Video Scopes

Your computer monitor can lie to you. If there is a glare on your screen from a window, or if your monitor's brightness is turned up too high, you might incorrectly assume your footage is overexposed and mistakenly darken it.

Professional colorists trust mathematics, not just their eyes. They use Video Scopes to measure the exact data values of the image.

Accessing Scopes

In the Color Workspace, the Scopes panel is usually located in the bottom right corner. If it is hidden, click the graph icon on the right side of the toolbar.

1. The Waveform Monitor

The Waveform is the most critical tool for judging Exposure (Luminance).

  • The horizontal axis (Left to Right) corresponds directly to the Left and Right sides of your image in the viewer.
  • The vertical axis (Bottom to Top) represents brightness. 0 is pure pitch black. 1023 (or 100%) is blinding, clipping white.

How to read it: If you see a large clump of data squashed against the 0 line at the bottom, your image is underexposed, and you are losing detail in the shadows (they are "crushed"). If you see a flat line of data chopped off at the 1023 line at the top, your highlights are "clipped" (e.g., the sky is blown out to pure white with no cloud detail).

The Goal: For a standard, well-balanced image, you want your data to stretch comfortably between 0 and 100%, without violently smashing into either limit.

2. The Parade

The Parade is identical to the Waveform, but instead of showing a single white graph of overall luminance, it splits the data into three separate graphs: Red, Green, and Blue.

How to read it: The Parade is the ultimate tool for fixing White Balance. If you shot a white piece of paper, but the lighting in the room made it look slightly orange, you will see it clearly on the Parade: the Red graph will be much higher than the Blue graph.

The Goal: To achieve a perfectly neutral white balance on a white object, adjust your color wheels until the top peaks of the Red, Green, and Blue graphs are perfectly level with one another.

3. The Vectorscope

The Vectorscope is a circular graph used to measure Hue (Color) and Saturation (Intensity).

  • The center of the circle represents zero saturation (pure black, white, or gray).
  • The further the data stretches outward from the center, the more saturated the color is.
  • The angle around the circle indicates the specific hue (Red, Magenta, Blue, Cyan, Green, Yellow).

The Skin Tone Line: In the upper-left quadrant of the Vectorscope (between Red and Yellow), there is a straight line extending from the center. This is the Skin Tone Indicator. Regardless of ethnicity or skin color, all human blood is red. Therefore, all natural human skin tones—from the palest to the darkest—fall on this exact line. If your actor's skin data is drifting toward Green or Magenta, they will look sick or alien. Use the color wheels to push the data back onto the line.