Preview

The Preview palette displays video source output and can replace a traditional field monitor for checking focus, framing, and color calibration.

The Preview Palette with 4x3 mask, center marks, and title safe overlays enabled.

Controls

When you select the preview palette, the following controls will appear in the sidebar.

Changes made to the image in monitor calibration only affect what you see in the preview palette. They are not reflected in any other scopes. Monitor Calibration should only be used to ensure your preview accurately reflects the video signal. You can do this by calibrating to color bars sent from your source device.

Aspect

Controls the aspect ratio at which the video source will be displayed.

Standard Definition video uses rectangular pixels whereas computer monitors use square pixels. This can result in video images that are stretched when displayed on a computer. If you're shooting HD, the 16:9 option should be selected by default. For SD sources, you can either view the native "rectangular" pixels, or the corrected "square" display. When you choose a new source, ScopeBox will automatically set your preview's aspect to match that of the incoming image.

Zoom

Zoom sets the size of your image. 100% and 200% set the video image to the corresponding magnification no matter the size of the preview palette. This gives you a pixel-for-pixel view of your image with no interpolation from the graphics card or video re-size, which is especially useful when trying to set focus. However, if your palette is too small you may not see the whole image. "Fit to Size" fits the video to fill the palette, but does so by re-sizing the image which may introduce minor sub-sampling interpolation - leading to a slightly blurrier image. When zoomed in, you can click and drag to pan within the image.

Mask

The mask overlay draws blue bars as a framing guide when shooting at an aspect ratio other than the destination ratio. Using this will allow you to frame shots not only for the acquisition format, but for any other formats you may have to deliver to as well. For instance, if you know the video you are shooting in HD (16x9) will be used in an SD production, setting your mask to 4x3 will allow to see where by default the image will be cropped in the format change.

Monitor Calibration

The Saturation, Brightness, and Contrast sliders provide simple correction of the Preview image. These corrections are used to compensate for differences in computer monitors. Calibrating the Preview palette ensures that the image accurately represents what the camera is shooting. Any changes made do not affect the video captured to disk or the video monitored in any other scope.

Blue Gun

When checked, the Preview palette displays the blue channel as black and white, ignoring red and green. This simulates the "blue only" button on many CRT monitors, which is useful when calibrating a monitor with SMPTE color bars.

Title Safe

Title Safe adds two overlay boxes to the video. The outer box shows the graphics safe region and the inner box shows the title safe region. Make sure important action happens inside the title safe box, as older televisions may crop beyond it.

Rule of Thirds

Provides a 3x3 grid to assist with composition.

Center

Provides center cross-hairs to assist with composition.

Overlays

False Color

False color colorizes the preview monitor with a color mapping based on the signal's luminance value. ScopeBox ships with the Red, Arri and ST2048 profiles.

Image Overlay

Overlays allow you to layer an image, movie, or live source on top of your source. This can be used for custom guides for framing around your productions lower thirds, a background that will later be chroma keyed into the shot, or video footage you need to match framing or exposure in.

After enabling the "image overlay" option, you'll be shown a list of sources. To learn about loading image sources, see the loading stills section.

Below the image well is a slider to adjust the opacity of the overlay.