Note: The quality has been reduced for this demonstration copy.
Click on a feature to learn more about it.
Note: The quality has been reduced for this demonstration copy.
Click on a feature to learn more about it.
Sweep
The sweep pattern lets you detect whether an inadvertent format conversion has teken place, such as 1920x1080 to 1440x1080. You can also measure the performance of format converters and display processors. Use the pulldown menu to see the effect of different types of format converters.
This pattern lets you measure how much the video quality has been reduced by compression. Roll your mouse across the image to see the effect of different amounts of compression. Look for the boundary where the detail vanishes and the pattern becomes flat.
Video compression encoders such as MPEG control the quantization step size in different frequency bands. As the step size goes up, the bitrate goes down, but so does the quality. One measure of quality is the step size (or bit depth) at a given frequency, and this pattern helps you measure it.
Roll your mouse over the image from left to right to see the
effects of varying amounts of compression on the pattern.
Use the pulldown menu to see how 4:2:2, 4:1:1, 4:2:0 and other chroma modes affect this feature.
Observe how the pattern changes across the bottom edge. This reflects the horizontal chroma resolution. Also Observe how the pattern changes moving up the left edge. This reflects the vertical chroma resolution.
Here you can quickly see if there if there is something wrong with the color or tonal rendition. This image is color-managed for the defined RGB primaries and gamma of the target format, so it should look the same on every display.
This chart provides another way to quickly check color fidelity. On a computer the color values can be checked for accuracy. See below for links to tables of R'G'B' values.
This pattern of rising diamonds checks the quality of several things: frame rate conversion, progressive scan conversion, frame freeze and frame drop, etc. This feature makes frame drops and jumps very obvious.
This is a rendering of the standard PLUGE pattern from SMPTE Color bars. The center bar is black and the bars on either side are +/-4% above and below black. Mouse over for a better view.
HD uses a different color matrix than SD. Mixing them up is an easy mistake to make. This feature shows you if they've been mismatched somewhere along the line. Use the pulldown menu to see how it works.
This feature lets you measure the synchronization of closed caption data. This image was shot off a TV displaying CC1 data. The CC1 data causes a counter to appear just below the counter in the pattern. The two counters should be synchronized. You can see here that the captions are behind by about a frame or so.
CC3 contains a different sequence that allows measurement of CC delay down to one field.
Mouse over near top and bottom to enhance contrast.
The left stairstep is linear voltage, the right stairstep is gamma-corrected to give linear light. There are low-level details in the top and bottom ends that you can use to check for clipping -- mouse over to see them better, or see the key below.
(Contrast enhanced. Diagonal features available with Y'CbCr versions only.)
The moving block hits the center when the audio track clicks (see audio description next). The marks are one frame (or one field) apart. Using this you can measure lipsync offset to +/- 1 frame.
You can also detect Field Dominance error in interlaced video (fields playing in reversed order: 2-1 4-3 6-5 ...). And you can detect when the chroma in 60 fps 4:2:0 interlaced video has been processed as 30 fps progressive.
Field Dominance Correct
Field Dominance Reversed
4:2:0 Interlaced Chroma: Interlaced video with chroma processed as non-interlaced will seem to show not one but three red squares, with the middle one brighter than the other two (see below). This is may be more apparent on a CRT monitor compared to an LCD monitor.
Interlaced 4:2:0 Chroma Correct
Interlaced 4:2:0 Chroma Processed as Non-Interlaced
Color wheel displays: Displays that use a color wheel will often show color-fringing on the left and right sides of the moving white mark.
The stereo audio track contains a mono tick every two seconds, coinciding with the flash of the center mark of the lipsync feature. Every 10 seconds there are two additional ticks, first in the left channel, then in the right channel (matching the position of the lipsync mark). This lets you determine left/right channel swap. The left/right ticks occur when the lipsync blinker feature goes gray-to-white instead of black-to-gray, so you can tell if the lipsync is off by more than 2 seconds.
You can use a photodetector with this feature to measure lipsync using a scope. It goes from black to gray when the audio track clicks. Once every 10 seconds, when the left and right audio ticks are heard, it goes from gray to white instead.
These are the white, cyan, blue and magenta colors from SMPTE colorbars, arranged so you can use them to adjust a monitor's NTSC chroma phase and gain like you would with SMPTE colorbars and the "blue only" mode of the monitor.
