Vegas and Digibeta?

musman wrote on 12/22/2004, 11:02 PM

For my next project I plan to shoot super 16mm. I'd then like to transfer to digibeta if possible, but that's 10 bit (right?) and vegas is 8 bit only I believe. I'm actually looking to spend some money on this, so I'd like to preserve as much quality as possible, thus the desire for digibeta rather than dvcam.
Can anyone tell me what my options are or provide any suggestions? Thanks ahead of time for any help!

ps- If it helps I have a couple friends with FCP systems, capture cards, and access to digibeta decks.

Comments

farss wrote on 12/22/2004, 11:04 PM

DigiBeta and even HD are only 8 bit, see SPOTs post below, very soon we'll be able to ingest 4:2:2 'officially', even though you've been able to do it for some time now (unofficially that is).
Bob.

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/22/2004, 11:07 PM

Value of the greater bits is most found in the acquisition stage. Will you have more color potential in 10 bit than 8 bit at edit? Yes, but is it significant? Not really. It's the acquisition. In other words, the camera I've got all sorts of digibeta material captured via SDI and the Convergent box. At DV Expo, I had several people asking if it was HD material.
There is indeed some value in wanting 10 bit, but not nearly what you're likely expecting it to be. And if that's what you want, Vegas isn't the answer. Why not go 12 bit, 16 bit...24?
It would be nice were Vegas 10 bit, but then most folks couldn't afford it due to the requisite hardware that would accompany it.

farss wrote on 12/23/2004, 1:10 AM

But is Vegas only 8 bits? The I/O is 8 bit but internally isn't it much better than that?
Bob.

musman wrote on 12/23/2004, 3:24 AM

Thanks for the help, guys. I did read the post below about the new decklink type thing. It does sound interesting. Not sure how this doesn't put it in the category that Spot mentioned about Vegas needing to cost more to support. Guess I'll see in time.
farss- I really really hope you're right about 10 bit and Vegas. I could swear I heard that Vegas can only work on 8 bit though. Of course, I was also told that digibeta was 10 bit.

farss wrote on 12/23/2004, 4:01 AM

Actually I suspect Vegas's internals are much higher than 10 bit. You can chain dozens of filters and still have nothing wierd happening. If all the calcs were only 8 bit the progressive rounding errors would be horrendous. I'm pretty certain the audio calcs are at least double if not floating point, again for much the same reasons.
Bob.

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/23/2004, 7:18 AM

The internals are, audio is floating point 32 bit

Coursedesign wrote on 12/23/2004, 11:20 AM

"I could swear I heard that Vegas can only work on 8 bit though."

If you put 10-bit video in a 10-bit codec onto the Vegas timeline, it will stay that way.

If you do simple cuts, it will stay 10-bit.

If you do transitions, video effects, color correction, etc. in Vegas, these are done in 8-bit precision.

If you do your color correction in say Combustion (or Color Finesse etc.), that color correction will be done in whatever precision you specify (10-bit is the next lowest available).

"I was also told that digibeta was 10 bit."

DigiBeta records 10-bit video at 4:2:2 color sampling with 2:1 compression, but SDI, the Serial Digital Interface used with DigiBeta, can also transfer 8-bit video by keeping the 2 Least Significant Bits at "0". This is used for example when capturing DigiBeta footage with an 8-bit codec.

The advantage of 10-bit video is that you can do more in post, because there is more picture information to choose from when creating the end result, which is usually in 8-bit (such as MPEG-2 for a DVD).

Keying is also easier and better quality (such as with chroma key "green screen" or luma key).