Blackmagic SmartView SmartScope User Manual Using SmartScope Duo 4K

What is Blackmagic SmartScope?

Previously, broadcast quality television and post production scopes were incredibly expensive custom solutions that only let you see one scope at a time on a tiny screen! Some scopes look ugly and don’t really look good in front of your client.

With SmartScope Duo 4K you get the addition of waveform monitors which allow you to see any aspect of your video signal on your dual monitors in real time. Any adjustments made to the input signal in Blackmagic SmartView setup can immediately be seen on SmartScope Duo 4K! Furthermore, each input signal can be sent to either monitor via the SDI loop out, meaning you can use the right hand monitor to display the scope for the signal going into the left hand monitor.

The scopes displayed by SmartScope Duo 4K are selected in the Blackmagic SmartView setup software. Select your scopes from the ‘display’ drop down menu.

The information below, and over the next several pages, explains how each scope display is used so you can get a deeper understanding of how each display can help you.

It’s easy to set your Blackmagic SmartScope Duo 4K to show a different scope on each monitor using Blackmagic SmartView setup

Video Monitoring Display

The Video Monitoring display is a handy confidence monitor so you can see the video that is being received by SmartScope.

If your input signal is SD, you can select between displaying it in either 4:3 pillarbox or 16:9 from the ‘set’ drop down menu. Any changes made to the LCD brightness, contrast or saturation settings can be immediately seen in this view. Note that changing these settings only affects the monitor, not the video signal, so the scopes will not be affected by any saturation or brightness changes.

It can often be handy to set one monitor as ‘video monitoring’ and another as your scope view. To do this, use a short cable to connect the SDI loop out from ‘monitor 1’ to the SDI in of ‘monitor 2’.

You can view SD video in 4:3 pillar box or 16:9 widescreen by selecting from the ‘set’ options in Blackmagic SmartView setup. Set ‘SD aspect to 16:9’ when viewing anamorphic standard definition video.

The video monitoring display setting shows the video signal as it will normally appear on a television screen or monitor

Waveform Display

The waveform display provides a digitally encoded waveform similar to traditional luminance waveform monitors, which is used to monitor and adjust the luma (brightness) levels of your video signal.

Traditional luminance waveform monitors only supported composite analog standard definition video. However, SmartScope Duo 4K’s waveform view works in Ultra HD and HD as well as SD so you have a consistent and easy way to adjust luma levels, even when monitoring high definition digital video formats!

Select waveform from the display drop down menu in Blackmagic SmartView setup. You will want to make sure the blacks in your waveform do not drop below 0% and the whites do not exceed 100% as this means you are getting illegal luma values.

The waveform monitor is a graphical representation of the image, showing luma values in the same position relative to those within the frame. For example, if part of your sky is overexposed you will see it in the same horizontal position on the waveform display as it appears in the frame.

Depending on your footage, your waveform will look different. If you are monitoring video which is high contrast, you might not see any values in the mid grays. The picture below shows a waveform for an evenly exposed image with a dark patch on the left, and brighter values from the centre of the frame out to the right.

The waveform display showing luminance values

Select ‘waveform’ in Blackmagic SmartView setup ‘display’ settings to view the luminance values in your video signal

Vectorscope Display

The vectorscope display uses a vector view to show the colors in a video signal. Depending on the standard of color bar test signals used in your facility, select either 100% or 75% from the ‘set’ drop down menu in Blackmagic SmartView setup.

Some people think you can use a vectorscope to check for illegal levels, however this is not correct. The Parade RGB display should be used for checking for illegal colors. The reason you cannot use a vectorscope to check for illegal levels is that both chroma and luminance values are required. For example, colors near the white or black points in video cannot be as saturated as the much stronger colors, which can be used in the mid-grays. Because vectorscope display only shows colors, and not luminance values, it cannot be used solely to check for illegal colors.

Vectorscope display is the best tool for checking color levels from older, analog videotape where you need to adjust chroma levels. Just play back the color bar segment of the videotape, and then adjust the chroma and hue settings to set the colors of the video within the square boxes in the graticule.

Vectorscope display is also perfect for color grading, as you can easily see if your video is correctly white balanced or if there is a color tint. If your video has a color tint, the vectorscope display will drift off center, and you might see two center dots. Normally the blanking in the video signal will create a dot in the center of the vectorscope, and this is because the blanking in the video is black video without any color. Blanking provides a useful reference point to help recognize areas of black video without any color information.

If your video has a color tint, you should see the blacks move off color and off center. The degree of shift represents the amount of color tint in your video and you can see the shift in both the white and black details of your video. This makes vectorscope display valuable for removing color tint and regaining correct white balance.

Vectorscope display lets you push colors in your video to the limits, without accidentally adding unwanted color tints to blacks and whites. While color balance can be monitored on both the RGB parade display and vectorscope display, color balance issues will often be easier to see in the vectorscope display.

When color correcting footage of skin tone, particularly faces, you will want to keep your warm color saturation along a line at approximately 10 o’clock on the vectorscope. This is known as the “fleshtone line” and is based on the color of blood beneath the skin’s surface. The fleshtone line is therefore applicable to all skin pigmentations and is the best way to ensure the skin tones of your talent look natural.

