-
BMCC alternate workflow
-
[Shawn Miller] “John Brawley’s blog and Blackmagic’s website both report that it’s 12 bit. “
Well, they say the raw files that the camera records are 12-bit. There are no real specifics about the conversion used by any of the CinemaDNG plug-ins and whether they preserve that. I would presume a photographic plug-in would, but that’s only an assumption.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Didn’t mean to sound like I was downplaying it. Certainly a very worthwhile and illuminating test.”
I didn’t mean to sound like I thought you sounded like you were downplaying anything. I just wanted to point out that even though it’s a completely synthetic test, it does have real-world implications.
I also didn’t mean to imply that you need 10b to get great imagery — just that there are some cases where you do want those extra 2 bits of precision.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
FWIW – I reran the tests making sure the 16bpc AE comp export to PR4444 was set to trillions. Again, I’m not seeing anything when I difference-blend the 8-bit uncompressed QT over the Pro4444 in either AE or FCP X.
Also tried 16-bit TIFFs with the QT refs. That doesn’t work. They don’t like 16-bit TIFFs. The 16-bit TIFFs import directly without issue into both FCP X and Media Composer. So, although there may indeed be some truncation issues, the workflow is more than workable at this point.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Shawn Miller] “John Brawley’s blog and Blackmagic’s website both report that it’s 12 bit. “
[Oliver Peters] “Well, they say the raw files that the camera records are 12-bit. There are no real specifics about the conversion used by any of the CinemaDNG plug-ins and whether they preserve that. I would presume a photographic plug-in would, but that’s only an assumption.”
I have confirmed that when AE uses Adobe Camera RAW to import these BMCC CinemaDNG files, it does not clip to 8b.
Opening one of the CinemaDNG files in Photoshop gives you customizable RAW workflow options for color space and depth that are unavailable to the user when opening them in AE. To figure out what AE was doing under the hood, I saved out a few variations of one of the frames (with no adjustments) from Photoshop, where I could customize the workflow options. I used combinations of 8b and 16b, and Adobe RGB and sRGB, saved them all out as 16b PSDs, and compared them to the same DNG imported into AE (with no adjustments). The 16b sRGB version matched perfectly, while the others all showed differences.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Oliver Peters] “Also tried 16-bit TIFFs with the QT refs. That doesn’t work. They don’t like 16-bit TIFFs.”
I used 16b TIFFs in my test — uncompressed TIFFs worked in QuickTime reference movies (with truncation), but LZW-compressed TIFFs did not.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “but LZW-compressed TIFFs did not”
That must be the case. I’m exporting the TIFFs out of Aperture and they don’t expose that setting in the export presets. I’ll try another time with Lightroom.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Let’s all send some feedback to get Appe to support image sequences in fcpx!
Who’s with me?!?!?!?!?
Hip hip! Hooray!
-
[Jeremy Garchow] “Let’s all send some feedback to get Appe to support image sequences in fcpx! Who’s with me?!?!?!?!? Hip hip! Hooray!”
Image sequences are ALWAYS the answer!
Of course, while we’re at it, we could request direct support for the BMCC…
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “Of course, while we’re at it, we could request direct support for the BMCC…”
Why stop there? BMDCC XYZ is an image sequence with RAW. Let’s do it all!
-
I’ve been making too some tests with Photoshop (importing as 8b and 16b) and then bringing the files to AE (difference), and there is no doubt that the .dmg’s are more than 8b depth.
[Walter Soyka] “I used 16b TIFFs in my test — uncompressed TIFFs worked in QuickTime reference movies (with truncation), but LZW-compressed TIFFs did not.”
That’s an interesting finding.
Do you think that the button “For PC/For Mac” on the TIFF export window, could be causing issues (“QT Reference” problems) when not properly set?
(can’t test by my self)[Walter Soyka] “Also, did you change the ProRes 4444 output module’s depth to Trillions of Colors? Ae won’t do this by default, even if you have deep sources, and even if you’re working at 16 bpc, so it’s very easy to accidentally dither down to 8bpc on output.”
When selecting Prores444, the output module changes it self to Trillions Colors, so by default you should be getting more than 8b (supposedly 12b with PR444).
rafael
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up