10bit editing with Decklink HD and OpenHD (again)

[Eric Goldstein]

Hi,

As far as I know the Decklink cards are are 10 bit capable. As I understand it, Premiere Pro uses AVI wrappers. AVI is 8 bit not 10 bit. So, I don’t how Premiere Pro could be truly 10 bit.

There is a solution that we are working with now. We’re using a product called CineForm (www.cineform.com). Cineform is a codec that uses wavelet technology for a truly lossless compression and has a number of special features when working blue or green screen. The codec however wouldn’t work in 10 bit with Premiere Pro except that CineForm has designed an arithmatic engine that among other things modifies the AVI to accept 10 bit information.

It’s a great product, check it out.

Hope this helps,

Eric

Eric Goldstein
Giraffe Film Company
Los Angeles
eric@giraffefilm.com

[Diethelm Fischer]

Maybe I’ve been misunderstood. I didn’t say that the card isn’t capable of 10bit. What I’m saying is that the processing in Premiere Pro
when exporting 10bit files isn’t lossless because of 8-bit processing. I approved it in the previously linked message and it was confirmed by
Michael Gro

[Eric Goldstein]

Hi Diethelm,

The point I was making was that Premiere Pro 1.5 is an 8 bit application. Version 2. will be 10 bit. You can’t work in 10 bit on Premiere Pro now, except if you are working with Cineform.

Further, AVI is 8 bit not 10 bit (unlike Quicktime). Even though Premiere 2 will be a 10 bit app, anytime it interacts with AVI you will have an 8 bit result.

When you install the Cineform software it installs not only an excellent codec, but adds code to Premiere Pro, which in part rewrites the AVI (the wrapper) to allow it to use 10 bit. Currently the Cineform software works with Premiere Pro, Synthetic Apperture’s color correction software and After Effects. Also the Cineform arithmatic engine is real time, which the Premiere Pro engine is not.

As a note, Cineform is not dependent on the i/o card and can work with Deck Link as well as the AJA cards and others.

Best,

Eric

Eric Goldstein
Giraffe Film Company
Los Angeles
eric@giraffefilm.com

[Michael Großmann]

Hallo,

AVI is just a Container, as well as Quicktime is. The bitcount of a frame is stored in the “Video Stream Format”(strf) a part of the AVI header.
Indeed in Microsoft’s AVI standard only specific values for bitCount are defined namely: 0, 1, 4, 8, 16, 24 and 32 bit per pixel.
(msdn.microsoft.com:BITMAPINFOHEADER)

But it is also true that the length of the biBitCount variable in the struct BITMAPINFOHEADER is WORD which means 2 bytes or
16 bits unsigned integer values form 0 to 2^(16)-1=65535. So even files with 30 bit (3 * 10bit for R+G+B) per pixel or even more can be stored.
The pixel organisation of the 10bit 4:2:2 YUV codec of Decklink HD is shown here https://developer.apple.com/quicktime/icefloe/dispatch019.html#v210
And if you say this is only Quicktime then I can tell you that the “mplayer for windows” (a port of “mplayer for linux”) can display 10bit Mov files by using the Video for Windows library BMDCodecLib.dll the AVI codec of the Decklink HD.
As I said before AVI is just a container.

You said “… adds code to Premiere Pro, which in part rewrites the AVI (the wrapper) to allow it to use 10 bit”
In principle the only thing that has to be changed in the AVI header itself is a single number to move from 8bit to 10bit per color component.
If the Decklink render engine would be better then 10bit export would be possible for this codec as well, but unfortunately it is not.

Regarding to the compatibility of Decklink HD-SDI I/O and Cineform I found this: from the “Cineform – Frequently Asked Questions” website:
“Why doesn’t Prospect HD support Blackmagic’s Decklink cards?”
The next thing is that ProspectHD only allows 10bit 4:2:2 not 10bit 4:4:4. (https://www.cineform.com/technology/NewWorkflowWhitePaper.pdf)

BTW when you try to export 10bit cineform files with After Effects are you able to set “trillions of colors”?

Regards

M.Gro