4:4:4 10bit single CMOS HD project

[Adrian White]

Would you be able to to edit 8bit avi files using Vegas Video 5?

[Obin Olson]

Vegas can edit 8bit fine. I have done it with both 720 and 1080p footage..what we need is the 10/12bit support for editing and also the support for a compressed format

[Obin Olson]

I guess I should also look at the MAC and Final Cut Pro as an option because of the native high-bitdepth suport of FC..I could look at encoding into the SheerVIdeo codec and editing on MAC...this would work for now untill some stuff is working on the PC

[Barend Onneweer]

At this point Premiere Pro 1.5 has 8-bit internal calculations, but if you work with 10-bit material in a cuts only timeline, the output to 10-bit will preserve all 10 bits. It's not perfect, but I'm guessing Premiere Pro 2.0 will support higher bit-depths.

So as long as you do filtering and FX in another application (e.g. After Effects) that supports higher bit-depths, you'll be okay.

Editing in RAW would be an idea, but might need too much work to implement. I'm not a programmer, but seeing how much work it already takes to get these capture apps to run... So the alternative would be to convert the camera RAW sequences to a format that is already widely supported. Also to streamline postproduction I'd hate to have all material exist in some kind of proprietary solution. So the conversion to Blackmagic 10-bit, SheerVideo or Cineform CODECS come to mind, with the first two offering support on both Mac and PC platforms.

The conversion from RAW to RGB could be done in Photoshop (batch processing), or After Effects (using something like Ben Syversons plug-in). It would be like 'developing film' before starting post. Not ideal, but no dealbreaker to me.

On a side note, I realize that people may be reluctant to work with uncompressed 10-bit HD because of storage and bandwith issues. I just put together an internal RAID5 system using a PCI-X SATA-RAID adapter with 8 Maxtor SATA drives (7200rpm 200GB). I'm getting 230 MB/s sustained write and 360 MB/s sustained reads. That's sustained - not burst. It cost me around 1700 dollars for 1,4 TB of effective RAID5 storage...

So there's a thought for 'affordable' uncompressed HD editing on PC.

Bar3nd

[Jason Rodriguez]

Are sustained writes always much slower than sustained reads?

[Marin Tchergarov]

Barend, Your thoughts sound PERFECT!

Thank You!

Jason, sustained writes are sometimes slower,but sometimes faster... in "real life"!

[Joshua Starnes]

Originally posted by Obin Olson : I guess I should also look at the MAC and Final Cut Pro as an option because of the native high-bitdepth suport of FC..I could look at encoding into the SheerVIdeo codec and editing on MAC...this would work for now untill some stuff is working on the PC

I still think this is the best solution. I know you've been working on PC because that's what you've got - and it's a lot easier to put one together for recording. But once you get to editing, for this project at least, you're better off on a Mac. On top of the Mac's native bit-depth support, you also have native DVCPROHD support - when you've finished your color correction and mastering, you have a widely used tape format to export for showing to broadcasters, distributors, or to use for a film out. Versus going all the way on PC where you going to have to cart harddrives around when you want to show some video (or film out), and the codecs you used as well.

[Barend Onneweer]

Choosing for a Mac solution because of DVCProHD support is silly. You could just as easily transfer to DVCProHD through HDSDI on PC (unless you want to edit in DVCProHD...). But the thought of using DVCProHD as a transport medium to get the material transferred to film is even stranger. You wouldn't want to lower resolution (if the source is 1080), compress and limit bitdepth to 8-bits and then transfer to film. Just rent an HDCAM SR deck for one day and transfer to HDCAM SR through HDSDI and get the cleanest picture on film as possible.

Anyway, FCP is a very viable solution, but not much more viable than what's out there on the PC platform, not for long anyway. But this is somewhat off topic.

Jason, like optical drives, hard drives tend to write slower than they read. It's just less work to read than to actually modify the bits. So these results were along what I expected from single drive benchmarks. They are also 'realworld' results, that reflect the HD editing situation.

Well, back to developing camera's ;-)

Good luck and keep up the great work everybody.

Barend

[Rob Scott]

Where is Rob S anyway, haven't seen him for a while?

Mostly lurking -- still too busy to get much done on the project.

[Joshua Starnes]

Just rent an HDCAM SR deck for one day and transfer to HDCAM SR through HDSDI and get the cleanest picture on film as possible.

My understanding is that HDCAM is also 8-bit, but I could be wrong about that. It is most certainly going to compress the stuff we're going to be shooting anyway.


However, it doesn't matter. My point was that DVCPROHD was already supported by the software - you don't have to buy or rent any other equipment to get it to a point where someone else can watch it or it can be filmed out. It would save money and workflow headaches. And your average filmgoer or video watcher isn't going to see a difference between something that was sent to film or DVD at 1080p, or if it was a somepoint downconverted to 720p before getting to the point where they are looking at it.

