Trying to match colors and gamma of three different camcorders, using a color chart and a software waveform/vectorscope. The latter works with DV or HDV over firewire, while one of the three cams is a Canon AVCHD (recording on CF media), and has only one A/V output which is SD composite (which I feed into an older DV VCR acting as composite-to-DV converter).

Question: is the SD composite from the AVCHD camcorder 709 or 601 ? Naturally, the software scope can be set to 709 or 601....I understand SD is historically 601, right ? But what about SD that is downconverted from HD, like in this case ?

This is important as the two other camcorders are HDV and hence, the scope is set to 709 for them.

Thanks for enlighting me...

If the camcorder is doing a correct down conversion then it should be 601 But I'd be very concerned with the validity of any alignments made with so many conversion steps in the monitoring process.

I presume you are attempting to set all 3 so that the recorded footage matches? If so the outputs aren't as important as the recorded media.

I'd be recording test content and then bringing that into the edit suite and comparing there as that's the place it needs to match.

Pat Horridge:

I presume you are attempting to set all 3 so that the recorded footage matches?

Yes, certainly not aiming at professional results, but minimizing the post work of matching the shots...

Pat Horridge:

I'd be recording test content and then bringing that into the edit suite and comparing there as that's the place it needs to match.

Will do in the last steps of the aligment process, but for the rough work, realtime adjustment with the software scope will save me a lot of time...