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9.3.1 Auto Color
Lighting conditions can change dramatically during many live events, especially those held outdoors.
Adding to this problem, production usually involves multiple cameras and, all too often, these may not
have uniform color characteristics. Ensuring consistent color when switching from one angle to another,
avoiding unwelcome brightness or color shifts as evening falls or when a cloud obscures the sun briefly
can be troublesome, and expensive.
To help you overcome these problems, the
Auto Color
feature updates the color characteristics of your
video sources as lighting conditions vary. In many cases, simply enabling the
Auto Color
switch is all it
takes to produce a show that looks amazingly consistent.
Multicam
By default, each camera with
Auto Color
enabled is processed uniquely – without reference to other
sources. Often, though, even greater consistency can be achieved by treating sources in similar
illumination environments as a group. Enable
Multicam
for several cameras causes
Auto Color
to
evaluate and adjust these cameras in unison. You might, for example, enable
Multicam
for court-side
cameras in an interior sports venue, while treating exterior or studio feeds individually.
Listen Only
The
Listen
Only
switch allows you to include a source in the
Multicam
group without adding its own feed
to the group evaluation. Thus a camera trained on a giant purple dinosaur can be automatically corrected
without disproportionately biasing the group evaluation and consequent
Auto Color
correction.
Alternatively, one might enable
Multicam
for a number of sources, turning
Listen Only
on for all but one
camera – effectively making that camera the color reference all other cameras in the group will follow.
Note: The Proc Amp, discussed next, is downstream of the Auto Color system. This allows you to apply
further manual color adjustments to your individual sources, whether for fine tuning or to achieve a
specific “look”.
9.3.2 Proc Amp
FIGURE 53
A switch at the top of the
Proc Amp
control group toggles the feature on/off. Other controls operate as
follows:
