8 bit or 10 bit. My thoughts.

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Mark,
How are you acquiring your Uncompress material at the moment?
rafael

[Mark Job]

Hi Rafael:
I'm not. I'm waiting for the Flash XDR to be upgradeable to full 10 bit uncompressed hopefully, in the near future. Originally, Convergent Design published a broshure stating full uncompressed would become an available feature via a paid upgrade sometime in the future. This was last year. Right now if I have to render out something I know I'm publishing to web, then I do it to full uncompressed frames or I use Quicktime Reference (Amounts to the same thing actually). The camera I own is capable of full uncompressed HD output via HD-SDI, but I have had no recording facility to capture source uncompressed. I'm waiting to have this feature added to the Flash XDR.

[Steve Phillipps]

Not sure if CD ever said they'd do 10 but though did they?
Also, am I being dim, but I never considered web publishing to really be the most demanding of quality material - surely anything that's good enough for HD (or even SD) TV is miles above adequate for anything on the web? What am I missing here?
Steve

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Steve and Mark,

Last year, we were over optimistic concerning our workload regarding feature development.

Yes, we promised, for the Flash XDR, an extra cost option, for recording uncompressed.

The uncompressed option allows for recording 10-Bit and this was priced as a $995 (US) extra cost option.

We try hard to listen to our customers and we try hard to develop features that are in the most demand, while balancing our obligations to fulfill our promises.

At this time, we have failed to deliver uncompressed with 10-bit support as promised.

I apologize for the delay.

[Steve Phillipps]

Thanks Dan, missed that.
I remember looking at your explanation of your uncompressed scheme and noticing 2 things: first the data rates were so huge it was crazy, and secondly that you'd done tests and the difference between uncompressed and 100 mb/s GOP was small. Because of these 2 things I didn't look any further as for almost all purposes it didn't really seem worthwhile.
Steve

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Steve,

Once we had confirmation from others that our 100 Mbps Long-GOP was very close to uncompressed, "visually indisinguishable" as we like to say, we changed our priorities. There were so many other features that we had to implement.

Now that we have 140 and 160 Mbps Long-GOP as options, the very small difference is even harder to justify.

We also have to taking into consideration the difficultly of actually working with these huge uncompressed files. Some are prepared to work with these files, most are not.

Uncompressed is somewhere between 120 and 150 Megabytes per second.

At a minimum this is 7,200 Megabytes per minute, or roughly 432,000 Megabytes per hour (approximately 432 Gigabytes per hour). Note: these are just rough estimates.

This is a serious burden on any editing system and post process.

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Dan Keaton

Dear Steve and Mark,

Last year, we were over optimistic concerning our workload regarding feature development.

Yes, we promised, for the Flash XDR, an extra cost option, for recording uncompressed.

The uncompressed option allows for recording 10-Bit and this was priced as a $995 (US) extra cost option.

We try hard to listen to our customers and we try hard to develop features that are in the most demand, while balancing our obligations to fulfill our promises.

At this time, we have failed to deliver uncompressed with 10-bit support as promised.

I apologize for the delay.

,,,,Hi Dan: Not a problem at this time, but I'm hoping this will become available in the near future. I also hope RS-422 and the firewire interface on the Flash XDR will become enabled so I have the option to work with four 128 GB CF cards plugged into my XDR and intefaced into my Avid NLE via FW and using Avid's Super AMA, or I will edit the uncomp via proxies. With AMA you don't ingest anything, so digital cinema becomes a practical proposition at this point.

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Dan Keaton

Dear Steve,

Once we had confirmation from others that our 100 Mbps Long-GOP was very close to uncompressed, "visually indisinguishable" as we like to say, we changed our priorities. There were so many other features that we had to implement.

Now that we have 140 and 160 Mbps Long-GOP as options, the very small difference is even harder to justify.

We also have to taking into consideration the difficultly of actually working with these huge uncompressed files. Some are prepared to work with these files, most are not.

Uncompressed is somewhere between 120 and 150 Megabytes per second.

At a minimum this is 7,200 Megabytes per minute, or roughly 432,000 Megabytes per hour (approximately 432 Gigabytes per hour). Note: these are just rough estimates.

This is a serious burden on any editing system and post process.

...Hi Dan:

I don't see the huge storage requirements as such a big deal anyomre, when you can get a 2 TB G-Drive in Montreal for about $450.00. Uncompressed was out of the question before due to storage requirements and HDD performance, but now with Avid's AMA, there's no longer any question about ingesting such large files anymore since you don't have to do that to deal with them.

