16bpc

[Mylenium]

All your formats are 8 bpc, so on the output side it’s not really much benefit working with 16 bpc files. However, working in 16 bpc will also affect AE’s internal pipeline and still improve some things. You will for instance experience less banding even if your footage is “flattened” to 8 bpc on output. So technically it’s not a waste entirely but considering what compression on DVD and DV does it may not always be worth the effort and longer rendering times.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Jatin Makwana]

thanks for that. any idea which formats are 16bpc?
also what kinds of things will i see the best improvement between 8 and 16. i cant always see any change.

[Mylenium]

Certain Quicktime CoDecs, Tiffs, Photoshop files, SGI images, IFFs, RLA/ RPF, OpenEXR and a few others can store 16 bpc or even more. Most likely candidates for improvements are effects that cover a lot of screen space. e.g. if you have a diagonal gradient across the entire screen it will always show banding in 8bpc. It will look much smoother in 16 bpc. The same goes for Blurs and Glows with large radii and some other effects.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Jerry Witt]

jat,

I used to be in the same boat. 90% of my work ended up on DV or DVD. But lately I’ve been doing more uncompressed work. I’m going out via a Aja io/LA. The difference is VERY noticeable. Even if your work IS going to DV, you will see better final output if you use gradients, feathers blurs or color tweaks.

[Jatin Makwana]

thanks for that, its quite interesting.
i always thought that firewire out didnt mess with the quility of the image but the codec you used.
would you have a clear example or test for this noticable difference?

thanks

jat