The 2020 pandemic forced churches that had never broadcasted worship services online to begin live streaming to maintain contact with their congregations and communities. In this author’s opinion, this massive online onboarding was a very good thing. To tweak a quote from an old Larry Norman song, “Why should the devil be the only one on the internet?” The internet is a powerful tool for spreading the gospel of Christ and encouraging believers. Churches and ministries of all types use the internet today for active, gospel-focused broadcasting. However, the newness of online broadcasting has worn off for many smaller churches and ministries, and questions are beginning to be asked about improving the quality of their livestream.
One of the most common critiques I’ve heard that tech teams receive from their leaders has to do with the live stream. Cameras don’t match in terms of color. Church technical leaders shouldn’t fear this feedback but should instead be proactive in doing what is possible to color-match their video cameras for their live stream and IMAG (image magnification). Cameras of different manufacturers and models interpret colors differently. Video cameras at prosumer and lower-end professional price points can have noticeable color interpretation differences within the same model and manufacturer. The best way to color match is to have all your cameras from the same manufacturer and, in the case of prosumer and lower-end professional price points, the same model. But for many churches, this isn’t possible. How do you get the cameras as close as possible to color matching? The first step in this process is lighting.
Many churches have windows that let in outside light into the worship center. This light can and will affect all aspects of color matching, especially the white balance.
Lighting is the starting point for the color-matching process
Lighting is a big issue regarding how a camera can capture an image and interpret its color. This is the starting point for the color-matching process. If a video camera doesn’t have enough light coming into the camera without opening the iris fully and adding video gain, you’ll have difficulty color matching.
Many churches have windows that let in outside light into the worship center. This light can and will affect all aspects of color matching, especially the white balance. Account for this in your white balancing by ensuring you’re not dependent on sunlight to light your stage for the live stream broadcast. Color-matching your cameras will be difficult if you lack dimmable/controllable lights to light your stage fully. Look into getting adequate lighting – key, fill, and backlighting – to light your stage for live streaming. If you don’t have enough budget to do all the parts of a 3- or 4-point lighting plot, start with getting adequate key lights and plan for future upgrades to the lighting system.
A helpful tool for color matching is a Video Chip (or Color) Card. These cards can be as inexpensive as $15.00 and as expensive as $3,000.00. Cheaper cards will work nicely for most churches that came into live streaming during the pandemic. Ensure you purchase a card in a 16:9 format with white, black, grey shades, primary colors, and some skin shades. This tool will be invaluable as you dial in your cameras to color match. Another handy card is a plain white poster board card. This will help your camera interpret the color white. When you use a white card, ensure you’re using the dull side of the posterboard.
Another handy color-matching tool is a video camera’s remote-control capabilities through camera control software or a camera control unit (CCU). If your video cameras cannot be controlled remotely, that’s ok. Quite a few churches use the free OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) video encoding software to encode your service video for social media and website broadcasting. OBS has powerful features that will help dial in your camera color without camera remote-control capabilities. These features in OBS are a waveform monitor, vectorscope, and masking. More on these features in a moment.
Let’s start by color-matching your cameras and ensuring the video camera’s settings are correct.
Let’s assume you have your white posterboard (with the dull side facing the camera) on a stand behind the pastor’s podium at face height and that OBS is running on your video encoding computer. Let’s also assume that your worship center has a well and evenly lit stage for your pastor’s sermon, allowing video cameras to capture an image quickly. (Note: Always color-match cameras with the lighting you’ll use for the most critical part of the service. For most churches, this means you color match using the lighting for the sermon.) Using the optical zoom on your camera, zoom into the white posterboard set up in front of the chip card, being careful not to use digital zoom features on the camera. Digital zoom can cause issues when color matching. Fill the entire posterboard in the video frame.
When using a white posterboard for white balancing, ensure you’re using the dull side of the posterboard.
With nothing but white being seen in your camera’s view, you’re ready to set the white balance. In OBS, open the waveform monitor (a tool that measures light intensity or luminance), where you can still see the image from your camera on the screen. Your image is overexposed if you notice a solid, level line at the top of the waveform monitor (usually represented by “100” on the right side of the scope). First, double-check that your video camera’s gain is set to 0. Next, check to see that the luminance level on the waveform monitor is less than 100. If it is solidly at 100, close the iris (exposure) on the video camera to let less light in by dropping the luminance level below 100. As you close and open the iris, you’ll see the line on the scope drop and rise. Once you confirm your luminance level is below 100, you can begin setting the white balance.
Now, close the waveform monitor in OBS and open the vectorscope. This tool measures color saturation. If your white balance is correct, you’ll see a dot in the vectorscope at the center of the crosshairs. Your camera white balance is off if the dot is not at the center. Use your camera's automatic white balance feature to set the white balance to the proper setting. The dot on the vectorscope will move to the center when the white balance is set. If you don’t have an automatic white balance button or feature to select, manually adjust the white balance until you see the dot move to the center of the crosshairs. Make sure to save the settings on the camera.
