Legalizing: What is it and why should I care?

NTSC video is not like print media where you are allowed to publish all of the color possibilities within the RGB or CMYK color gamuts. Instead, NTSC is comparatively narrow in its range of luminance and chroma to accommodate the 60-year-old limitations of analog broadcasting standards. It used to be that illegal colors would cause an analog TV monitor to buzz or bleed, or cause crossover noise in the audio, but those days are gone. Now, even though just about everything is shot digitally, broadcasters still require compliance to the analog limitations of NTSC, PAL and HD gamuts. Should you care? If your program is going out over the air, absolutely. If not, no, though your video should still be adjusted to look good.

FCP includes Vectorscope and Waveform analyzers so that you can see if any part of your footage falls outside of the legal limits for broadcast. I have heard a number of arguments that said that the FCP scopes cannot be trusted, or that only digital outboard scopes can provide an accurate analysis. To be honest, I have never done a side-by-side comparison to gauge if this is true under controlled circumstances, although I don’t doubt that there would be a difference. On the other hand, I have been using FCP’s inboard scopes and have yet to have a master kicked back at me, though this is no proof of the accuracy of FCP’s scopes. Digital outboard scopes are expensive, and unless you do a ton of broadcast work, there’s no mandate that you spend the money to get one. Even some high-end LCD monitors include their own vectorscopes with the an ability to superimpose the graphical display over your video.

Generally, film that has been color corrected in a telecine suite will be legal. However, most video captured on DV, HDV and DVCProHD will be illegal and will have to be adjusted. Also, most graphic designers don’t pay much attention to legal colors so if there are titles or effects that were layered onto footage, check them too.

My policy has always been to use the Broadcast Safe effect on all clips even though there may not be anything obviously illegal about the clip. Sometimes there can be a line or two of video in the blanking interval that you wouldn’t notice, and the Broadcast Safe effect will fix that. However, be aware that the Legalize effect DOES NOT legalize your chroma automatically. I do not use the Broadcast Safe effect to legalize chroma, but use a combination of the Color Correction 3-Way and the CGM Selective Color Correction effect. The CGM effect is a 3rd party plugin that I believe gives a superior grade from illegal to legal colors without banding. The parameters allow you to select blending modes and opacity.

Some other things to look for in your master: if you are using old footage that was recorded on 1″ video format, sometime you will notice a column of black on both sides of the image. This is leftover horizontal blanking, and I suggest you scale your image horizontally out to the edge until the black is gone. It is a nominal adjustment that shouldn’t make the image noticeably distorted, and it will prevent a QC check at a broadcaster to reject the tape. If you can patch over any single frame dust spots, you will be a hero.

Video Demo: Legalizing your master sequence