V8 and 32-bit float: how much gets exported?

john-beale wrote on 10/18/2007, 11:22 PM
I'm curious about the 32-bit floating point mode of Vegas. This should allow amazing dynamic range, but is there any high-dynamic range output?

16-bit input is possible: I created a 16-bit file in Photoshop with very subtle smooth gradients, using the gaussian blur function. I exported it both as 16 bit and 8 bit PNGs and put those on the Vegas 8a timeline with a 32-bit float project. When I applied strong contrast to the image with curves, the 16-bit image stayed smooth and the 8-bit version showed visible steps, with a spiky histogram, as expected.

However, when I export a PNG frame it is still only an 8-bit file. Is there any path for deeper images on export, or is all the dynamic range still stuck inside Vegas ?

Comments

john-beale wrote on 10/18/2007, 11:37 PM
This is a plea to add an option to the Tools/Scripting/Render Image Sequence

Right now your only output options are JPEG or PNG images. I'd like to add a third option: PNG16 for 16-bit per channel PNG files. You can import these and use them in 32-bit float mode, so it is disappointing that there's no way to export them.
farss wrote on 10/19/2007, 1:48 AM
If Vegas will not let you do it I'm far from certain a script could achieve it.
Apart from that I agree with you 101%, why is all that dynamic range locked up inside Vegas, unleash it SCS, we can cope, even this lowly 6 bit monitor will not blow up fed 16 bit tiffs.

Bob.
rmack350 wrote on 10/19/2007, 8:54 AM
Aieee! I'm sure you guys don't know it but you're torturing me. I've just spent the last few days going back and forth about this with a guy on the cow.

The still image export capabilities of Vegas rely on the same frame buffer that's displayed in the preview window. It's 8-bit, and controlled in large part by your preview window settings. (Okay, I *think* the image sent to the frame buffer for preview is 8-bit, but I suppose the 8-bit conversion could be coming along later at the display card. But I doubt it).

The short of it is that's a very limited way to get still frames because it probably can't get generate anything over 8bpp (even if you had a format option to support it and because you need to use the copy to clipboard function to get all the pixels. (And of course you have to set the preview to Best/Full, but we all know that, right?)

A different process is needed and you're right that a "Render As" option would be the best choice. Quicktime Pro has an option to render image sequences but this option doesn't appera when you render Quicktime from Vegas.

I'm getting into rendering sequences here but the same ought to apply to individual stills. There's nothing in Vegas' Render dialog that can make still directly but you can use Satish' frameserver to output frames to Quicktime Pro, VirtualDub, Tmpegenc, etc and all these have some level of image or image sequence export. I have no idea if one of these might actually support 16-bit output.

Vegas can, at least, write 10-bit files (the sony 10-bit yuv format really is 10-bit, I think). I'd imagine it could output 32-bit data as well but I don't think Satish's frameserver will support that.

So, it seems to me that Vegas needs another VFW codec, similar to Satish's frameserver, that is designed specifically to output images and image sequences. There's no reason it couldn't have a 16-bit output setting that would convert whatever you gave it to 16-bit.

From there, you could script that if you liked, although the main thing I'd want a script for at that point would be to put the render option at a more accessible spot in Vegas' menus.

Rob
john-beale wrote on 10/19/2007, 9:46 AM
If anyone from SCS developing Vegas is reading this, if you do plan to support export of stills with more than 8 bits, there are a number of standard formats out there:

16-bit TIFF, 16-bit PNG, Cineon / DPX, OpenEXR, Radiance HDR

can all be opened in Photoshop so they are the most attractive formats. DPX and OpenEXR are the most common formats for motion picture effects work, I think.
Even better, OpenEXR is well documented and has a freely available source code library: http://www.openexr.com/downloads.html

Not so often used, but for the ultimate in dynamic range, you can export the full 32-bit float: OpenEXR normally uses 16-bit floats but there is also a 32-bit float per channel version. There is also a TIFF / PFM format at that bit depth. See also:
http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2006/Holzer-06-HDR/Holzer-06-HDR-.pdf
rmack350 wrote on 10/19/2007, 11:12 AM
I'm going to guess that you'd want to stay away from formats that are handled by Quicktrap. I know that TIFFs rely on Quicktime and totally bog down Vegas when you use them.

Just saying that you need some non-quicktime formats in addition to whatever goes out to QT.

I've been looking around today for any sort of installable codec that might actually handle still exports. Not looking to hard, but haven't found anything.

Rob Mack
john-beale wrote on 10/19/2007, 11:40 AM
It's interesting... it looks to me like the Vegas developers have already done the hard part, which is supporting 32-bit floating point internally. I think that required a total rewrite of all the internal filters and infrastructure. BUT they left out what seems to me the easy (but critical) part... some way to connect this to the outside world via import & export formats.

With support for Cineon/DPX and OpenEXR formats you'd have access to the full professional motion picture pipeline for work with scanned film and CGI frames. That would make it possible to use Vegas 8 in a "PRO" environment for finishing feature film work, not just video and offline film edits. (Admittedly, you'd also want access to other formats eg. the Cineform 10/12 bit formats.)

For what it's worth, I made a "product suggestion" to Sony about still export.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/support/productsuggestion.asp
If anyone else thinks this would be useful, I'd encourage you to do the same.
GlennChan wrote on 10/19/2007, 1:37 PM
If you export "uncompressed" (the 'codec' that is simply called uncompressed), in a 32-bit project you will get 32-bit output.

However, there's a bug if you're in 2.222 compositing gamma. (I haven't checked to see if this is fixed in 8.0a).

2- 10-bit cineform in/out would likely be the most useful.

Uncompressed TIFF and DPX would require a hefty RAID array... which I'm guessing many people don't have. Though DPX could be useful too.
john-beale wrote on 10/19/2007, 1:50 PM
> If you export "uncompressed" (the 'codec' that is simply called uncompressed), in a 32-bit project you will get 32-bit output.

Thanks, sure enough! But is there any other program besides Vegas 8 that can open or use this kind of 32-bit AVI format? ...well, looking at the AVI headers I see that it is actually storing 128 bits per pixel. ..but it claims no alpha channel, so I guess it's padding the file with an unused 32 bits for each pixel? As if uncompressed wasn't large enough already.

> Uncompressed TIFF and DPX would require a hefty RAID array....

Sometimes you need to work with a high-dynamic range still background, etc. but not every frame of a movie. So DPX, EXR input / output would be very useful for that even without the mega-raid. I agree the average videographer or hobbyist probably has no use for it. I'm thinking those who are working with DPX images have the appropriate hardware.
farss wrote on 10/19/2007, 2:30 PM
I've used uncompressed 8bit HD with Vegas more than once without a fast array or massive number cruncher. Sure it's slow but so what, you get there in the end. Come to think of it RT full raster playback of anything in Vegas is totally hardware dependant for any format anyway so the issue of what you need to get that shouldn't be holding back SCS from implementing this.
More to the point until they do we're unlikely to see those who have the hardware to do that here anyway so it's a kind of a catch 22 argument.
Glenn is right on the money though about the CF codecs, with these you don't need TBs of disk arrays to handle anything that you need for a cinema ready input or output, you can now send your movie off for a film out on a drive that fits in your pocket. With Vegas being native RGB most of the ducks are in alignment, we can even hook Vegas upto a Euphonics desk to do a cine soundtrack mix.

Bob.