8-bit ingest to 10-bit post

[K. Tessman]

I'm currently setting up post for a project originating on HDV. In a perfect world, budget allowing, it would be great to use Prospect HD's 10-bit colour depth for colour correction, etc.

Is there any advantage when coming from HDV sources to ingesting with Prospect HD? Or can one ingest with Aspect HD, then use the resulting 8-bit files in a Prospect HD workflow and get the same benefits through editing and colour correction and other things as one would by beginning with 10-bit AVIs as sources in the first place?

[David Newman]

Here is the quality order of prefer.

1) 10-bit source encoded at 10-bit and edited at 10-bit. This is like a Viper, Cinelta (to DDR/Wafian) or a Silicon Imaging camera, edited in Prospect HD.

The rest are 8-bit sources.

2) 8 to 10-bit upconverted encoding (with Prospect HD), edited in 10-bit.

3) Encoded as 8-bit, and edited as 10-bit (Aspect HD to encode, Prospect HD to edit.)

4) Normal Aspect HD workflow

There is a difference between 2 & 3 as the 10-bit encoder is better then the 8-bit equilavent -- this gets into compression theory to explain why. Aslo Prospect HD capture also you to upconvert to 1920x1080 before compression which also has a small edge on quality.