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Talk to me about 10-bit?
Set me straight on the merits and downsides of working in 10-bit versus 8-bit. I’m transferring over to FCP this year from Deiscreet and hitting a few little bumps here and there. Like bit depth choices.
I’ve been using 10-bit uncompressed in FCP for some short little projects, using chromakey, on the assumption that “more is better” when it comes to bit depth… but am constantly running into problems getting my audio to come up (using SDI) when I digitize my footage in 10-bit, and then I get into trouble on my timelines with excessive renders required for every little thing, even stuff that’s not composited and for straight audio cuts. I’m obviously doing something “wrong” but not sure exactly what. The work is getting done regardless but I want to reduce or eliminate uinnecessary render delays where practical, yet keep the highest quality settings that are reasonable.
A buddy never works in anything but 8-bit on a moer or less identical system and is quite happy. I’m not doing any HD here at the moment, 99 percent of my work is SD so, what would you say my best choice is, in setting my preferences for the sequences and project files? My footage is almost exclusively DVC pro 25, going in thru an AJAIO via SDI in and out. Is there a real difference in procedures or techniques working in 10-bit versus 8? Why would my audio be harder to capture in 10-bit?
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15 Replies
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10 bit is better for banding issues and effects rendering. It’s better than 8 bit, the only downside being that it takes up more room.
Audio should follow video, so I’m not sure why you are having trouble with that.
Make sure you use the proper AJA setup for DV in Final Cut Pro>Easy Setup, not DV FireWire.
You should have no trouble with your footage if you use the proper setup.Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
Hi Mark,
I still don’t see the advantage of capturing DV in 10b. Capture DV, drop a Chroma Smoothing filter and render in 10b with “Render all YUV in high precision” for me have been working great.
If you need to make a chroma key with a DVCPro25 camera, plug the composite video OUT of the camera to your AJA (guess have composite video IN) and capture 10b.
rafael -
10 bit really only comes into play if you are doing a lot of compositing, motion graphics or using a bunch of filters, as that kind of workflow will justify the increased file sizes and render times. Or if you are working with Hires files to begin with.
Dual 2.5 G5, IO, Kona LH, IO, Medea Raid, UL4D, NVidia 6800, 4Gig RAM
Octocore 8 GB Ram, Radeon card, MBP, MXO
Windows XP Adobe Studio CS3, Vegas 8.0, Lightwave 9.2, Sound Forge 9, Acid Pro 6, Continuum 5, Boris Red 4, Combustion 2008, Sapphire Effects -
I am one of those like your friend who is more than happy with 8 bit. A lot of my work goes out on Beta which is 8 bit, so 10 bit is a total waste of space and render time. For banding issues, I just add a tiny bit of grain. I never work in 10 bit. Actually, these days I do nearly everything in ProRes.
Have a wonderful day.
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Mark,
Your hard drive subsystem is very important in this equasion. The more throughput you have, the more realtime performance you get in FCP, especailly when editing uncompressed. What do you have???
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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[Chris Poisson] “I never work in 10 bit. Actually, these days I do nearly everything in ProRes.”
Chris ProRes is a 10-bit codec.
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I know that, but it’s not uncompressed which is my point.
Have a wonderful day.
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[Chris Poisson] “t. A lot of my work goes out on Beta which is 8 bit”
Betacam Digital is 10b, Betacam SP is analog, nothing to do with 8 or 10b.
Rafael -
Thanks for the great responses so far. Dave, I’m away from the office till the morning, I’ll get all the system stats and post them then, but for the moment, it is a 2-month old quad core with the IO taking up a firewire connection and an external terrabyte of raid space. Well, half a tb, to be honest, since the array is striped for redundancy. I’ll run system profiler and give you a better idea in the AM.
Meanwhile, if you wanted the best realtime performance in general, while working with DVCpro25 footage, and without sacrificing quality, what flavor of preset would youall prefer? I understand ProRes is especially efficient on drive space, but if I do everything in ProRes am I giving up something else? And which Pro Res, there are a lot to pick from.
Final output is almost always going to be back out SDI to a DVC Pro25 master, plus some h.264 encodes for web and perhaps a DVD burn in DVDSP.
Appreciate any and all suggestions and advice.
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[Mark Suszko] “an external terrabyte of raid space. Well, half a tb, to be honest, since the array is striped for redundancy.”
I suspect the mirrored raid is causing issues for you, as the price of redunancy is not just halved storage volume, but halved throughput as well.
[Mark Suszko] “Meanwhile, if you wanted the best realtime performance in general, while working with DVCpro25 footage, and without sacrificing quality, what flavor of preset would youall prefer?”
Probably just DVCPro50. DVCPro25 has 4:1:1 color depth, and that will ultimately compress the heck out of your text and graphics. But, DVCpro50 is 4:2:2 and thus will leave your text and graphics looking much better. Anything beyond that such as ProRes or 8-bit is really overkill, with much bigger files and not much more.
BTW, the video itself won’t be improved by any of this, just the text and graphics get the benefit.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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