Scopebox 2.0 is the only Mac software that I have found that can do this. I have been looking around for software that was capable of adding an overlay to a live camera feed. This will be a greenscreen shoot at Blue Rock Productions in Baltimore and the live actors will have to be lined up with the CGI House of Usher. I am very impressed with Scopebox 2.0 and plan to use it on the live action shoot for my short, The Fall of The House of Usher. It would also be great if Scopebox 2.0 had a chroma key option to key out greenscreen on the live feed (similar to Adobe’s Ultra) and use the overlay feature to see the composite. Hopefully the price will come down or perhaps a light version could be offered.
A lot of the work I do is with independents doing their first feature or short movie and this would be great for them, especially if the price were reduced. My favorite, the vectorscope with the colored pixels.Īlthough Scopebox 2.0 does so much and is worth the $699 for the HD version (SD $399), it will seem a bit expensive for most small independent producers to purchase, especially since many of them are familiar with PC’s SD/HD capable DVRack (which is now Adobe OnLocation CS3) and its price point of $499. The scopes all worked as desired and I had a bunch of things open at once with no problems on my Mac G5.
Quicktime movies were also easy to bring in as well as stills, although I couldn't figure out a way to import stills and had to use the drag and drop method. While I didn't try to bring them up at the same time, the program allows you to do multicam shoots. It recognized both my Sony HDV camera and my Panasonic miniDV camera without a problem. Scopebox 2.0 performed very well for me once I got the hang of it. Some of the many scopes and previews you can bring up in Scopebox 2.0. ( I seem to learn better from color pictures, as you may guess from my color-centric commentary in this review.) To learn more about color correction and what all the scopes do I recommend the book, Color Correction for Digital Video by Steve Hullfish and Jaime Fowler (CMP Books).
The included PDF manual gives a pretty good overview of what the various scopes do and is simple and clear with nice color pictures. (I only do sound when I have to but I'm sure this will make your sound guy happy.) As a visual filmmaker it gives me a quick, very colorful (I like things in color) way to monitor my sound acquisition. It also features up to 8 channels of sound and has several different scales of -12db,-14db and -20db, which I understand are common ranges for dialogue, sound effects, and music.
With the large colorful VU meter palette activated in Scopebox 2.0, I can see where the peaks are and how close I am getting. My issues was that I have trouble figuring out what the onscreen meters on the Panasonic actually mean, as I like things to turn red when there is trouble and something is getting cropped. The film was shot by Michelle Farrel on the Panasonic HVX200. Would have loved to have had this feature on our last shoot, a short movie directed by Arlette Fletcher. Microfilmmaker Magazine - Reviews - Software Review: Scopebox 2.0, Pg.