"Colour Bleed"

WHAT IS IT?

Colour Bleed is the effect seen on video tapes where strong colours seem to spread out from their correct places and "bleed" into adjacent areas. This is especially noticeable on strong reds but normally occurs on all colours equally, being simply more obvious on reds and to a lesser extent on blues.

WHAT CAUSES IT?

There are two main reasons for colour bleed. The first problem is that video recording on all normal domestic video recorders or camcorders (e.g. VHS, S-VHS, 8mm and Hi-8) results in reduced sharpness of the colour (reduced "colour definition"). This is a deliberate compromise to give you the best overall quality and is generally satisfactory with first generation copies of broadcast material, which is what most video recorders are designed to do well. The reduced sharpness causes bright colours to spread, but providing they stay in the correct position they can still look sharp. This is because the eye is more concerned about the brightness part of the picture, the part left when the colour is turned off. If this is reasonably sharp, and the colour is in the correct position, the eye is fooled into thinking the colour is sharper than it really is.

However, this is where the second problem arises. Very often video recorders do not reproduce the colour in exactly the correct position, but cause it to shift left or right a bit. Now, the eye is not so easily fooled and sees the poor colour sharpness.

HOW CAN I CURE IT?

This is where one of the ACE's clever features comes in. The ACE can move the colour left or right so that you can line up the colour part of the picture with the brightnesss (black and white) part of the picture. This is done with the "COLOUR SHIFT" control. When the colour is correctly aligned it looks much sharper and the picture looks much cleaner. Simple isn't it!

This feature alone is enough to persuade many of our customers to buy the ACE - even those with computer editing systems who find it the ideal solution for correcting colour bleed in any non-digital camcorder sources and on their final VHS copy.

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