The EBU Recommendation R137 was first published in August 2014. Its purpose is to give technical advice to broadcasters who intend to assess new lighting equipment or to re-assess the colorimetric quality of lighting in their television production environment.
This advice is based on a mathematical calculation implemented in software and available for free download from the EBU as ‘TLCI-2012.zip’. Both the “TLCI-2012” and “TLMF-2013” are specified in EBU Tech 3355 and supporting information is provided in EBU Tech 3353 and Tech 3354.
This month, EBU R137 was republished as a revision 2.0 with the inclusion of the following note:
TLCI-2012 has become widely accepted by the industry with many vendors now including the TLCI-2012 Qa-factor in their datasheets. However in order to clarify any potential confusion it should be noted that the differences between three sensor cameras which employ dichroic colour filters and single sensor cameras where organic dyes work independently to share light over a wider range of wavelengths was carefully considered and included in the work behind the TLCI-2012.
It is a matter of course that high-end TV/Film productions use extensive colour processing during post production in order to realise the desired ‘colour expression’ and ‘sentiment’ or ‘look-and-feel’ of the production. Any remaining and very small imperfections related to differences between 3-chip/1-chip cameras are insignificant and easily corrected in this process.
The recommendation otherwise remains unchanged. All EBU publications are available free of charge from tech.ebu.ch/publications.