Bits per channel

[lori_petersen_waite]

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?

[davidarbor · Accepted solution]

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.

[lori_petersen_waite]

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?

[davidarbor]

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

[lori_petersen_waite]

Thank you, David, for your help!