Color Correction Handbook: Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema

Chapter 9. Quality Control and Broadcast Safe

Broadcast legality is mentioned in many, many chapters of this book, on the assumption that most video professionals have at least a peripheral awareness of the importance of video signal standards. However, this chapter is intended to delve deeply into the subject of what broadcast safe means, to present a more complete picture of what you need to look for, and to show how you can deal with noncompliant video images in the most graceful way possible.

For the uninitiated, a video signal is considered to be broadcast legal or broadcast safe if the measured luma and chroma of the signal fall within a prescribed minimum and maximum range, whether measured as a percentage, in IRE, millivolts (mV), or ...