10 bit export in Premiere Pro2

[Pedro Rey]

Hi. I am using SI2K originated material that will have cc work done within Speedgrade HD.

The thing is I want to take advantage of the CF Detail 3 level setting for debayering, which offers better detail resolve, at least in my observations, that the embedded debayer in Speedgrade. Also, as of yet, Speegrade will not detect metadata of CFRaw files, so I loose white balance info.

So my workflow is as follows:

1- Import clip into PPro2.
2- Set global setting to Cineform Detail 3 for render debayer.
3- Change .look metadata to no_look, in order to have a flat image in Speedgrade.
4- Apply the chroma-noise filter...it will solve some very minor chroma noise issues on certain scenes.
5- Trim if needed.
6- NO-Render (do I need to render prior to export, or will export take care of this ? I am asking because of the chroma noise filter).
7- Export as Cineform HD, 444 encoding enabled, Filmscan2.
8- HERE COMES MY IMPORTANT QUESTION -- Under Keyframe and Rendering, the color depth setting should be set to "Maximum" or to "Timeline setting" IN ORDER TO PRESERVE 10BIT ?
9- Import into SpeedgradeHD and grade happily.


Funny thing is that when I look up info for a CFRaw clip, it states 64bit depth color, but when I look up info for that same clip exported using the aforementioned workflow, it comes back as 32bit depth....sorry for a dumb question, but is it still 10 bit ? Am I doing something wrong ?

One more thing, do the global playback quality settings and metadata settings affect PPro2 ? I mean the ones in Cineform tools program folder.

Thanks for your opinions,


Pedro Rey
FRACTAL

[David Newman]

8. We ignore the "Maximum" setting and use our own control with the CineForm Playback Settings panel. Have 32-bit enabled and your render will be the best quality.

You are ingore the pixel precision listed for the AVI, there mean related to the internal precision.

Workflow is otherwise fine. SpeedGrade will be able to support our metadata, and hopeful our demosaic engine soon. We will be spending a lot of time with the Iridas guys at NAB -- we are sharing a booth.

[Pedro Rey]

Thanks David.
Ok, so you are saying that regardless the setting I use under "Keyframe and Rendering", be it "Maximum" or "Playback , it will always be 10bit ?

I am not using build 161, si how do I know for sure if 32 bit is enabled ?
Is the unshrap mask filter 32 bit ? I guess it should be, since it is not doing any color work.

Looking forward to Speedgrade increased support!

BTW, do you think that there will be less grain/noise to deal with if exported in High and not Filmscan2 settings ? I have not tried it, just wanted to know from a theorethical point of view.

Pedro

[David Newman]

The 4:4:4 export are 12-bit, I'm sure you don't mind. However I don't think the unsharp mask filter is 32-bit-- so many filters are 8-bit. While an 8-bit filter is fine if you don;t intend further coloor work, your are going on to DI, therefore that can be an issue. Betas of the new build should be out in a few days, so you can make your own call on which filters to use on export.

It is true High will preserve less noise than Filmscan2, but High was not designed as a noise reducing mode, so I wouldn't use for that purpose.