-
10-Bit Color in El Capitan: A sign of things to come in FCPX?
I figured you guys might be interested in this: 4K and 5K iMacs Support 10-Bit Color Depth on OS X El Capitan & Apple Is Paving the Way for 10-Bit Color with Its Latest OS X Update
So we now have support for 10-bit color depth native in the OS (finally!). Given that Final Cut Pro X already supports 10-bit video via hardware IO, I feel like it’s got to make an appearance in the viewers on this next update. From what I’ve read on Mac Rumors and No Film School, it’s currently supported on the Mac Pro, some 15″ Retina Macbook Pros and Retina iMacs. I haven’t moved on from 10.10 yet (damn you Media Composer), but this has me really excited as both of my displays are 10-bit panels. This is also great news for the Adobe guys, as this would bring the OS X apps back to parity with their Windows counterparts. At least it will when Adobe gets around to enabling it, which shouldn’t be too long given their recent track record. Currently it’s only supported in Photos and Preview, but I would be very surprised if we didn’t see numerous creative apps taking advantage of this very soon.
On a side note, I’m curious if we’ll see Metal support added in Apple and Adobe’s next updates. We know it’s eventually headed to Adobe, and of course Apple will utilize it. It’s much more a question of when rather than if. What sort of improvements can we expect? Does anyone know if using it in the FxPlug framework would add any measurable improvements to existing plugins? Will we see it used to speed up the sometimes slow UI animations in FCPX?
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
________________________________________ -
13 Replies
-
[Nicholas Zimmerman] “This is also great news for the Adobe guys, as this would bring the OS X apps back to parity with their Windows counterparts.”
Yes.
-
how does one test to see if you are getting 10-bit video out of your i/o (aja or black magic)?
Brooks Tomlinson
“I dream in 32bit float” -
[Brooks Tomlinson] “how does one test to see if you are getting 10-bit video out of your i/o “
9 out of 10 times you won’t notice in normal use cases and it’s actually considered to be a bit of a fallacy by many. Even if the owners of 10bit systems won’t generally want to admit to it. 😉 But whether you have 10bit output is obviously only relevant if you in fact also have a 10bit display, the needed GPU and most of all appropriate drivers. Do you?
But you can find a 10bit test image here for example: https://bit.ly/1kH4muc If you see obvious banding, it’s not displaying 10bit. Raise the gradient steps minimally and already you won’t see any banding in either case.
– RK
____________________________________________________
Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
[Robin S. Kurz] “9 out of 10 times you won’t notice in normal use cases and it’s actually considered to be a bit of a fallacy by many. Even if the owners of 10bit systems won’t generally want to admit to it. ;)”
I’m stoked that Apple has finally implemented deep color. I think that a 10-bit display pathway is really important if you’ve profiled your monitor and are trying to using color management for accurate color on your GUI. Applying a display LUT on an 8-bit pathway is practically guaranteed to introduce visible banding where none exists in the source image.
To head off any argument, I am happy to stipulate that color management on the desktop is not a normal use case.
Of course, knowing of Brooks by reputation, I’d suggest he’s not exactly pushing the normal use case either. Brooks, as far as I know, Smoke and Flame are 8-bit on the GUI only, even on Linux with 10-bit capable Quadro cards and Eizo displays.
SCRATCH 8.4 supports 10-bit display on El Capitan. They’re the first ones out of the gate that I know of.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “SCRATCH 8.4 supports 10-bit display on El Capitan. They’re the first ones out of the gate that I know of.”
Good to know. Thanks for the heads up! They’d be the first that I know of also.
– RK
____________________________________________________
Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
And Resolve 12.1, updated today, is the second.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Ooh. Nice.
____________________________________________________
Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
Thanks Walter you are exactly correct :), I was looking for definitive proof. The black magic guys said you can run it into ultra scopes and find out, but couldn’t find my dvi adapter. I’ll have to test that out sometime soon.
But I did find out by trial and error exactly what Walter just said.
Also in my quest to find out if mac can out put a 10-bit signal at all (hd-sdi, a respected college says it can’t do 10 bit at all) I found out that no matter what I did in premiere on mac. The output was always 8-bit.
I had my Pablo Rio feeding a gradient into sdi 1, and my mac feeding sdi 2. I couldn’t get them to match till I used the blackmagic media program. Then my two displays matched perfectly.
Anyone know what I’m missing in premiere?
I want to see what resolve and the 10-bit option looks like on the new 5k mac!
Brooks Tomlinson
“I dream in 32bit float” -
Okay, took a little bit, but Found out for sure you can have 10-Bit export from mac thru I/O. I ran a 10-bit signal from my pc, and mac thru the same Flanders monitor. Then just switched from sdi1 to sdi2. It matched.
Also, I called blackmagic and they confirmed as well.
Brooks Tomlinson
“I dream in 32bit float” -
IO devices like the AJA Kona and IO cards have been 10 bit for quite some time. WELL BEFORE El Capitan came out. The OS being 10-bit and IO cards outputting 10-bit from the NLE have zero connection. FCP 7 output 10-bit video via IO. As did FCP 6….it’s nothing new.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up