Broadcast Monitor · Advanced Monitoring
Professional brings two-source comparison, advanced color analysis, and signal metadata into your monitoring workspace.
Professional overlays two sources in Picture, Waveform, Vectorscope, Color Balance Plot, or Quad Balance views. Complementary colors identify each input; a Mix display blends them. Instead of remembering one camera while looking at the next, compare their behavior in the same place.
During rehearsal: frame the same subject on both cameras, freeze one as your reference, and adjust the other. Picture and waveform offsets help align the subject horizontally; picture comparison also allows vertical alignment.
Freeze either source independently, isolate picture channels, and zoom or pan the picture for a closer inspection. Waveform magnification helps examine a smaller range of signal levels.
The overlay compares the latest available frames, without timestamp synchronization. Use a steady subject for camera matching; movement or different capture delays can create differences unrelated to exposure or color.
Click any screenshot to open the larger view and inspect the controls and traces.
Included in Professional, these views answer different questions about the same signal. Keep the ordinary picture nearby so measurements stay connected to your creative intent.
This view preserves source chroma while holding encoded brightness at a fixed middle level. Removing brightness variation from the display makes color differences easier to inspect.
Try it when matching cameras: look for a color cast on a neutral subject or differences in stage-light color, then return to the normal picture to judge the result.
Chromaticity places colors on a two-dimensional map with a gamut triangle as a reference. A gamut describes a color space's range of colors; the plot helps you see where the signal falls relative to that reference.
Follow source metadata or choose a reference such as Rec.709, P3, or Rec.2020. Unknown source metadata defaults to Rec.709, so confirm the source interpretation before drawing conclusions.
Color Balance Plot offers RGB gamut and channel-balance displays, including double-diamond views that compare green with red and green with blue. Traces outside the reference diamonds reveal RGB values outside the nominal range.
Try it with vivid lighting or graphics: investigate excursions that a pleasing picture might hide. Values outside the range remain visible in the analysis instead of being clipped away before plotting.
Professional includes a Caption Data scope for supported CEA-608/708 text, plus an optional picture overlay with caption-channel or service selection. Watch text changes and clears, with source timecode when available, to help check that the expected captions are arriving.
This is plain-text monitoring, not a complete reproduction of broadcast caption styling and positioning. Enabled picture captions are included in composed monitoring output. They are rendered text in the output picture, rather than outgoing SDI ancillary caption packets.
Timecodes and other metadata can travel alongside a video frame. Professional's Ancillary Data scope lists the fields supplied by the source, highlights changed values, and retains a rolling minute of snapshots. Browse a moment or double-click a field to examine its history while capture continues.
Blackmagic capture can expose timecodes and SDI ancillary packets, including supported caption payloads. Available fields depend on the signal and adapter. Embedded metadata availability depends on the decoder. Local audio transcription can also supply derived caption text, including from an independently selected audio source.
Professional can capture native reference frames into portable collections and route them into Picture, Waveform, and Vectorscope views. Compare a saved reference with a live input instead of relying on memory. Add editable measurement guides to supported scopes, and select an area of interest to share a region with supported analysis views.
Channel vs Channel plots two selected components; Quad Balance brings channel relationships into a four-quadrant display. The rotatable 3D Scope offers RGB, YCrCb, and YHS color volumes.
Professional includes Faces (Experimental) and Shot Evaluator (Experimental). Faces arranges tracked face crops with SDR exposure and color guides. Shot Evaluator brings exposure, color, focus, lighting, composition, temporal behavior, and audio guidance together.
These are assistance tools that depend on scene content and detection quality. Treat their suggestions as prompts for inspection, listening, and production judgment.
Inspect PQ or HLG luminance and highlight limits with the source's transfer interpretation. The bundled HDR photographs are synthetic encodings of SDR originals; the screenshots demonstrate analysis, not physical HDR display output.
Locate native-code, RGB-range, and target-gamut excursions, then examine a selected scanline and exact pixel code values.
Inspect input counters and signal/audio durations. Use a suitable flash-and-beep test signal for sync measurement; independent sources use arrival-time estimates instead of shared source timestamps.
Professional can transcribe a selected audio channel locally using a downloaded or local Whisper model. Choose the language and model in Audio Transcription settings, then monitor Audio transcription in Picture, Caption Data, or Ancillary Data. Audio stays on the computer; model downloads require an Internet connection.
Generated transcripts are derived text rather than embedded broadcast captions. Processing speed, language, background sound, and model choice affect results. Caption Data preserves segment and token metadata for inspection.
With a Professional Picture pane focused, hold F to frame detected faces as a group, or hold a top-row number 1–9 to inspect one detected face, ordered left to right. Release to restore your previous framing. This is temporary face zoom in Picture; the dedicated Faces scope remains a separate view.
Detection depends on the image. An unavailable face number returns to your manual framing. These top-row numbers differ from the numpad region shortcuts.
Hold numpad 2, 4, 6, or 8 for a 2× crop with temporary 45-degree rotation. Corner keys 1, 3, 7, and 9 inspect a quadrant without rotation; 5 inspects the center while keeping the current rotation.
Release the keys to return to the saved presentation. See the shared scope shortcuts.
Continue the tour, or choose any topic from the navigation above.