SMPTE color bars are a

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

test pattern A test card, also known as a test pattern or start-up/closedown test, is a television test signal, typically broadcast at times when the transmitter is active but no program is being broadcast (often at sign-on and sign-off). Used since the ear ...

used where the NTSC video standard is utilized, including countries in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

. The

Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded by Charles Francis Jenkins in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and e ...

(SMPTE) refers to the pattern as Engineering Guideline (EG) 1-1990. Its components are a known standard, and created by test pattern generators. Comparing it as received to the known standard gives video engineers an indication of how an

NTSC NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170. In 1953, a second ...

video signal has been altered by recording or transmission and what adjustments must be made to bring it back to specification. It is also used for setting a television monitor or receiver to reproduce NTSC

chrominance Chrominance (''chroma'' or ''C'' for short) is the signal used in video systems to convey the color information of the picture (see YUV color model), separately from the accompanying Luma (video), luma signal (or Y' for short). Chrominance is usu ...

and

luminance Luminance is a photometric measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through, is emitted from, or is reflected from a particular area, and falls wit ...

information correctly. A precursor to the SMPTE test pattern was conceived by Norbert D. Larky (1927–2018) and David D. Holmes (1926–2006) of

RCA Laboratories RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Company ...

and first published in RCA Licensee Bulletin LB-819 on February 7, 1951. U.S. patent 2,742,525 Color Test Pattern Generator (now expired) was awarded on April 17, 1956, to Larky and Holmes. Later, the EIA published a standard, RS-189A, which in 1976 became EIA-189A, which described a Standard Color Bar Signal, intended for use as a test signal for adjustment of color monitors, adjustment of encoders, and rapid checks of color television transmission systems. In 1977, A. A. Goldberg, of the CBS Technology Center, described an improved color bar test signal developed at the center by Hank Mahler (1936–2021) that was then submitted to the SMPTE TV Video Technology Committee for consideration as a SMPTE recommended practice. This improved test signal was published as the standard SMPTE ECR 1-1978. Its development by CBS was awarded a

Technology & Engineering Emmy Award The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Engineer ...

in 2002. CBS did not file a patent application on the test signal, thereby putting it into the public domain for general use by the industry. An extended version of the SMPTE color bars, SMPTE RP 219:2002 was introduced to test

HDTV High-definition television (HDTV) describes a television or video system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since at least 1933; in more recent times, it ref ...

signals (see subsection). Although color bars were originally designed to calibrate analog NTSC equipment, they remain widely used in transmission and within modern digital television facilities. In the current context color bars are used to maintain accurate chroma and luminance levels in CRT, LCD, LED, plasma, and other video displays, as well as duplication, satellite, fiber-optic and microwave transmission, and television and webcast equipment. In a survey of the top standards of the organizations' first 100 years, SMPTE EG-1 was voted as the 5th-most important SMPTE standard.

SMPTE ECR 1-1978 (SDTV)

In a SMPTE

color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...

bar

image An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or Three-dimensional space, three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be di ...

, the top two-thirds of the television picture contain seven vertical bars of 75% intensity. In order from left to right, the colors are

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

gray Grey (more frequent in British English) or gray (more frequent in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning that it has no chroma. It is the color of a cloud-covered s ...

yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In t ...

cyan Cyan () is the color between blue and green on the visible spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a predominant wavelength between 500 and 520 nm, between the wavelengths of green and blue. In the subtractive color system, or CMYK c ...

green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...

magenta Magenta () is a purple-red color. On color wheels of the RGB color model, RGB (additive) and subtractive color, CMY (subtractive) color models, it is located precisely midway between blue and red. It is one of the four colors of ink used in colo ...

