[Frank Black]

hey Gary, I hear what you’re saying about the “we” — as I started understanding more, I noticed that some of my questions may not be phrased right, and I understand what you mean by “hardware” but even without that the concept of uncompressed revealed itself here with people’s responses. thanks though. i am trying to wrap my head around the ratios that you’re speakin about though… thanks

[Frank Black]

[Walter] You’re welcome. I’m glad I was able to help a bit!

More like 10 bits 🙂

[Frank Black]

Hey Walter, I gotta really thank you man, you’ve really schooled me with these several posts. Everything you taught me, I intended on learning, but I never hoped to learn it on such a level this time around, so thanks a lot, and thanks bringing it down to my level otherwise it would’ve sent me back into circles.

Per your last comment/question about what camera I’m using, I now understand. I thought up to now based on what I’ve been gathering from you that 4:4:4 is what ANY camera captures.

Checked out the link you provided for subsampling and printed it out (your posts have been printed and analyzed too :))

Checked out your site too — you’re in NY!! Me too. Very cool. I thought you were in Europe based on the times I’ve gotten a couple of responses. Well anyway, thanks a lot man. I’ll be looking out for your responses to people’s questions. You really school me on I/O devices. Thanks. Be well man.

[Frank Black]

Theres so much to know Jeff… Thanks man

[Frank Black]

No we’re cool; thanks for the clarification. I was beginning to think that there is more than one way. Thx for the clarification. Happy new year John.

[Frank Black]

Really?! You mean if I hook up an I/O device to a PC w/ Vegas, Vegas will capture through the I/O without playback? Or capture it otherwise without playback? Will it have to be from a camera that has a codec that Vegas will support? What codec?

[Frank Black]

Good stuff. I gotta say, though, from everything I’m learning, there IS playback for copying from the memory card. The cam has to play back in order to even be able to let the files out of the memory card.

[Frank Black]

Walter thank you very much. (Thank you very much)

…I do have some follow-up questions to your answers.

W.S. — That’s a lot of techno-babble to say this: you can lay out colors in a plane. With two coordinates on that plane (the values of the Cb and Cr channels), you can identify a point which corresponds to a specific color. You can then raise or lower the brightness of that specific color (with the value of the Y or luminance channel).

How do you “raise or lower?” Is there a button?

W.S. — Why is this important? Unlike RGB, YCbCr allows for chroma subsampling. Human vision is much more sensitive to changes in brightness than it is to changes in color, so we can reduce the bandwidth required for video by including less color information than luminance information. With 4:2:2 YCbCr, we use only 2 samples in each chrominance channel for every 4 samples in the luminance channel. Essentially, the brightness information is carried at full resolution, but the color information is carried at half-resolution since the human eye is vastly less sensitive to it.

Is there a way to choose b/w RGB and YUV or is it based on what the I/O device offers and even firstly what the camera shoots?

W.S. — The 10-bit part refers to the bit depth, or degree of precision, with which we can describe colors. Imagine the spectrum: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. If you only can only express those colors in the range of 1 to 7, you can’t get any of the gradations in between. If you can express those colors in the range of 1 to 100, or 1 to 1000, though, you can get more and more of the in-between colors, too. The more bits in the bit depth figure, the more subtle gradations in color you can express, and the less banding will be visible in your image.

1. Is 10-bit the highest? What’s the lowest?
2. How do I know what the “range” is for each bit (or is it a minimum of plural bits)?
3. By “subtle,” do you mean good? less noticeable?
4. Is the higher the range, the more “precise” the final color?

W.S. — That said, there are very few 4:4:4 recorders.

1. What different variations can RGB be in — 4:4:4, 4:2:2 (4:2:1)?
2. What will determine whether I get 4:4:4 — the camera? the I/O device?……
….. (your answer to a couple of questions above may already have answered this….

….And, you also said in your response — “Do you get to choose? Not really — it depends what devices you’re connecting. If both devices support 3G SDI, then they can pass RGB or 4:4:4….” So does this mean camera records 444 no matter what, and that if it has 3G SDI outs then it can output 444, and if the I/O device has 3G SDI then it can input 444? And that at the same time the I/O has the choice of inputting YUV? ).

3. And how will 444 be passed to the NLE? Will it still be 444? And if 422 is passed, will it still be 422?

Thank you. Thank you for your explanation of motion adaptive, thank you for everything.

[Frank Black]

Hey Gary,

… what? 🙂

It looks like you’re making an important point, but I don’t understand it.

[Frank Black]

Hey Jeff,
Thanks a lot… To be honest, I’ve already been “uncompressed”… a lot of folks pitched in and I finally understand. The example you give of the four dots does paint a picture though. I’d like to know more from such an angle now. And about the dropped frames you mentioned…

What do you mean by this:

3) If hardware can’t keep up – say BM is requesting to playback uncompressed video @ 1080 and the drives aren’t delivering data fast enough, your system ‘drops’ frames.

Which drives are you talking about? In the camera? And what happens when the frames drop? How do they drop? How is the drop represented — in layman’s terms and in precise terms?

Thanks Jeff