Apple Final Cut Pro 6 - Manual (Page 1300)

Chapter 26 Measuring and Setting Video Levels 515
III
Learning to Read the Vectorscope
The Vectorscope shows you the distribution of color in your image on a circular scale.
The color in your video is represented by a series of connected points that fall
somewhere within this scale. The angle around the scale represents the hue displayed,
with targets indicating the primary colors of red, green, and blue and the secondary
colors of yellow, cyan, and magenta. The distance from the center of the scale to the
outer ring represents the saturation of the color being displayed. The center of the
scale represents zero saturation, while the outer ring represents maximum saturation.
The Vectorscope is useful for seeing, at a glance, the hue and intensity of the various
colors in your image. Once you learn to identify the colors in your clips on the graph in
the Vectorscope, you will be better able to match two images as closely as possible
because you can see where they vary. For example, the image above has points of
intense red and areas of vivid blue, which you can spot immediately on the Vectorscope.
The underwater image below contains predominantly blues, which present an entirely
different profile on the Vectorscope. Although this is an extreme comparison, by looking
at various images and studying how the Vectorscope changes you’ll learn how to spot
the information you’re looking for.
Red of clothing
Blue of background
Distribution of blues