I’m intending (unless someone tells me otherwise ) getting some old family 3" super 8 cine film digitised. The company I’m looking at using will transfer to 10bit uncompressed via a external h/d I provide due to the massive file size and I’ve requested a MiniDV tape version as well (of lesser quality ) as a second archive copy and to be able to view the stuff painlessly, transfer to DVD etc for family and friends involved.
I’m looking at using a Quad core machine to do this and link the external drive up eSATA although I’d be surprised (pleasantly hopefully) that I could view it realtime.
Queries are:
Can blender handle 10bit uncompressed in the sequence editor, including creating the proxies? Or am I looking at FCP? I just want to be able to do the usual NLE stuff on it.
Is it worth getting 10bit uncompressed for super 8? It’s going to cost £50.00 more over MiniDV so I thought if I’m going to get this stuff scanned do it at the highest possible quality I can afford and the 10bit service really is affordable and then make lower quality copies as needed from the MiniDV stuff if I can’t get to the 10bit.
If blender can’t do it, can something like AVISynth handle some of it?
It’s probably not that important for the purpose i want it for, to use the 10bit, I’m sure the MiniDVD stuff would be good enough, it’s not like I’m going to be doing loads of compositing (artefacts) with it or need it for broadcast. lol.
Is 10 bit any good? 10 bit uncompressed sounds horrible
I think the lowest virtualdub quality is 12 bits, and it looks like atari 5200.
I think virtualdub can take most avi’s and export them to different bit depths,
so with that you should be able to export it with it’s ‘export old format avi’ back into blender.
Isn’t consumer video generally 8bit (YUV) and compressed with some codec or other adding artifacts and loss of quality? MiniDV is compressed for example, 4mins is about 800mb in file size. 4mins 10bit uncompressed is about 6GB.
Are you thinking of 16bit audio?
I think 10bit is broadcast quality. Digital betacam I believe is 10bit.
Wouldn’t 10bit give more latitude over compressed MiniDV?
I think yellow is talking about 10bit per channel (30bit)
Which is 4 times the colorinformation than 24bit.
IMO there are two things two think of.
what is your filmmaterial like. If it is the original negative film, it might be worth investing in the colordepth. If it is a printed positive, than there is possibly not enough information to make sense being transferred to 10bit (especilly on small formats with low contrast).
If you are planning any colorcorrection or other postprocessing, it will benefit from more bitdepth, but if you want to simply cut and arrange the material and plan to show it on TV or PC, it could be enough to stay with 24bit.
You could try to talk to your servicecompany, to do some tests and get the colorcorrected Material out of the scan.
The film material has not seen the light of day for 30 yrs.
It’s super 8mm positive Kodak Ektachrome?
On reflection it’s not really a matter of whether or not to do the 10bit because the cost on top of having the MiniDV is trivial (£50.00). But I understand what you mean about quality, i could end up with GB of lowsy video not worth struggling with datarate wise.
I can have a sample done of my films and like you say it would be a good idea and then make the decision on whether to use the 10bit as source material or not.
However I’d still like to establish whether blender can handle it, I know blender it doesn’t major on it’s NLE features but non the less. Or any other open source app that can handle 10bit.
Presentation wise 42" 1080P HD screen, home cinema projector.
Just in case you’re going for the higher quality.
If you are doing tests, you should test the fileformats as well.
Filmscanners mostly export to DPX for higher bitdepth
But perhaps your sevice can provide you a short piece in openexr and/or cineon as well.
This way you can check, what is handled best by blender.
Because sadly the support for file formats are sometimes quite different in other systems.
Therefore, even if blender has support for one format, it is better to make shure the files you are getting and paying for are really working.
) getting some old family 3" super 8 cine film digitised. The company I’m looking at using will transfer to 10bit uncompressed via a external h/d I provide due to the massive file size and I’ve requested a MiniDV tape version as well (of lesser quality 