actually editing in 4K though?

 

[Simon Dunne]

I'm not editing in 4K yet, but yes, scopes for colour are very relavant!! How do they monitor the colours on a Spirit 2K or 4K. I remember they have to line up the film on a waveform to start with......?

 

[Vico Martin]

If you master for TV you can´t live without them.
To work with 4K? the IRE values still the same, or.... not?

 

[M Most]

If you master for TV you can´t live without them.
To work with 4K? the IRE values still the same, or.... not?

If you're mastering for TV, 4K as a finishing format is irrelevant and will be for quite some time. You would be monitoring HD, for which there are many scope solutions. For many colorists, traditional style scopes are simply a nice, simple to use, and unambiguous reference for things like white and black balance and overall levels. Using HD scopes is just as useful even if you're using a downconversion for this purpose.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

External / hardware scopes are still good for checking your output falls within your desired parameters, among other things. When working with media that holds more color or spatial resolution than your monitoring or output format, you really do need software scopes internal to your applications software so that you can better quantify what is going on. But yeah, a hardware scope is of limited utility when you're shooting 16bit REDCODE RAW on Epic and you have already modified the source by down-scaling to 1/5th of acquisition resolution and compressed your color space into 10bit log before sending out to the scope. Mostly their application at this point is checking your HD/SD deliverable output.

 

[Simon Dunne]

Thanks Jeff. So i look at my software scopes for 4K and my waveform for HD-SDI. What happens if Jim get's his way and we have 4K TV???!

 

[M Most]

Thanks Jeff. So i look at my software scopes for 4K and my waveform for HD-SDI. What happens if Jim get's his way and we have 4K TV???!

What happens if you get hit by a bus?

It hasn't happened yet. When it does, you and everyone else will deal with it, just like we have every other format that's ever shown up. Manufacturers will come up with both software and hardware based solutions. The world will go on.

 

[jake blackstone]

But...but.. what about 8k?

 

[Thomas Koch]

Turn your waveform diagonally.

 

[jake blackstone]

That would only work with Sony 8k sensor...

 

[Marc Wielage]

What happens if you get hit by a bus?

Funniest line I've read here in a year.

Do people still use waveforms in hardware form? When working with 4K footage, how would i get a 4K signal into a waveform to monitor my signal accurately?

Your best bet is to color-correct with 1K or 2K proxies, using whatever color-space you intend to view in 4K, and use conventional HD scopes like Tektronix or Videotek (or the lower-cost Blackmagic UltraScope). If you try to color-correct in 4K on all but the most expensive (and super-fast) systems on the market, they'll run as slow as molasses in January, especially once you start to add a lot of color layers, windows, vignettes, defocus nodes, and so on.

All the 4K projects I've done have routinely used a 1080 workflow for the initial color decisions. Once the client signs off on the color and has locked the project, then we replace all the media with the 4K originals, render the final output using the same color corrections, then view the rendered files (which takes a few hours).

The color doesn't change -- only the sharpness and detail change, and it doesn't alter your perception of the picture in terms of brightness, color, or contrast.