Using vectorscope feature
Using your video camera to output color bars into a vectorscope is one of the easiest ways to ensure that your colors are represented correctly on each camera.
The next step of the color-matching process is ensuring your colors are represented correctly by your video camera. The easiest way I’ve learned to do this is through having the video camera output color bars into a vectorscope. To start, have your video camera output color bars and use the vectorscope feature in OBS. With your video camera outputting bars, notice the dots on the vectorscope monitor corresponding to the color bar colors of white, yellow, cyan, green, magenta, red, blue, and saturated black. Your camera interprets color correctly if all the dots line up on the inner set of boxes on the vectorscope. (This inner set is the 75% broadcast-safe color standard. The outer boxes are 100% saturated colors.) Adjust the color saturation setting on your camera to move colors toward the center or the edge on the color saturation scale on the scope. Adjust the hue settings on your camera to rotate the colors clockwise and counterclockwise on the scope. Make these adjustments until you see all the dots line up in the corresponding inner set of boxes. White and black will be represented by a dot at the center of the scope. (We made this setting in the previous white balance step.)
Now, for the church technical leader whose cameras can’t output color bars. This is where the chip card comes in handy. Ensure your chip card is behind the pastor’s podium at face height. Secondly, ensure you have the sermon lighting turned on and the stage lighting up the card. Open OBS on your video encoding computer. Create a scene in OBS masking out all the areas on the card, leaving the color squares of yellow, cyan, green, magenta, red, and blue visible and everything else masked/blacked out. Now, open the vectorscope in OBS. Adjust your colors to the inner set (the 75% broadcast safe) boxes using your camera's saturation and hue settings. Note: Make sure that you don’t have the camera’s image overexposed during this process. Use the vectorscope in OBS to double-check that the luminance levels of your camera shooting the chip card are around 75%. Having an image that is too dark or too bright can cause the color-matching process to be even more difficult.
Let’s not forget to look at the black levels on our video camera that we’re trying to color match. In OBS, open the waveform monitor. Look to see if the bottom of the readings from your camera’s image in the waveform monitor is coming from the bottom line on the scope. If a camera’s readings are above this bottom line, adjust the contrast levels on that camera to lower the bottom line of the readings on the waveform monitor – black levels – until they are on the bottom of the scope. When you’ve adjusted the contrast to show the waveform readings coming from the bottom line of the scope, your black levels are dialed in.
If you’ve never really learned how to color-match cameras and screens, seize the opportunity to learn and grow. Don’t forget to ask for help if you don’t feel confident enough to tackle something independently.
Check the skin tones
The next part of color-matching cameras is checking skin tones. Whether you have color bars on your camera or not, you can use the chip card to look at how your camera interprets the colors of skin tones. Open the vectorscope in OBS. The line on the vectorscope from the center to the upper left of the scope is called the skin tone line. All skin tones, regardless of shade, will appear on this line. Make a scene in OBS masking out the entire screen except for the skin tone square on your chip card. Look at the vectorscope to ensure this skin tone shows up on the skin tone line. If you’ve dialed in your colors correctly up until now, you’ll see this color on your chip card show up correctly on the line.
Now that you have this first camera’s color dialed in, set, and saved on the camera, repeat the process for every camera in your video streaming system. Matching camera color can be time-consuming, but the more you do it, the better, quicker, and more comfortable you’ll get with the entire process.
Now that your cameras are suitable for live stream broadcasts let’s tackle the issue of making IMAG screens look better with the cameras. Several factors affect how video projectors look in a worship center. The first is brightness. I’ve seen many churches that use video projectors in their worship spaces suffer problems using projectors that do not have enough output to make the screens easily visible. This can be caused by having projectors with lamps that need replacing. Ensure that the lamps in your projectors are replaced when needed and that you replace the lamps in all the projectors simultaneously to ensure even brightness on all video screens. Don’t forget to clean the projector lenses and filters regularly. Dust gets on lenses and filters and can cause a degradation in performance. Then, even if you use an LED or laser projector, ensure the brightness on the projector is set to a reasonable level and that the settings on the projectors are all the same.
Regularly inspect your video projectors for the correct color settings and the same settings across all your projectors.
Check your projector's color settings
Next, make sure your color settings are the same for each projector. It’s easy to hit a button on the remote that controls your projectors and make a color adjustment without knowing it. Regularly inspect your video projectors for the correct color settings and the same settings across all your projectors.Use the color bars on your projectors to help dial in the proper color settings. Ensure saturation, hue, and contrast levels look good on one projector and every other by checking that the same color settings are used. Color matching is more difficult if you have different models and manufacturers with your video projectors, but you can still make them look close to one another. After dialing these settings, you should see a better look from your IMAG screens.
If you’ve never really learned how to color-match cameras and screens, seize the opportunity to learn and grow. The hard work you do will pay off. Don’t forget to ask for help if you don’t feel confident enough to tackle something independently. Help is just an email, text, phone call, meeting, post, or video away. Remember, you are part of a community where we’re all on the same team, and we stand ready to help our fellow technical artists when needed.
