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lori_petersen_waite
lori_petersen_waite
Inspiring
Sep 21, 2018 3:22 PM UTC
Answered

Bits per channel

When encoding a Prores master, should I choose 8 bpc or 16 bpc?  Is the 16 bpc worth the extra time it takes to encode?  There is a noticeable difference in the video image quality?

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    David ArborCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    Sep 25, 2018 12:31 PM UTC

    It depends on what you're working on.

    Is this video? Animation? If it's video, was it captured in 10-bit and you did heavy color correction? Is this from After Effects and you did a lot of work with lights or gradients, so you see heavy banding?

    It completely depends on what project you're working on. Can you give more details about what you're doing?

    If you shot 8-bit footage and you're just editing it, or even if you did some graphics in AE, it doesn't automatically make your video look better if you export out as 16-bpc.

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    4 replies

    lori_petersen_waite
    lori_petersen_waiteAuthor
    Inspiring
    Oct 9, 2018 3:59 PM UTC

    Thank you, David, for your help!

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    David ArborCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    Sep 25, 2018 12:31 PM UTC

    It depends on what you're working on.

    Is this video? Animation? If it's video, was it captured in 10-bit and you did heavy color correction? Is this from After Effects and you did a lot of work with lights or gradients, so you see heavy banding?

    It completely depends on what project you're working on. Can you give more details about what you're doing?

    If you shot 8-bit footage and you're just editing it, or even if you did some graphics in AE, it doesn't automatically make your video look better if you export out as 16-bpc.

    Translate
    lori_petersen_waite
    lori_petersen_waiteAuthor
    Inspiring
    Oct 2, 2018 2:40 PM UTC

    Thanks for your reply.  (Sorry for my belated one.).

    It's 4K video, 4-2-2 color space.  I looked for the bit depth in Media Info but I don't see the color bitrate listed.  I don't see it listed in the metadata in Resolve, either.  (I did not use heavy color correction, just basic correction in Resolve 15.  No After Effects.)     Any idea how I find out the bit depth?

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    David Arbor
    Inspiring
    Oct 9, 2018 1:12 PM UTC

    Hey there, sorry for the delayed reply. I just realized that I stopped receiving email notifications from the forum.

    MediaInfo can tell you the bit depth of your footage: MediaInfo

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