[Bj Ahlen]

[IMG-INTERACTIVEMEDIAGURUS] “Don’t believe all of the baloney about AMD having better throughput, etc. As a computer tech with 30 years experience, and 10 years in actually building video systems, AMD makes ok stuff for a gaming system, but Intel smokes them for a top of the line NLE box. Fewer technical problems and compatibility issues than AMD, for sure. Better choice of mobos, etc.”

Tell that to Lucasfilm. They have bought many thousands of AMD Opteron systems for reasons of performance with reliability.

Ditto for Google’s servers, in spite of having Intel’s CEO on their board.

Virtually every Hollywood post facility now uses AMD CPUs, because time is money.

Heck, ask the Lindebooms: Creative Cow is running on AMD Opterons too now.

AMD had problems in the past that were caused by VIA’s buggy peripheral chips. Today NVIDIA makes rock solid peripheral chips for AMD CPUs, and the performance exceeds current Intel capability on 100% of NLE-related benchmarks. Opteron vs. Xeo, AMD X2 vs. Intel dual core, same thing everywhere.

Intel will take one step forward this summer/fall, as will AMD.

Next year, Intel may pass AMD. Or not, it’s just too early to tell.

I have been a professional user of Intel CPUs continuously since the 4004, and have always preferred them over the alternatives.

Until now.

The difference is just too great at this time, and even the most conservative outfits have added Opterons to their workstations (and the X2s are just the same CPUs set up for desktop use with non-ECC RAM access, etc.).

Although if you have other reasons for using Intel CPUs, you’ll still be OK for 64-bit, because Intel had to copy AMD’s 64-bit instructions for compatibility, as all the major software vendors refused to provide a separate version for an incompatible Intel 64-bit architecture. They told Intel to use AMD’s instruction set or write their own software.

Funny that some of the most brilliant aspects of the Opteron architecture were created for DEC’s Alpha CPU which was way ahead of its time.

I have no stock (whether financial or psychological) in either of these companies, but I have to reluctantly give credit to AMD for really having moved computing performance forward significantly, and having done it with substantially less power consumption, which means less heat, less noise, and higher reliability.

Let’s give recognition where recognition is due. Next year it may all be back in Intel’s court…

[Bj Ahlen]

You don’t mention what size you need, but Photoflex has a very nice collapsible 5’x7′ Flexdrop2 screen that’s blue on one side and green on the other.

Excellent non-reflective material that keys really well.

Make sure you’re absolutely sober the first time you fold it, otherwise it may take you a while to figure it out. :O)

[Bj Ahlen]

Thanks for the feedback, everybody!

I don’t like to use a camera I’m not intimately familiar with anyway, but it’s enough work to set up a competent test that I wanted to hear what other people have found first.

[Bj Ahlen]

Configure the media disks as JBOD and use Windows XP software RAID instead.

It should work instantly and give you higher performance, too…

[Bj Ahlen]

You’re repeating my statements, so perhaps it’s time to take a pause.

I know well that FCP has been able to ingest 10-bit video since FCP4, although FCP plug-ins even today can only return 8-bit RGB video. This also leads to lost bits as the original footage is converted from YUV to RGB to YUV again. With the narrow conversion used [8-bit to 8-bit as opposed to 8-bit to 10-bit] you would expect to lose 2 bits, and this could be another reason you’re not seeing a difference.

But I wasn’t referring to FCP’s ability or lack of it. I was referring to the incompatibilities between Apple’s own codecs and the codecs of the companies that make the SDI I/O boards. The forums are full of postings from those who had problems, and I thought this could be the source of your problems (or rather lack thereof, because you are satisfied with what you have).

Perhaps it isn’t common knowledge that the OS doesn’t get much involved in inputting or outputting video for monitoring to a 10-bit card, it’s just data shuffling. I don’t use my graphics card for monitoring, I use a BMD purpose-built card that is not OS-limited to any bit depth.

You say you’re not talking about film, that film is another story. So are you saying that if a digital video file was recorded from a film transfer, it can have 10-bits or more of genuine latitude, but if the video file was captured from a broadcast video camera it is effectively limited to 8-bit, i.e. the output is just padded to 10-bit, 12-bit etc.?

[Bj Ahlen]

Panasonic Varicam, 14 Bit quantization, 10-Bit HD-SDI out, 720p60

I’m still baffled that you can’t see the difference between 10-bit and 8-bit on a Class 1 monitor.

