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Onlining in FCP - 10-Bit RGB Concerns

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Uli Kunkel

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We are onlining a film in FCP to output to SR tape for a DaVinci 2K Color correction.

Our timeline has been relinked to the _H proxies and we are rendering out ProRes 4444 from Color then sending the timeline back to FCP for the output.

It's recently come to my attention that the FCP timeline is not capable of a 10-bit RGB output. I have also read on older threads online from back in 2008 that the Red proxies don't contain the 12-bit color information from the original .r3d.

Could someone help me address these concerns? If I render ProRes 4444 from color and output my FCP timeline to HDCAM SR will I NOT be getting 10-bit color space on the tape? If not, what do you recommend?

Thank you for your help.

Uli
 
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FCP has been capable of 10-bit RGB editing and output for quite a while, but it was restricted to cuts only. Any effects processing used to have to be done at 8-bit RGB. FCP 7 introduced the option to process ProRes4444 RGB material in 32-bit float Y'CbCr as it does for the other ProRes codecs which are natively Y'CbCr. This is not quite the same as true high bit depth RGB processing, but it is a work around which is acceptable for some purposes.

Maybe you didn't want that much detail! So to summarise YES you can render as ProRes4444 in another app such as Color and play out to tape from FCP as 10-bit RGB. Just be aware of the limitations if you do any processing of it in FCP before play out.
 
Okay. Thank you. I'm glad to hear this answer. This is consistent with what I was most recently told. Will dissolves render in 10-bit in FCP or do I need to render the A-B sides of the cut with a dissolve in After Effects first?
 
Dissolves (and some filters) will render in 32-bit float, but will be converted from RGB to Y'CbCr first, then processed, then converted back to RGB. This may well be transparent, but I would test your setup to be sure. Y'CbCr and RGB do not have quite the same gamuts.
 
FCP RGB 10 bit render?????

Are you absolutely sure Nick ?

Why does everybody say that it can output true RGB 10 bit, but not "precess" effects ( color correct etc...)10 bit RGB.


Antoine
 
R3Ds are 12bit. The Quicktime previews have full access to the 12bit data. They decode in whatever format FCP requests - either 8bit RGB for realtime, or 32float YUV (r4fl) for its full quality pipeline.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
R3Ds are 12bit. The Quicktime previews have full access to the 12bit data. They decode in whatever format FCP requests - either 8bit RGB for realtime, or 32float YUV (r4fl) for its full quality pipeline.

Graeme
Click to expand...

Graeme,

I am ready to output my project to burn an SD dvd for playback on a standard dvd player and television. Using Compressor, the images look ok, but I have two scenes that have shown some banding due to their dark background. I figure this to be an FCP 8 bit issue, but am not sure how to fix it. The file in question is a 1920 x 1080, 24 bit ProRes4444.

When viewed on my computer monitor, everything looks fine, so it has to be the compression that's affecting it, right? Any helpful direction would be most welcome.

Thanks!
 
It's the MPEG-2 compression. Add some mild noise.
 
Yep, there's no fixed value, depends on imagery an the encoder.
 
Well I have tried adding some noise (Gaussian) at a couple of different settings and it's not doing much other than junking up the image. I can still see banding, but now with the added feature of noise, so it's not really a very pleasing look. Any other suggestions?
 
Well, then it's possible that you stretched those two scenes too far. MPEG-2 is always 8 bit on DVD. Check them on a calibrated monitor before encoding to be sure it's not in the sources.
 
Mark Phelan said:
Well I have tried adding some noise (Gaussian) at a couple of different settings and it's not doing much other than junking up the image. I can still see banding, but now with the added feature of noise, so it's not really a very pleasing look. Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

I may be wrong, but don't you have to add the noise AFTER the stage that's introducing banding, otherwise, you are just processing a noisier image through the bit-limited banding stage - hence no improvement!
 
Mark Phelan said:
Graeme,

I am ready to output my project to burn an SD dvd for playback on a standard dvd player and television. Using Compressor, the images look ok, but I have two scenes that have shown some banding due to their dark background. I figure this to be an FCP 8 bit issue, but am not sure how to fix it. The file in question is a 1920 x 1080, 24 bit ProRes4444.

When viewed on my computer monitor, everything looks fine, so it has to be the compression that's affecting it, right? Any helpful direction would be most welcome.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Mark, try Bitvice encoder from Innobits. Usually get best results on a Mac with that encoder. They also have noise reduction options if you ever need it.
 
Well, if MPEG-2 for DVD is really causing the banding, you can't introduce noise after that. I second trying BitVice for encoding.
 
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