Color Balance and Control for Filmmaking – from Shoot to Edit From the makers of the original ColorChecker Classic, the X-Rite ColorChecker Video is the ideal color chart for your video workflow. This two-sided target provides chromatic color chips, skin tone chips and gray reference chips on one side and a spectrally neutral white balance card on the other side. This larger color target is perfect for pre-camera checks and wider shots.
Get to your ideal color place faster! The ColorChecker Video will get you to a worry-free color balanced and consistently neutral place, with ideal camera exposure, faster than ever before – giving you more time to spend on your creative look. It’s an essential color tool you won’t want to be without, saving you valuable time from capture to edit.
ColorChecker Video is an all-in-one full size durable and rigid color target, specifically intended for video production. It includes a newly designed video color chart on one side and a large spectrally neutral white balance card on the flip side.
Video Color Target includes:
Chromatic Colors: six saturated and six de-saturated color chips aligned with video production Skin Tones: six color chips from light to dark with different undertones Gray Levels: four larger steps for even gray balance, including white, 40IRE gray, deep gray and high gloss black reference patches Linear Grayscale: six steps for even gray balance, including highlight and shadow regions Illumination Check Chips: black and white color chips at two corners to better assist in determining even illumination White Balance Target: Create in-camera white balance to start at a neutral point for all the footage you capture. With this chart, you’ll be able to:
Eliminate color casts Make post production color editing and grading faster and easier by eliminating the need to neutralize frames individually Use for a variety of applications, including:
color grading
color balancing
gray balancing
setting perfect exposure
color matching multiple cameras
shooting and editing for mixed lighting
ColorChecker Video charts make your workflow faster, more consistent and more color balanced. They allow everyone on your team – from producer to cinematographer to editor to colorist – to work with consistent color information. They save you time, from pre-production through production, and help you get to your creative look faster. Sounds pretty ideal, doesn’t it?
Achieving the proper color balance and exposure for video can be challenging. F-stops in cameras don’t always match. Ambient lighting conditions change. Multiple cameras and lenses have different looks, even if they are the same brand and model. All of this adds up to quality control challenges and increased workload in post-production for your colorist or editor. Here’s what ColorChecker Video offers:
VIDEO COLOR TARGET
Speed up your color grading workflow by achieving ideal exposure and color balance, whether shooting with one camera or multiples. This color chart includes a series of chromatic color chips, skin tone chips, gray chips and illumination check chips. The layout is designed for ideal performance when used with vectorscopes and waveforms, whether on camera or in software.
Chromatic Colors: two rows of six chromatic color chips, both saturated and desaturated, specifically designed to align with the color axis on a vectorscope. These colors provide two levels of color information to more quickly achieve an ideal color balance.
Skin Tones: ranging from light to dark with subtle undertones to better reproduce accurate flesh tones. This row of chips is positioned on the outer edge of the target for easy alignment.
Large Gray Levels: four larger steps for even gray balance, including white, 40IRE gray, deep gray and high gloss black. These levels are ideal for determining proper exposure whether you use a waveform, zebras, or false colors. Use these levels to align the exposure and contrast of cameras you are matching and ensure that mid-tones are rendered accurately. These chips are positioned in the center of the test target for maximum exposure, even on a wide set.
Linear Grayscale: six color chips for achieving even gray balance. This row addresses highlight and shadow regions.
Illumination Check Chips: black and white chips at two corners to better assist in determining even illumination across the target
WHITE BALANCE TARGET
Starting with an accurate white balance ensures the colors you capture are true and provides a point of reference for post-shoot editing. The White Balance target found on the reverse side is a spectrally flat target that provides a neutral reference point across mixed lighting conditions that you encounter during a video shoot. Since the target reflects light equally across the visible spectrum, creating an in-camera custom white balance can properly compensate for varying lighting.
With this chart, you’ll be able to:
Eliminate color casts
Improve the color preview on your camera’s display so your histograms are more reliable
Make post production color correction and editing faster and easier by eliminating the need to neutralize each frame individually
Why can’t I use just any white object for white balancing?
White balancing on a piece of paper or other gray element in the scene may seem like a simple workaround, but most objects are not actually neutral under all lighting conditions; and they’re certainly not consistent. An inaccurate white balance will result in color casts, and a lack of consistency between lighting conditions, making color corrections extremely time consuming.
Include ColorChecker® Video targets in every shoot to make your video workflow faster, more consistent, more balanced and repeatable. You’ll save time and money avoiding costly mistakes and frustrating color corrections after the fact. Best of all, you’ll get to your creative look faster, which is ideal, because we all know how much you love being in your creative place.
