Prores422 HQ inferior to DVCPRO50 @ SD

[Jerry Hofmann]

If all of your footage is DV50, you’ll gain nada with it transcoding it to ProRes but a larger file size. I’d edit in DVCPRO50 all the way unless you have a ton of graphics that are part of the program… then it might make real sense to go to a 10 bit sequence setting… otherwise I don’t see any advantage working in ProRes with SD sources.

I also don’t believe you gain any advantage in color correction bumping up to 10 bit from an 8 bit source, because you can’t add any real information in the 10 bit files… i.e the “damage” was done when you shot 8 bit to begin with.

IMHO, ProRes’ best use is for any non all “i” frame source (such as HDV), and uncompressed HD… otherwise, editing natively will always give you the best results.

Jerry

[Aaron Neitz]

I’ve always been a huge fan of the Panasonic codecs… we offline edit all our SD work in DV-50. 1st generation from a digibeta – the stuff looks exceptionally good and that 4:2:2 colorspace makes keying a little cleaner.

[Chris Borjis]

[Jerry Hofmann] “I also don’t believe you gain any advantage in color correction bumping up to 10 bit from an 8 bit source, because you can’t add any real information in the 10 bit files… i.e the “damage” was done when you shot 8 bit to begin with.”

I agree you cannot add to what you don’t have but you can surely
minimize the multi-generational loss (of going between apps etc…)
if you keep it all 10-bit.

The post house I work at is pretty much all 10-bit all the time
for SD and HD, (since 1998) though we have been doing some DVCPRO-HD stuff as well.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Borjis] “I agree you cannot add to what you don’t have but you can surely
minimize the multi-generational loss (of going between apps etc…)
if you keep it all 10-bit.”

I honestly have never seen a difference between finishing with an 8bit source or bumping it up to 10bit. There are a lot of people on these forums who believe that 10bit is the only way to go, but I have never seen one instance of bringing in 8bit material as 10bit creating any sort of an advantage. That’s our personal experience.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

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[Chris Borjis]

I guess the main concern is adding graphics and the potential of banding to occur if the graphic images push the limits of 8-bit.

With 10-bit I can rest easy that everything will lay back to Digibeta without banding.

[Aaron Neitz]

I’m with you there. Unless you have lots of graphics or gradients, 8 bit will usually work beautifully.

[Cory Caplan]

Sorry if I didn’t make this clear, but I was comparing the capture from BETA SP via analog component, and IMO, DVCPRO50 trounced prores422 w/ smaller file size. Because it was analog, 10 bit resolution was a possibility, and that is technically an “advantage prores” but no big deal.

A day and a few tests later, I stand by my original assessmnent– dv50 looks clearer with easily visible higher-resolution, with no blurring of details from the original– some noise, yeah, but much more detail.

The source is auto factory footage, many varied shots, if anyone is interested. I could see how vain females might like the “smoothing” effect prores has in similarly colored areas… But I didn’t run any comparisons with people.

🙂

As opposed to 10-bit vs 8-bit on 8-bit source, my thought was simply increased color resolution, ie “finer” control. Theoretically, I should have much “finer” control, and apps like color that use curves would make smoother corrections, color-blend wise, I would think think, in theory, but I’ve never really tested 1 vs. the other.

Anybody w/ real world 8 vs. 10 bit COLOR experience wanna share? I’m thinking I might go prores anyway, because multi-generational DVCPRO HD scares me. Plus I feel like DVCPRO HD crushes blacks too much, but I might be imagining it.

[Peter Dewit]

You realize that DVCPRO50’s quality is more comparable to Digibeta’s than BetaSP’s right? You’re simply comparing footage from different quality sources. To do a real test compare the same footage in Prores and in DVCPRO50 or uncompressed.

I’ve tried it on BetaSP footage. After transcoding footage to ProresHQ the difference between the Prores and an uncompressed version were barely noticable evne on a professional monitor.