Final Cut Pro – Calibrating Your Monitor Using Color Bars

Creative Planet’s Digital Production BuZZ Tips & Tricks

Final Cut Pro and most NLEs can produce Color Bars using the Color Bar Generator, which can be selected from the Generators menu in the Viewer window.

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You can use a Color Bar generator, which is a specialized piece of test equipment that few people actually own. Fortunately there are other sources of accurate color bars. You could use a taped Color Bars but you would have to be sure that they were recorded correctly and that the playback deck is also calibrated. Recorded Color Bars are not recommended as a source of bars because there is no easy way to be sure the source of the bars and the deck are accurately calibrated.

Fortunately we do have a ready reference. Final CutPro and most NLEs can produce Color Bars using the Color Bar Generator, which can be selected from the Generators menu in the Viewer window. The Color Bars generated in Final Cut Pro are an accurate reference to use to calibrate the monitor.

You can feed the output from the NLE to adigital to analog converter or from the outputs of your capture card. Be sure that any digital to analog converter adds the necessary setup to the signal if you’re using NTSC.

NTSC and PAL Bars

The main difference between NTSC bars show and PALbars is that NTSC Bars have “blacker than black” bars in the black at the bottom right. PAL does not have “setup” so there is no need for these blacker than black bars. Note that the “white/gray” in the main bars segment can be 75% or100% – both are correct as long as you know which you are using.

Once you have a source of Color Bars you know are accurate then calibration of the monitor is pretty straightforward once you now how. All you need to do is follow these simple steps.

1. Turn on the monitor and allow it to run for about half an hour to stabilize the temperature.
2. Connect the output from Final Cut Pro to the monitor via any converter device or from your capture card.
3. Play back bars in your NLE or from tape, suitable for your Television system from the Viewer’s Generator’s menu.
4. Start with the color to zero saturation while you adjust the black level. At the bottom right of the Color Bars image there are 3 black bars known as the PLUGE bars – Picture Lineup Generating Equipment. Adjust the brightness control until the middle bar at 7.5 IRE bar is not quite visible, i.e. adjust it so it’s just visible, then back it off a bit. The 11.5 IRE bar should be barely visible. Adjust brightness until you can just see a difference between the 7.5 and 11.5 IRE bars.
5. Adjust the contrast to maximum. The 100% white bar will bloom or appear to glow. Adjust the contrast down until that white bar just responds with no blooming but no darkening.
6. Adjust color hue. With the saturation set back to normal levels, switch the monitor to Blue only if you have the Blue-only option. If you don’t have a Blue-only option use a deep blue lighting gel in front of the monitor so you can see only blue. PAL users do not have to adjust Hue because it is automatic in PAL and not user adjustable so they can miss this and the next step.
7. Adjust the Hue control on the monitor until the Yellow, Green, and Red bars show equal brightness of blue.

After this adjustment, you might want to compare skin tone and make any final adjustments based on skin tone from a source that you know to be accurate. Reference monitors should not need any tweaking. Calibrate every monitor to the same source and never adjust settings on the monitor between calibration sessions. Calibration should be checked every 6 months as electronic component values can drift slightly as they age.

TIP
Once amonitor is calibrated tape closed the controls on the monitor, other than thosenecessary to change source. You should never, under any circumstances, adjust the monitors so “the picture looks right”. If it does not look right on a correctly calibrated monitor, then the picture is not right and should be corrected in the NLE.