The point of this project is to make something of a professional quality that doesn't cost too much and is more or less headache free. Why add more hassles than you have to?

[David Newman]

HDCAM SR supports 1920x1080 4:2:2 in 10bit. You are thinking of regular old HDCAM (which you generally won't use for film-out just like you should never use DVCPRO-HD for film.) For film-out D5 or SR will work as they are both full resolution 10bit compressors. All HD decks are HDSDI based, there is not point in rendering to DVCPRO-HD. There is no advantage to a disk based DVCPRO-HD, it loses one third the resolution over your source, and that is before it applies 8bit compression. Apple promotes DVCPRO-HD as a convient format, but it is only convient when used with a $27k deck and Varicam source (much lower quality than the cameras being discussed here.) A $1k-$2k HDSDI card allows you to send full 10bit HD to any desk , not just DVCPRO-HD. It seems if you go to the trouble of shotting and editing in high quality, you would rent an appropriate deck to master to.

[Rob Lohman]

To all: there where some problems with the server. It has been
rebooted and everything should be working fine again now!

[Wayne Morellini]

<<<-- Originally posted by Barend Onneweer :On a side note, I realize that people may be reluctant to work with uncompressed 10-bit HD because of storage and bandwith issues. I just put together an internal RAID5 system using a PCI-X SATA-RAID adapter with 8 Maxtor SATA drives (7200rpm 200GB). I'm getting 230 MB/s sustained write and 360 MB/s sustained reads. That's sustained - not burst. It cost me around 1700 dollars for 1,4 TB of effective RAID5 storage...

So there's a thought for 'affordable' uncompressed HD editing on PC.

Bar3nd -->>>

Yes, that has allways been the downside, but still cheaper then heaps of 35mm film stuff. That is why we shouldn't get to carried away with the price of other stuff, if we want to keep it affordable. But in the end, when you have a job, it is going to cost, unless you can backup to server tape!

The whole idea here was to do 4:4:4 raw for the benefit of the amazing clarity and detail that lesser formats ussually loose. The other problem was that while we can debate that RAW bayer equates 4:2:2, or 4:2:0, quality the truth is that there is a mismatch between the two pixel spaces and you are going to loose. So going o these comrpessed tape formats, or to 4:2:2 defeats the purpose a bit. If there is a $20 chip out there that could comrpess to lossless and visually lossless 4:2:2 or 4:2:0, I would say go for it. But without a lot of investment, this is the best for us.

Jason, like Barend said, particularly nowdays it requires a lot of power to flip a bit in the drive write cycle, where as sensing is still easy peasy.

To all, plugins:

If you are going to go to plugins, as said before, you might find native pathways, there might even be selectable bit depth format support above the packages specified max bit depth, built into the routines, support might be even easily programmable. Don't depend on what the package tells you or even the programming documentation sometimes, look at the programming API carefully for extras.

With this sort of thing, if people want Apple, the first person that goes to Apple and gets their support for a universal bayer 4:4:4 8-20 bit, multi-resolution format may take the market.

I don't know much of editor internals and which do plugins propperly, but would I be right in suggesting that (apart from the top editors popular here) that Vegas Lite would be the best mid line editor to make a plugin for? What would be the best low priced editor to write a plugin for (under $100 to free)?

[Wayne Morellini]

David, a thought on your last post. We are dealing with 4:4:4 footage there must be RAW 4:4:4 tape format for things like Starwars, you could theoirectically hire, and then backup your drives onto something like this when production is over. Then you could re-use the drives. But lets look at it another way, we have 4:4:4 bayer, that's 8+ bits per pixel, 4:4:4 three chip is 24-bits per pixel. that's three times more than you need, so if we treat it as a data stream we could store three times more. Also we could use a lesser tape format as a data drive to backup to, any suggestions?

Now, speaking of suitable editors, if anybody is going to spend $1K, or $500, how's your versions of cineform, do they both support the bayer cineform system?

[David Newman]

Wayne,
Yes to all of that. HDCAM SR does support dual link HDSDI what carries 4:4:4:4 RGBA -- maybe overkill for bayer data. But as they is no "mastering" tape format for raw bayer, YUV 4:2:2 single link HDSDI is perfectly suitable even for film out. I know that because I just saw the first feature film posted on a desktop PC using a compressed digital immediate (CineForm's) and presented on film in a large theatre (it used YUV 4:2:2 10bit for output.) It was a cast and crew screening so I'm still swarn to secrecy on the details.

The bayer development is still under wraps -- can't give details, but it seems like many of the proposed workflows only need a stand alone version of Prospect HD without the bayer stuff. Recording RAW bayer data to disk would allow of post conversion into 10bit YUV based CFHD fairly easily. I let you guys know when the stand alone version is available (it is coming soon.)