#NTSC Legal Palette
6 messages in this thread
Is anyone out there doing broadcast stuff with 3DS? I'm having a problem
my broadcast spots and my color palette. I don't have a Waveform Monitor/
Vectorscope and my background is computers and not broadcast engineering,
but my problem the best I can explain it is this:
My animation colors look beautiful when I lay them to tape, but apparently
the saturation of the colors is too high to be NTSC legal. Consequently,
the TV stations have to dial down the saturation to 75% and the result is a
muddy looking animation on the air. The broadcast professionals I've
talked with tell me to adjust my palette so that colors have only 75%
saturation and that should be safe. My problem is that 3DS seems to bump
the diffuse and specular saturation to 100% even if I lower the saturation
in the Mat. Editor. Does anyone know how I can create and broadcast legal
palette with 3DS?
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks. -Mark
the only way i have fould to get a ntsc legal signal is to use a
vectorscope or i use a digital arts utility called gamma at 1.33. it seems
to work. but you really need a scope.
There are alot of people doing broadcast stuff with 3DS… many of them on
this forum. James Hyde and Ken Loss-Cutler just finished a piece for MTV,
and Richard Sher and Seth Levinson did the Chip and Peppers Cartoon Madness
stuff, and now Lucasfilm's upcoming "Defenders of Dynatron City." etc
etc…
It's actually not that hard to get NTSC-legal colors. 3DS does NOT bump
the diffuse and specular saturation to 100%. If you turn it down, it stays
down. Red's should never be about 65%, Blue's should never be about
60-70%, and Green's can be pushed to 75%. A little atmosphere and
depth-cueing goes a LONG WAY too. Never use reds next to blues, and try to
put GREY'S in between contrasting colors, if possible.
And most important… ALWAYS WORK ON AN NTSC MONITOR IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE
GOING TO NTSC VIDEO.
Worst comes to worse, you can run the video through a ProcAmp (Video
Processing Amplifier) and cut the chroma gain down while looking at a
Vectorscope. Color corrector's can do this too.
– G
Thanks, I'll give your suggestions a try. -Mark
Mark,
Watch your lighting, lots of high power lights will over do it. Try turning
your lights down first. I usually use ambient around 20-30 and omni's
around 60-80.
Short of a vector scope, working with a plain TV set will really make a
difference during the design phase. Hook the composite signal out of your
frame buffer to a VCR and view it right on what will be the "final" output
device for your audience. Oversaturation will case the colors BLEED and be
highly visible on a run of the mill tv set.
James
James, That sounds reasonable. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give
them a try. -Mark