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10 bit colour editing
Hello, I’m Bruno, new to this forum, nice to be part of this community.
I’m kind of new in video editing (used to do it 8 years ago, and stopped nwo i find myself eaten by the new techonlogy)
Not so long ago I purchased a Panasonic gh5s, Im just diggin the 10 bit format, and was curious on why I can’t fully color grade those 10 bit in Adobe Premiere… It’s hard to explain myself since english is not my native language but I’ll try, you might correct me if I’m wrong. I understand that 8 bit colour gives you 255 shades of Green, Red or Blue for you to manipulate when you cpolour correct, while 10 bit gives you near 1024 shades? If I got that wrong, just ignore the rest of my post, but if that’s correct, I wonder why when I try to colour grade a 10 bit file in adobe premiere and lets say for exaple I apply the effect “Levels” or when I check vectorscope I only can modify from 0 to 255 (in the level case) or why just shows from 0 to 255 in the vectorscope? It’s something Im doing wrong/not understanding?
Thanks in advance for your patience and apologises for my bad english. Have a goos day all! -
6 Replies
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Bruno,
you have stepped into a very challenging area ☺ The answer is that you can do what you want to do but there is not a very satisfactory process to do so. You have to be very persistent.
Usually people use 10 bit (and higher) media as a source for HDR projects.There is a good section in the Premiere manual at: https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/pdf/premiere_pro_reference.pdf
Search for “High Dynamic Range Controls”. Basically you have to enable HDR in various places to get to the required mode.
The challenge is monitoring your grade as you do it. You will want a monitor that can display 10 bit data. These are starting to get cheaper now. You may need a graphics chip that supports 10 bit but even with that only the workstation chips (from NVidia) can be used by Premiere (through the OpenGL interface).
What I do is render the project and upload it to YouTube. Then I can watch it on my monitor. Not satisfactory but better than nothing.Carlos Quintero has a good video about how to upload:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnk1Nm5LNN4There are a couple of articles, from good sources, that explain some of the limitations.
https://mixinglight.com/color-tutorial/hdr-essentials-getting-setup-in-premiere-pro/
and
https://www.mysterybox.us/blog/2016/11/17/adobe-premiere-cc-2017-real-world-feature-review -
Marks, infinite thanks for such detailed reply. I got most of it… so basically 10 bits is only used for HDR videos? What I was wondering was if I could use that 10 bit information to have a more detailed steps of shades when grading my footage.. I got that part wrong then? In my head the idea of working with 10 bit video was that when I color grade those files, insted of havnig the 255 steps of shades I’d have 1024 (aprox ??) to mess arround and be more precise in my grading, even if im not willing to work with HDR. Is that wrong? Am I missing something there? Btw the HDR articles are very helpful but I think I had a misconception of what 10 bit meant. THanks again for your time!
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HDR mode is what you want.
For example bring up the Lumetri Scopes panel (I’m using CC 2019 but I’m pretty sure it has been like this for a while). At the bottom right you will see a dropdown that lets you choose from: 8 bit, float or HDR. Select HDR and you will now see the scopes go up to 10,000. This is in nits as required for HDR but if you have 10 bit clips you will be able to see more than the 8 bit data points.On the Lumetri panel, on the menu select HDR (then re-check the scopes are still on HDR) and you will have more options.
This should let you use the full 10 bit range and then some.
When you render a project like this it will not necessarily be an HDR Render, you can still choose what format you want.
If you want to use all 10 bits on a Rec 709 time line, i.e. not be HDR just have more color on a SDR project? I’ve not tried that , perhaps someone else can chip in that has tried it.. I expect it will go back to 8 bit when you render.
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Excellent, Im gonna mess arround a little with that then. Mark thanks again for your help! Really appreciate that! Have a nice day!
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from my understanding, the scopes don’t determine quality. premiere works in 32bpc and then either dithers back to 8bit , 10, 16 bit on export. you can keep rec. 2020 colors from clipping to rec709 if you export in one of four special HDR PQ codecs. Grading in HDR requires an external monitor because premiere’s timeline is hardcoded to rec. 709 so you won’t ‘see’ the HDR.
10 bit and Rec. 2020 are separate things. precision and color gamut respectively.
unless you’re trying to upload HDR, there is no particular advantage to trying to setup HDR as the GH5s only has 12.5 f-stops of data. If it can’t record PQ, then you’re effectively baking in a fake HDR with warped brightness.
Indeed, this article says to record in V-log-L for maximum dynamic range, then transform to PQ in the grading stage.article is not premiere, but a good read.
https://www.mysterybox.us/blog/2018/1/8/panasonic-gh5s-hdr10The sticking point here is that premiere uses PQ for the luma curves, but HDR10/HLG uses Rec. 2100(which, afaik is not supported by premiere at all) Another problem is that lumetri’s lut checkbox disables HDR mode completely.
-export HDR to youtube from premiere
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2293073supported exports for HDR
• HEVC .MP4 | 10bit | Bt.2020 | PQ• H.264 .MP4 | 10bit | Bt.2020 | PQ
• JPEG 2000 .MXF | 12bit | Bt.2020 | PQ
• Sony XAVC-Intra .MXF | 10bit | Bt.2020 | HLG
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2612343 -
Wow Chrtis that’s a lot of information to dig in. I’m gonna do my studies respectively.. it’s amazing how much one can miss being out the business for that long. I appreciate a lot the time taken to write that reply! Thanks!!
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