, red, and

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

. The choice of white or gray depends on whether that bar's luminance is 100% or not. This sequence runs through all seven possible combinations that use at least one of the three basic color components of green, red, and blue, with blue cycling on and off between every bar, red cycling on and off every two bars, and green on for the leftmost four bars and off for the rightmost three. Because green contributes the largest share of luminance, followed by red, then blue, this sequence of bars thus appears on a

waveform monitor A waveform monitor is a special type of oscilloscope used in television production applications. It is typically used to measure and display the level, or voltage, of a video signal with respect to time. The level of a video signal usually corre ...

in luminance mode as a downward staircase from left to right. The graticule of a

vectorscope A vectorscope is a special type of oscilloscope used in both audio and video applications. Whereas an oscilloscope or waveform monitor normally displays a plot of signal vs. time, a vectorscope displays an X-Y plot of two signals, which can ...

is etched with boxes showing the permissible regions where the traces from these seven bars are supposed to fall if the signal is properly adjusted. Below the main set of seven bars is a strip of

, and

castellations. When a television receiver is set to filter out all colors except for blue, these castellations, combined with the main set of color bars, are used to adjust the color controls; they appear as four solid blue bars, with no visible distinction between the bars and the castellations if the color controls are properly adjusted. The bottom section contains a square of 100% intensity white and a rectangle of 7.5% intensity black, for use in setting the luminance range. More modern versions of the pattern feature a '' PLUGE pulse''. The white square lines up so that it is below the yellow and cyan bars, and on a waveform monitor this will show up with the white bar overlapping the peak of the yellow and cyan chroma at 100 IRE units. The ''pluge'' (short for picture line-up generation equipment) pulse is positioned within the black rectangle, below the red bar (it is present in the illustration but may be hard to see). It comprises three small vertical bars, a rightmost one with intensity 4% above black level (11.5 IRE), a middle one with intensity exactly equal to black (7.5 IRE), and a leftmost one with intensity 4% below black (super-black or ''blacker than black'', 3.5 IRE). The pluge pulse aids in adjusting the bottom of the luminance range to avoid either washing out the black tones into grays or collapsing picture information into the signal clipping that occurs a small distance below the black level (known as ''crushing the blacks''). When a monitor is properly adjusted, the rightmost pluge bar should be just barely visible, while the left two should appear indistinguishable from each other and completely black. Also in the bottom section are two sections that contain -In-phase and +Quadrature signals (see

YIQ YIQ is the color space used by the analog NTSC color TV system. ''I'' stands for ''in-phase'', while ''Q'' stands for ''quadrature'', referring to the components used in quadrature amplitude modulation. Other TV systems used different color spa ...

), centered on black level and having the same gain as the color burst signal; these show up on the pattern as a square of very dark blue, and a square of very dark purple. On a vectorscope, they appear as two short lines ninety degrees apart. These are used to ensure that the television receiver is properly demodulating the 3.58

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...

color subcarrier portion of the signal. The vectors for the -I and +Q blocks should fall exactly on the I and Q axes on the vectorscope if the chrominance signal is demodulated properly. These bars give rise to the former portion of the casual term ''bars and tone''. Typically, a

television network A television broadcaster or television network is a telecommunications network for the distribution of television show, television content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or ...

TV station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth's ...

, or other originator of video programming transmits SMPTE color bars together with a continuous 1,000 Hz

sine wave A sine wave, sinusoidal wave, or sinusoid (symbol: ∿) is a periodic function, periodic wave whose waveform (shape) is the trigonometric function, trigonometric sine, sine function. In mechanics, as a linear motion over time, this is ''simple ...

before sending program material, in order to assert ownership of the transmission line or medium, and so that receiving stations and intermediary telecommunications providers may adjust their equipment. Likewise, producers of television programs typically record ''bars and tone'' at the beginning of a videotape or other recording medium so that the playback equipment can be

calibrated In measurement technology and metrology, calibration is the comparison of measurement values delivered by a device under test with those of a calibration standard of known accuracy. Such a standard could be another measurement device of known ...

. Often, the name or

callsign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assi ...

of the TV station, other information such as a real-time clock, or another signal source is graphically superimposed over the bars.

Analog NTSC

Values of 75% (75/7.5/75/7.5) SMPTE ECR 1-1978 color bars as analog NTSC signals: ''Note: IRE units apply to both NTSC

composite video Composite video, also known as CVBS (composite video baseband signal or color, video, blanking and sync), is an analog video format that combines image information—such as brightness (luminance), color (chrominance), and synchronization, int ...

and broadcast signals while mV values only apply to NTSC composite video.
Values sourced from the Tektronix TSG95 test pattern generator manual''

Digital video

For digital video sources, the 10-bit

YCbCr YCbCr, Y′CbCr, also written as YCBCR or Y′CBCR, is a family of color spaces used as a part of the color image pipeline in digital video and digital photography, photography systems. Like YPbPr, YPBPR, it is based on RGB primaries; the two ...

