Blackmagic Codec vs Apple Uncompressed Hell

[Mactrix]

Take a look here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=124&postid=859068

What formats are you working with? In 99% you won’t need 10-Bit.

[Accountneedsrealnameupdate]

Thanks for the reply and link, however it doesn’t solve our problem, we know all about the “High Precision” workaround and it was the first thing we tried. I’m not sure you say that 99% of the time we don’t need the 10bit codec, do you mean the BM 10 bit or 10bit vs 8 bit? We get source and output to dBeta, often creating elements in 3d (PC) and compositing in after effects.

At present, using the Tiger machines we are unable to lay off renders that work fine on a Panther machine, they were all rendered to the Blackmagic 10bit from after effects but now the tiger machine sees them as Uncompressed 10bit and messes up the luma. This is a serious problem and I can’t believe that no-one else is affected by it. The Apple Uncompressed 10bit is not as good as the Blackmagic codec and there is a definite luma change between them. Please try rendering from After Effects(Mac) to the BM 10bit and Apple 10bit codecs and see that they are not the same, and not just in Quicktime playback either, the two codecs will not match.

Please give us back the option to use the Blackmagic codecs on Tiger if desired, I know Apple is the one putting on the pressure to switch but we’re the ones that have to deliver consistent material. We do DVD menu animations so have no latitude in chroma or luma shifts at all but any final cut users who adds motion graphics or effects from After Effects are affected by this. Even if it was just the quicktime playback that was affected by the apple codec adjusting the gamma for screen playback it would be reason enough to want to use the BM codec but that output to tape and broadcast monitor are both messed up leaves no doubt about it as far as I’m concerned.

We have had Decklink cards in house since they came out, we were able to move from the Voodoo cards with no problems but now due to software “upgrades” we’re getting completely screwed.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who feels like this, anyone I’ve explained the problem to has been shocked that we’re being asked to stop using a great codec in favor of a seriously flawed one.

Please help us out here!!

Glenn Stewart
1k Studios

[Mactrix]

Hi,

no, you’re not the only one with that kind of problem.
An like I explained also when you work with a complet
other format like DV the BMD-codecs might affect your
renderings.
This issue occurs on quite every BMD-workstation I’ve
worked on. I am not sure yet if it’s a BMD or an Apple
codec-issue …

With 99% I meant that in most cases you wouldn’t need
10-Bit because you have no visual quality enhancements.
DigiBeta e.g. is not a 10-Bit format. It stores luma
information in 8-Bit and chroma with more than 8-Bit
but not true 10-Bit. If you want to preserve the higher
chroma information you must capture in 10-Bit but in
my tests you won’t gain much … I know it’s not what
you would like to here but I would suggest to work in
8-Bit with BMD-cards, since it’s the easiest way to get
out of trouble …

[Carsten Orlt]

Hi
the only way I could figure out to avoid the gamma shift problem is to use the Animation codec as an in-between.
So export what you need from FCP as Animation codec, do your AE magic and render out as Animation codec again from AE. Import to FCP put in timeline and render. Comparing the original with the reimported clip you will still see a gamma shift but it is so minimal that you can’t pick it anymore.
give it a try…

[Accountneedsrealnameupdate]

Thanks again for the replies, just to get the damn thing out the door I changed the sequence to 8bit and playing around with the render settings got (both the high precision RGB and 8bit settings worked).

I am disgusted though, we’ve been rendering to 10bit for years, cutting down on render time on the final cut stations and everything has been fine. It was a struggle to get the animators to render to the Blackmagic codec and now I’ll have to tell them all to go back to the animation codec, resulting in long renders on the edit machines.

Anyone from Blackmagic got any comments on this? We have about 12 of your cards in house and are really unhappy with the current situation, I was supposed to be at home today and had to come in to “fix” this layoff, I’ll be happy to get this one out the door but I am not happy that I will have to re-render every 10bit render to 8bit to avoid luma shifts.

Glenn Stewart
1K Studios

[Jeff Bernstein]

First off, let’s get one thing straight. Digi-Beta is a 10-bit format. Their camcorder, however, is 8-bit. End of story.

Second, Glenn, you are not alone. I think the issue is that so few people test or even bother to hook up a waveform monitor, that very few people even notice. We’ve been doing a series of tests and found jumps in Gamma as you have found. You will even see jumps in Gamma between multiple codecs, especially under Panther. You will find these jumps between Blackmagic, Animation, DV. Doesn’t matter. All will exhibit inaccurate conversion.

We brought this to the attention of Blackmagic several months ago with plenty of corroberating evidence and nothing has been done. I find it quite odd that a company that was founded on the whole principle of color fidelity and accuracy, now finds itself with this issue and is not running to fix it.

This issue affects those who need their files to run on other systems. Even more interesting is that if you have archived a project under Panther, then restore it under Tiger, you are really screwed. You better restore your Panther OS. If you replaced your hardware recently with a box that only runs Tiger, then you are SOL.

This problem is real and needs a real solution, real fast.

Jeff Bernstein

Digital Desktop Consulting
Apple Pro Video VAR
XSAN Certified

323-653-7611

[Accountneedsrealnameupdate]

Thanks Jeff, I was starting to wonder if it was just my system or that I was being completely unreasonable due to the lack of interest in this. And I agree, since the voodoo cards 10bit was the selling point, to go back to 8bit for us is a step back. I’m not saying 8bit makes a lot of sense in a lot of cases but with motion graphics it’s not the best option.
Glenn Stewart
1k Studios
PS I’m still amazed that anyone encoding mpeg2 from animation (or any other RGB) codec quicktime is completely messing up their luma, there is a huge bug in the YUV conversion, the pros know about it and encode from YUV codecs but no-one fixes it, Unbelievable!!

[Mactrix]

Hi Jeff and Glenn,

the 10-Bit issue is one thing. But BMD-codecs are affecting other formats
as well. I saw FCP setups with no BMD card installed working in DVCPRO HD
and all rendered parts had luma shifts. The BMD-codecs were installed and
throwing them out fixed the problem. I saw this also with DV and Photo-JPEG.
So there is a problem in 8-Bit as well …

[Michael Lazar]

Let me also put my 2c in here and ask (again) that whatever BMD does to the codecs installed with the card drivers it also does to the software codecs. Right now there’s no way to get luma matching between systems with Decklink cards and the new codecs installed and systems with only the older software codecs installed (i.e. that have no Decklink card).

Even if the software codecs simply matched the new luma behavior I would be happy.

Michael Lazar

[Andrew Yoole]

Glenn, just to make you feel less alone, I switched all the systems in our facility back to OS 10.3.9 / FCP 4.5 for exactly the same reasons. The nature of our work is that we are often pulling in archived footage and mixing it with new. The gamma shifts were ugly and obvious in almost every job. Now it’s getting to the stage that software upgrades and content requirements are FORCING us to move to Tiger, but we can’t. If the situation is not resolved when we do our next hardware upgrades, I will certainly be comparing the competitor’s options.