[Alister Chapman]

But you wouldn't be able to edit uncompressed 10 bit of a single drive or G-tech drive pair. You will need a really good raid array, probably 4x fast sata drives with a top spec PCI controller as a minimum. Especially if you want 2 streams at a time (around 2Gb/s). Do not underestimate the kind of drive performance you will need to work with uncompressed. Also consider how you will manage your footage in the field. Even with 4x 64Gb cards you will fill them after less than 30 mins of shooting. Offloading to USB drives is not realistic as it would take over 2 hours to backup your 4 cards. Esata would be faster and take around an hour with a fast drive.

One of the key advantages of file based systems is the possibility of faster than realtime workflows. Going back to a slower than realtime workflow is a hit most don't want.

[Daniel Symmes]

I've done several features uncompressed.

A single frame is about 8MB (1920x1080p, 24, 32bit*).

Do the math and it's nearly 700GB per hour.

The only problem for me is my 10TB RAID filling up and the TIME it takes to move this stuff off. Even with eSATA it's "come back tomorrow."

Uncompressed 10bit is key for big screen. For Web or eyePhone, even tee-vee? SD still looks fine.




*24 bit is smaller, but the studios add the alpha for no reason except ignorance

[Billy Steinberg]

Originally Posted by Daniel Symmes

I've done several features uncompressed. <snip> Uncompressed 10bit is key for big screen. For Web or eyePhone, even tee-vee? SD still looks fine.

I don't usually get involved in religious discussions (arguments?), but I can't help myself sometimes.

I'm the Senior Video Engineer for all the Metropolitan Opera Presents telecasts. We send 1080i/5.1 to over a thousand theaters around the world, live, every couple of weeks. It's sent 8-bit compressed. Not only has the quality of the viewing been praised by every single review, but we just won an emmy award for it. I've also shot a number of shows in video for theatrical release, including a series of outdoor concerts in HiDef 3D shot this summer.

The extra two bits provide nothing to speak of except for a higher signal to noise ratio. The best state of the art video camera doesn't come close to the signal to noise ratio of 8-bit. (And ONE of my cameras costs over a hundred grand). Editing/grading/keying is another story, as you're performing mathematical changes to the bits. So you acquire in 8-bit and you add two bits (of zero) to make it 10-bit in the editor. That way the manipulations don't truncate some of the low bit info in the 8-bits you acquired.

Sometimes I want to just yell "HEY those of us that work in the real world really think these esoteric discussions are no different from the ones about needing $750 power cords for your audio amplifier".

But I try to remind myself I don't know everything, and that my needs aren't necessarily the same as others needs. I understand striving for the very best quality, even if others can't see it, but recording 10-bit uncompressed in the field strikes me as having far more down sides than up sides.

Billy

[Daniel Symmes]

At least in my part of the woods, the customer is always right.

Not so much a religion as keeping one's options open.

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by Billy Steinberg

So you acquire in 8-bit and you add two bits (of zero) to make it 10-bit in the editor. That way the manipulations don't truncate some of the low bit info in the 8-bits you acquired.

if I could just convince the 10 bit purists to read, re-read and actually understand this, it would short circuit a lot of this heated discussion.

i'd like to do a double blind study of my own where the 10 bit purists are forced to reveal in an A/B comparison (AT VIEWING DISTANCE) of which footage was acquired 10 bit uncompressed and which which an 8 bit compressed, like a Nano.

[Daniel Symmes]

I certainly don't care what anybody else thinks about this topic as we all have our own worlds with clients calling the format shots.

I certainly don't do uncompressed for my health. My clients REQUIRE it. To refuse simply makes them go to someone who will.

If you want 10bit, solutions are well known.

If 8bit will work, you're in the right place.


Can't we all get along and just say "go with what floats your boat?"

Then we can get off this 8/10 RAMBLE (look how many pages are devoted to this "discussion") and get back on the subject at hand: CD's stellar products.

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Steve Phillipps

Not sure if CD ever said they'd do 10 but though did they?
Also, am I being dim, but I never considered web publishing to really be the most demanding of quality material - surely anything that's good enough for HD (or even SD) TV is miles above adequate for anything on the web? What am I missing here?
Steve

...Hi Steve:
It is precisely because the web formats are so relatively low quality, that one must begin with as high a resolution possible with low noise, so that the resulting encoded web video looks as prestine as it possibly can.