DV to 10-bit discussion

[Shane Ross]

I believe that you will be hard pressed to see a difference. Seriously…I doubt there really is much difference, as the software upconvert in FCP is really good.

I have gone from DV to 10-bit (both render and recapture) and really saw no difference. Now I am upconverting DVCPRO HD to 10-bit uncompressed HD via software upconvert. No difference.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[David Roth weiss]

Thanks Shane,

That’s what I was hoping to hear, as redigitizing would require more time and drive space than I’m wishing to invest at his point.

DRW

[Shane Ross]

Yeah, I talked about this with people at three post production companies out here and they all agree. Thus the beauty of FCP…

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Dndobson]

You’ll still need the drive space for 10bit — in fact you’ll have both DV footage and the rendered 10 bit on your drives.

[David Roth weiss]

That is true, but at least I won’t be capturing material additional that, with Media Manager involved, might be somewhat different than what I’m desiring.

[Shane Ross]

That is the BIGGEST plus to simply upconverting. You know that your timeline will be exactly how you edited it from the start.

I have used the Media Manager a grand total of three times to consolidate media or prep for upconvert, and one of those times it had problems linking to the correct items. 33%….I don’t like those odds. Not when a simple upconvert/render does it all.

And yeah, you need high speed drives.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Chris Poisson]

I upconvert aomwtimes too for the sake of graphics quality, but more often than not I capture 8bit (not 10 bit, a waste IMO) just to save space. I actually like the look of capturing DV to 8bit via component, plus I don’t have to worry about those pesky six extra pixels missing from the DV clips. Just my dos pesos.

Have a wonderful day.

[Trevor Ward]

1. how do you upconvert once it’s all captured? Capture as normal, new sequence that is 10bit, then place clips and render?

2. Is there an advantage of upconverting to 10bit since the footage came from a miniDV camera at 25mb stream? Is the purpose for going to broadcast quality? Or is it better for big screen projection? If only going to DVD, does it do anything at all since it gets compressed again?

-trevor ward
orlando, fl

[Jeremy Garchow]

Don’t you use the Media Manager to recompress anyway?

I recapture, but I guess I’m old school in that sense. I have had really good luck with Media manager and recapturing. Now, if I could only have an ‘offline’ codec that was 720×486, it would make my life so much easier.

Jeremy

[David Roth weiss]

[Trevor Ward] “1. how do you upconvert once it’s all captured? Capture as normal, new sequence that is 10bit, then place clips and render?

Yes!

2. Is there an advantage of upconverting to 10bit since the footage came from a miniDV camera at 25mb stream? Is the purpose for going to broadcast quality? Or is it better for big screen projection? If only going to DVD, does it do anything at all since it gets compressed again?”

There would be no advantage to me if thats all I was doing, but, in this case about two thirds of the project is comprised of DaVinci color corrected 10-bit uncompressed and the other third, the new material, is DV thats ultimately going to be color corrected on the DaVinci. Plus there are graphics and animated still photos that I’d also like at 10-bit. As an example of that, we have a book cover with red text that was looking horrible in when compressed to DV. Now, after I replaced the same graphic in the 10-bit timeline, its stunning. The difference in that one graphic made me determined to do them all.

So, in this case, the workflow I’ve decided upon is to copy everything from the DV timeline to a 10-bit timeline, and now I’m going through the entire project and match framing to the source and replacing all 10-bit video, graphics, and stills. Its actually not as horrible as it sounds… Its only taken me a couple of hours to get half way through the entire 86-minute timeline. Perhaps I should have edited the entire project in 10-bit throughout, but the downside would have been either, lots of rendering or lots and lots of drive space.

DRW