Method

Video colour bars

Colour-bars detection (head window only)

What we measure and how

Sampled-frame heuristic for SMPTE / EBU colour bars: each candidate frame in the first `window_s` seconds is downsampled and matched against the canonical column-saturation signature. Scope is **head-only** — bars in real broadcast deliveries only ever appear in the head slate, so the check samples only `[0, window_s]` and never scans the rest of the file. The spec's `colour_bars.mode` enum still accepts `required_head`, `required_tail`, `required_both`, and `forbidden`, but only `required_head` is enforced today; other modes emit a `skipped` check noting the mode is not currently implemented (SQC-886).

Provenance

Standards

SMPTE ECR 1-1978 · EBU 100Hz colour bars

Spec fields consulted

These Universal Media Delivery Profile paths resolve this check's thresholds against your spec snapshot at the moment the job was submitted.

• · assets.video.quality.colour_bars.mode
• · assets.video.quality.colour_bars.window_s

The full UMDP schema: /umdp.

Related methods

• Black frames
• Frozen frames
• Video aliasing
• Video blockiness
• Video blurriness

Method identifier: video_colour_bars