Thanx Bob for your encouraging answer. The question remains, into what format should I convert my raw 16-bit BW files to preserve the highest dynamic range? I can batch convert in Photoshop but to what? I know that Vegas digests tiff AND Photoshop files but can they be 16 bit deep?

I have no access to Vegas at the location where I'm doing the conversion, that's why I ask for advice :)

Cheers,

Christian

"I have no access to Vegas at the location where I'm doing the conversion, that's why I ask for advice :)"

And I guess you have no access to photoshop etc where you have Vegas?

If so then I'm really straining my brain as to how you can handle this.
I'm trying to think of a way I could even test this for you.
How I did this before was to render an 8 bit greyscale wedge, divide by 4 by comping with 25% grey, render that to a 10bit video codec. Take that back into Vegas and multiply 400% and check with the scopes that there was no truncation.

You'd need to do this using output to something like dpx or dng, I don't think Vegas will output 16 bit tiffs or jpegs.

Probably if you can get a 10bit greyscale and load that into a 32bit projectand divide by 4 and then multiply by 4 and check that nothing is truncated you know your good to go.

All of that said the difference between 10bit and 8bit can in reality be minor if your images are already graded and you're using linear gamma. Of course you may have some esoteric need in which case ignore this.

Maybe Musicvid can chime in here, it took me a lot of head scratching to devise a test for this and I think he has more experience with image processing pipelines than me. The core problem is the scopes in Vegas are only 8 bit and good luck finding a monitor that's going to clearly show you the difference between an 8 bit image and a 10 bit image.

Bob.

Hi again,

Grateful for the info and good advice. You guessed right, Vegas and Photoshop reside at different addresses, at least for now. My use is VERY esoteric, you could call it even exotic! Unfortunately I cannot share any details now, but will fill you in later, about my progress, and what I did. Must also experiment if the VP11 "export as independent images" has some new options for higher bit depth...

Christian

Hi,

I tested the 64-bit VP11 (build 521) and it seems that it can digest 16-bit grayscale TIFF images - and that's great! If I turn on the 32-bit full mode it seems that the internal math preserves the gray levels all the way to the final render. That's another great thing.

There is also an 16-bit TIFF export option (separate file/frame) that outputs 16-bit RGB files. That is probably also OK for my task. Great news. However, I have not dared to turn on the GPU processing (to be safe), but it's not essential in this project since the video only about 10 seconds long. Sorry, cannot reveal more at this time about my esoteric project...

Christian

"Sorry, cannot reveal more at this time about my esoteric project..."

Finger prints?
Ghosts?
Security cameras?
Restoring B&W movies?
CIA or MI5?