Re: Working on a DSR-11 SDI solution

You just helped me solve the damn explaination! It IS the codec! Just not the way I explained it. I've been here before at this crossroad, and you just tipped me to what's happening. When the footage is blown up, it needed to be rendered to play. When the export to AE happens, it needs to be rendered, too. FCP doesn't pass an exported clip along native, unless you simply open the raw file in AE. Apple does re-compress when it renders, and that's where the artifacts are introduced. Which actually does make the codec the source of the gunk in the image.

I first saw this test done at a Final Cut Pro user's meeting in L.A. At the time, the ProMax tech threw out the theory that allowing more head room by up-rezing to SDI and 10-bit was the reason the footage was cleaner. I grilled him on it during the meeting because his explaination wasn't logical. How can you add information to an image? I went through the same arguments you were giving me, then started testing and re-testing for months. But no one could or can dispute the results, it was shown on a 100 foot projector in front of us all, there simply wasn't a question, the uncompressed capture was cleaner. I was so interested that I went home and repicated the test to the same results. I got my friends involved and the only logical explaination we came up with is the codec. Based on what we discussed, we were right! Just wrong in the application of our thinking!

But I'm back at the same place as far as working in uncompressed though. Any time you add a filter, you're going to render in the artifacts that are avoided by working in 10-bit.

As far as drive space, it costs nothing these days. The cost of a good RAID stripe is pennies per gig. Well worth the gain, to me anyway.

Great discussion!

-mjd