CompuServe Messages

John, I doubt it. The camcorder resident bars are usually never in the optical path, but generated electronically into the digital stream that is then a/d 'd to tape. That way there is certainty that (within the limits of a/d s in the camera) you are getting standard value bars. A compsosite video in I think is routed direct to the record heads without hitting the optical path either. This is, BTW generally how you "balance" multiple cameras for a multi-cam shoot or live switched multi-cam show. Run bars to a DA, then to each camera. Now you have one source of bars. Use the camera timing/phase controls (assuming you have them) or the return feed proc amp to adjust each camera's feed so they look the same (actually as close as you can get them since they almost never look the same, cable runs and other considerations being largely uncontrollable…). But if you short circuit the process and record at the camera, and haven't balanced that camera's output with say a WF/VS or by comparing to other cameras' output (and using phase and timing to get them looking alike) then you are left to color balance in post and you may find you don't have enough latitude on the proc amps to fix it if the cameras are REALLY off (like each is off center in the opposite direction). Shooting bars instead has too many varialbes that you can only get "ballpark" control over – light temp, flux, lense coatings, age, camera white balance/black balance accuracy, chip health, etc. And if you are doing it outdoors its even worse. BUT!!! If there are no internal bars for the camera, or no common bar source you can balance to, shooting bars is the next best thing since at least there is SOMETHING with which to tweak the TBCs in post to get as close as you can to "same color rendition" from two different cameras. But I seriously doubt that if you took a test signal generator's bars to the video in of the camera and recorded it, then took a shot os a colorbar card from a test card set that they would look the same. Never The Same Color (NTSC) is not an undeserved moniker :^} wmc – via Autopilot!