User's Manual

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!
RGB parade view
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
19Using SmartScope Duo 4K