values for SD color bars are based on the SMPTE formula for Y from the NTSC system (Y = 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B). The following table show the expected digital values, for example when measured using a signal analyzer. Note: Values sourced from "''Leader Teleproduction Test Volume 3 Number 4 - Digital Video Levels''" The colors below are presented using

sRGB sRGB (standard RGB) is a colorspace, for use on monitors, printers, and the World Wide Web. It was initially proposed by HP and Microsoft in 1996 and became an official standard of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as IEC 6 ...

transfer of CSS. Since sRGB is the standard colorspace for webpages and computer screens, this gives only an idea of the intended colors. They are not completely representative of how they look on TV displays, since these follow the ITU-R BT.1886 standard, specifying a different

gamma correction Gamma correction or gamma is a Nonlinearity, nonlinear operation used to encode and decode Relative luminance, luminance or CIE 1931 color space#Tristimulus values, tristimulus values in video or still image systems. Gamma correction is, in the s ...

value, and thus colors below will look darker on such a display, and those darker colors will be the reference ones. The off-by-one errors (for example 254 instead of 255 and 1 instead of 0) happen because the 8 bit Y'PbPr values were used when decoding to R'G'B', if you use 10-bit Y'PbPr that does not happen. Y'PbPr (and

Y'CbCr YCbCr, Y′CbCr, also written as YCBCR or Y′CBCR, is a family of color spaces used as a part of the color image pipeline in digital video and photography systems. Like YPBPR, it is based on RGB primaries; the two are generally equivalent, ...

) values of 75% (100/0/75/0) SMPTE ECR 1-1978 color bars (0.75 * 219 + 16 = 180) using BT.709-2 matrix coefficients as written in RP 219:2002: The source data for 10-bit and 12-bit Y'PbPr is 8-bit Studio R'G'B', so 10-bit data is not just a bitshift operation (that means multiply by 4) from 8-bit Y'PbPr, as usually the case. For example, for 75% Blue 28-212-120 would be just 112-848-480, but it is actually 111-848-481. Per ITU-R BT.2111-2 TABLE 2

SMPTE RP 219:2002 (HDTV version)

An extended version of SMPTE Color Bars signal, developed by the Japanese

Association of Radio Industries and Businesses The , commonly known as , is a standardization organization in Japan. ARIB is designated as the center for promotion of the efficient use of the radio spectrum and the designated frequency change support agency. Its activities include those previo ...

as ARIB STD-B28 and standardized as SMPTE RP 219:2002 (High-Definition, Standard-Definition Compatible Color Bar Signal) was introduced to test

signal with an aspect ratio of 16:9 that can be down converted to a

SDTV Standard-definition television (SDTV; also standard definition or SD) is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. ''Standard'' refers to offering a similar resolution to the ...

color bar signal with an aspect ratio of either 4:3 or 16:9. The Color Bar signal is generated with unconventionally slow rise and fall time value to facilitate video level control and monitor color adjustments of HDTV and SDTV equipment. Digital test images generated following the RP 219:2002 specifications and adapted to perfectly fit 114 standard and non-standard resolutions for both 16bpp and 8bpp, are freely available in the COLOR dataset of the TESTIMAGES archive. Later RP 219:2002 became RP 219-1:2014, with RP 219-2:2016 and ARIB STD-B66 adding details for UHD. ITU-R Rec. BT.2111 and ARIB STD-B72 further added versions with PQ / HLG HDR transfer functions and wide color gamut (BT.2020), which additionally have 100% saturated colors at the top and BT.709 bars at right bottom and left bottom; the 75% gray horizontal bar in the middle is changed to grayscale stair steps.

Values

The values of 100% (100/0/100/0) SMPTE RP 219:2002 color bars (1.00 * 219 + 16 = 235) using BT.709 matrix coefficients (only white and black are the same using BT.601 matrix), taken from the standard:

ITU-R The ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) is one of the three sectors (divisions or units) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and is responsible for radio communications. Its role is to manage the international radio-frequenc ...

Rec. BT.1729 specified the last two 100% colors, green and magenta. It also specified all 100% colors for BT.601 matrix, not only BT.709.

SMPTE ECR 1-1978 (SDTV)

Analog NTSC

Digital video

SMPTE RP 219:2002 (HDTV version)

Values

References

See also