Vectorscope display showing the “fleshtone line” towards the 10 o’clock position

Set your vectorscope to 100% or 75% color bar test signals

Parade Display

RGB and YUV parade displays are perfect for color correction, checking for illegal colors and checking levels.

When color correcting, select RGB parade from the ‘display’ drop down menu in Blackmagic SmartView setup. RGB parade view displays the full height of the individual red, green and blue color channels. Monitoring the levels of each color channel makes color correction straightforward and it is also easy to view color balance in the blacks, mids and whites of the video signal. RGB parade display enables you to identify details common to the red, green and blue channels, making it simple to color balance and remove unwanted color tints.

It’s important when color correcting to make sure the video levels are full but not clipped. If you want to increase the video level, make sure it doesn’t go above upper RGB limit or you will encounter illegal levels. Some equipment won’t let you generate illegal 100% RGB levels, however other equipment will. SmartScope Duo 4K lets you see illegal levels whenever they occur.

Illegal video can also happen in the black and white levels. In some color correction systems, black levels can be lowered to below the black point of 0%. If you observe illegal black levels, just add some “lift” or gain to eliminate them but check the 100% graticule level to make sure the whole video signal has not lifted and generated illegal colors in the whites.

To check YUV levels, select YUV parade from the ‘display’ drop down menu. This view is useful because the luma (brightness) values are separated from the chroma (color) values, which is the format of video signals for television broadcast. The left waveform shows the luma information and the second and third waveforms show the chroma information. YUV parade view is useful for calibrating a video signal’s chroma values to a color bar test pattern, so that colors are represented accurately and the signal being broadcast will be displayable by television sets.

Color correcting is a constant adjustment process to attain the best looking images without generating illegal levels!

Color Correction Terminology

Blacks – Black levels in the video signal

Mids – Mid-gray levels in the video signal

Whites – White levels in the video signal

RGB parade view

YUV parade view

Select between RGB parade and YUV parade from the ‘display’ drop down menu in Blackmagic SmartView Setup

Histogram Display

Histogram display is most familiar to graphic designers and camera operators. Histogram display shows the distribution of white to black information and lets you monitor how close the detail is to being clipped off in the whites or blacks of the video. Histogram display also lets you see the effects of gamma changes in the video.

Black video is shown on the left of the display, and whites are shown on the right. All video should usually be found between the 0% and 100% intervals of the histogram display. Your video is being clipped if it moves below 0% or above 100%. Video clipping can be really bad when you’re on a shoot, as detail in the blacks and whites must be preserved if you subsequently want to perform color-correction in a controlled environment. When shooting, keep the video above the black clip, and below the white clip, so you can have more freedom later to adjust colors without whites and blacks appearing flat and lacking in detail.

When color-correcting, you might decide to clip your video, and in which case histogram display will show the effect of clipping the video, and how much it is being clipped. You can even use gamma to create a similar look, with less clipping, while retaining more detail.

You cannot really use histogram display to check for illegal levels although you can use it to see illegal blacks and whites. Histogram display does not show colors and so the histogram might appear to show legal levels, even though your video may contain illegal colors. Again, RGB parade display provides the best way to watch out for illegal levels as it shows them in both the color and luminance elements of the video signal.

The histogram display setting showing distribution of whites to blacks

Select histogram from the ‘display’ drop down menu in Blackmagic SmartView setup

Audio Metering Display

The audio metering displays show you the audio levels in the embedded audio of the SDI video signal. Up to 16 channels of embedded audio are de-embedded and then displayed in either dBVU or dBFS format.

The VU meter shows average signal levels, is easy to use and very common on older equipment. VU is calibrated to the SMPTE recommendation of a 1 kHz tone test signal set to -20 dBFS.

dBFS is essentially a meter of the overall digital audio signal and is common on modern digital equipment.

The right hand audio scope can monitor two channels of audio, which can be selected from the ‘set’ drop down menu. e.g., ch 1 & 2, ch 3 & 4, etc. The audio scope presents audio in an X-Y view so you can see audio balance issues, out of phase conditions and whether an audio track is mono or stereo. Mono audio should appear as a single vertical “in phase” line. If the line is horizontal, then your audio is “out of phase” and could cancel out (i.e., loss of audio) when received by downstream equipment. Audio phase is one of the most common audio faults in large facilities, where cables can be incorrectly connected.

When monitoring stereo signals, the line of the right hand audio scope fans out to represent the difference between the left and right audio channels. The more stereo sound contained in the audio track, the more circular the line will appear. If the audio contains minimal stereo content, then the scope will appear more concentrated around the vertical axis.

Dialog audio tends to appear as a vertical line, whereas music with plenty of stereo content will cause the scope to puff out. This is because mono audio is L+R, and will display on the vertical axis, whereas stereo content is L-R, and will display on the horizontal axis to show the stereo difference.

Audio metering display showing peak levels and audio balance

Use the “Set” drop down menu to select which pair of audio channels to monitor.