[Ayman Farahat]

Thanks very much, Tim, your answer addresses and confirms my thoughts on this… Sony left me confused between the 10-bit and the 8-bit quality of my footage… my thought was that I probably have got 8-bit footage with their CineAlta F-900 camera, but ingesting that footage in 10-bit in post production will probably give me smoother edges and maybe better compositing… glad to hear experienced thoughts on this point that echo mine.

This forum is awesome and you guys are brilliant in your experience and support. This is the first time I use this place and I’m really grateful for your thoughts and help!!

I had another question on the same project, which I have posted under a different section (Blackmagic Decklink)… I’m using Decklink HD Pro PCIe card to capture this footage, but to my surprise (and frustration) I’ve discovered that Blackmagic people deliberately do not provide support for capturing 1080p/25 (their card supports only 1080i/50); they claim that 1080p/25 is an extremely rare format… and guess what… my footage is 1080p/25 and the last thing I want is to convert my progressive footage into an interlaced one during the capture process (I understand that sfx work yields better/more reliable results when it’s done on progressive rather than interlaced footage). I’m about to take the plunge and spend a couple of grands on the Kona 3 card because it supports the 1080p/25 format, but I was hoping that there is someone out there who might know a way of using the Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro card to capture 1080p/25 footage without converting it into 1080i/50 footage… any thoughts on that?

Many thanks again for all your help!

Cheers,
Ayman

[Ayman Farahat]

thanks, Mark, you make some good points there… cheers! What about 10-bit 4:2:2 as opposed to 8-bit 4:2:2? any thoughts on that? From your experience, is it reasonable to expect from 10-bit 4:2:2 a better gain (than with 8-bit 4:2:2) in terms of image quality and perhaps less trouble (than with 10-bit 4:4:4) in terms of workflow difficulties?

[Ayman Farahat]

Many thanks, Mark, for your response. There will be a significant amount of compositing, fx, coloring, etc. (the whole film was shot on green screen) and this is why I’m thinking of 10-bit vs 8-bit and 4:4:4 vs 4:2:2 although, as you rightly say, the information might not be there in the original footage. The thing is… I’m not sure about the information in the original footage, probably because of my technical naivety, and I don’t know whether the camera and the tape used (as I described them in the first message) captured an 8-bit or a 10-bit image at 4:2:2 or 4:4:4. So… I’m thinking… there is nothing to loose if I go for a 10-bit 4:4:4 capture in post-production… if the information is not there, then I have only lost some disk space. This is, of course, unless there is some technical reason/difficulty that I’m missing, again because of my technical naivety, which would “prevent” me from capturing an 8-bit 4:2:2 footage as 10-bit 4:4:4… any thought on that?

Cheers,
Ayman