Reasons to use 32bit Projects

Streamworks Audio wrote on 8/15/2009, 7:04 PM
Curious to see what others think....

It is very cool to see Sony Vegas supporting more than the standard 8bit per channel - however I am curious to see if and why people would be using this? I am sure there are some situations where it will be used (i.e when shooting with x.v.Color) but in most cases is it needed?

In my situation(s) I am using computer generated RGB sources which are 8bit per channel - so I cannot see an obvious benefit to working on 32bit.... are the filters in Vegas work in 32bit color depth yet? Same when I edit footage from my AVCHD cam... which is still 8bit per channel source..... so unless I used filters that were 32bit I cannot see a benefit there either.

How about your fine folks? I am not trying to start a flame war - just curious to see if and why some would take advantage of the extra bits.

Cheers,
Chris

Comments

PerroneFord wrote on 8/16/2009, 12:26 AM
Any time I plan to do more than basic cuts, I use a 10-bit codec and 32 bit in Vegas. Lets me get the colors and subtlety I want with no banding, and no blowing out the colors.

To each their own.
Streamworks Audio wrote on 8/16/2009, 12:37 AM
That makes sense... I guess if I am doing color correction then makes sense to do it in a higher bit depth then render to a 10bit codec for a decent source. But which color correction filters are more than 8bit?

And I was under the impression that Vegas can do 32bit per channel... is that so? If so wouldn't there be some clipping if rendering to a 10bit per channel codec. Then again still better than rendering to an 8bit per channel codec.

Cheers,
Chris
farss wrote on 8/16/2009, 5:17 AM
It's a 32 bit floating point pipeline.
No, converting bitdepths does not cause clipping. Bigger numbers represent less not more, more bits equals greater resolution not 'louder'.
The argument for using more than 8 bits in RGB is to do with the Y'CbCr <-> RGB conversion and rounding errors however Vegas does an excellent job of avoiding this. If you do decide to use 32bit float be aware that the results may well be wrong unless you use the correct mode in V9 or wrangle the issues if using V8. Please see here:

http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/v8color/v8color.htm

Bob.
Brad C. wrote on 8/16/2009, 4:34 PM
I'm no expert and I only share what I experience. Sometimes I can't even explain why things work and why some don't.

Having said that, I will always attempt to use 32bit video levels. Why? To prevent color banding where it could be present in 8bit and because I notice a HUGE difference in video quality when posting my vids to YouTube or Vimeo. Vimeo is the weaker of the two, usually showing more pixelation in motion and in darker areas. Most if not all of this is no longer present for me when using videos that have been rendered with 32bit float.

The only (but crucial) roadblock now becomes memory. If I have a project that I'm trying to render with 32bit that has a lot of pics, transitions, Bullet, etc then I will most likely hit the memory limits and crash. (even after doing B3T's memory adressing hack). So for me there are definite plusses and one big minus. The memory limits of my computer. :-(