1. Could it be that you don’t set the SDI switch on the Varicam to EE, but to EE/PB? That would pre-filter the signal (on playback) to 8-bit, even though you are feeding it out the SDI connector. It has fooled many pros, see for example https://www.hdforindies.com/2004/06/sata-raid-hd-capture-tests-frc-dvcpro

2. The only other possibility I can think of is that you are having some problem with codecs on the Mac, that has screwed up many Mac users also, as Apple has wanted to have control over the HD codecs, and they like to do things their own way.

…It’s marketing bullshit from the manufactures, besides the first link.
But the first link has nothing to do with video. It’s film, it’s logarithmic
color space – total different story and yes, working with film
demands more than 8-Bit.
Cineon is a video format, not a celluloid format. Used primarily for DI which
simply means transfer from film to video. And working with 10-bit also demands
more than 8-bit. No difference compared to film other than that less expensive video cameras have a couple of stops less range than film (and 8-bit of course has two stops less than 10-bit).

You say there are no 8-bit monitors even? Take a look at https://www.ids-healthcare.com/hospital_management/global/eizo_nanao/color_lcd_monitors/102_0/g_supplier_4.html for some Eizo Nanao certified 10-bit monitors with a billion colors. There are plenty more.
Of course it’s all “marketing bullshit”.

I use a Sony professional CRT monitor fed via a Decklink Extreme card for monitoring, but I’m not the end user of my content.

I shoot 10-bit for the extra latitude it gives me in post, and I am grateful to have it. I shot on film for 30 years, now I’m grateful to not have all the worries of shooting film, even though it can look quite wonderful in 35 mm at least. I do my post work in 10-bit or 16-bit depending on if I use Combustion or After Effects, and my final output is 8-bit of course, whether for DVD or broadcast. Even with the 8-bit eventual output, shooting and posting in 10-bit or better helps me get a nicer look.

Your mileage may vary, so let’s just agree that you don’t find a difference between 10-bit and 8-bit, and I do.

[Bj Ahlen]

[mactrix] “And
I made enough tests with DigiBeta. You don’t have it on tape.

And I made tests with hard disk recording. It’s very difficult to
make the true 10-Bit visible even in HD (video noise is one
reason – aka dithering). It matters only in computer generated
graphics and gradients that don’t exist in “nature” …”

Perhaps you are evaluating the differences between 8-bit and 10-bit on a 6-bit LCD monitor with dithering? Those are quite common, although they are disappearing fast.

I feed a 10-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 SDI signal directly from the camera (Sony DXC-D50WS + CA-D50, same camera head as the high-end DigiBeta) to a BMD Extreme card and use BMD’s 10-bit codec (yes, I tried their 8-bit also). The video noise in my camera is about as low as it gets right now, and it’s not an issue for banding in my case.

I agree that computer generated graphics represent the worst case, but it’s not the only case.

To find unlimited gradients in nature, just look at the sky near the horizon, or the cheek or forehead on a sidelit face, or any of a number of other natural very light textures with a sidelight.

Of course if you’re going for a gritty look (which is totally valid), then none of this matters.

[Bj Ahlen]

Which camera are you using, which connection, which A/D converter?

If you are using a consumer camera or most of the semi-pro cameras, you won’t see any difference between 10-bit and 8-bit, because the camera signal itself doesn’t have a 10-bit range.

From https://www.cineon.com/conv_10to8bit.php: With 10 bits per color over a 2.048 density range, the resulting quantization step size is 0.002 D per code value. This is below the threshold for contour visibility, which insures that no contour artifacts (also known as mach banding) will be visible in images.

From https://www.necdisplay.com/gammacomp/readme.html: The 10-bit resolution provides 4 times as many levels as 8-bit, so color banding problems that occur when using 8-bit tables can be reduced.

From ” target=”_blank”>https://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1109&page=3: [Matrox Parhelia’s] 10-bit colour, as you can see in the graphic, gives a much smoother appearance due to the increased range of available shades.

This matches also my own experience. But only with a broadcast camera that has real 10-bit output.

[Bj Ahlen]

There used to be some DigiBeta equipment that had the last 2 bits set to zero, but that was a very long time ago.

DigiBeta is a pure 10-bit format, and part of the price justification for the cameras is the money that was spent on making sure the user got really good 10-bit out of say a 12-bit or a 14-bit A/D converter and an even deeper DSP.

10-bit means two extra f/stops of freedom to tweak the footage in post, even if the eventual output is in 8-bit.

It also means avoiding a lot of different banding-related artifacts, not only in post processing. If you have to get banding, better to get it in the output format rather than risk having input banding mess up just about anything you do to it in post (if the subject is susceptible to this, which of course is not always the case).

I shoot only 10-bit since mid 2004, and really appreciate the difference.

[Bj Ahlen]

The link is definitely down.

Allume StufIt reads and writes .sit files really well, I have used it for many years.