[walter biscardi] "The HQ version is designed for formats larger than 1080 as has been discussed at length by Gary Adcock in numerous articles and in the Final Cut Pro forum."
Can you provide a few links to edumacate me on Gary's views?
My view on this matter comes from my own tests as well as the Apple White Paper. In the 2009 edition of the ProRes White Paper Apple clearly documents the Signal to Noise ratio of the various flavors of ProRes and HQ is cleaner, no doubt.
In my own tests, the HQ variant holds up much better in a wide variety of scenes where the non-HQ variant can get noisier, especially in low-light with lots of gradients. 10-bit'ness is only one aspect of a codec's measure. I use HQ for broadcast because I have no idea how this material is going to be re-ingested and the more compressed an image is the more likely those artifacts can get exposed when subjected to different compression schemes. HQ, being less compressed, is, IMO, less subject to having it's scheme exposed when re-captured by a different NLE using a different codec when International Masters are being regionalized.
As far as HQ being designed for larger than 1080 - I see that nowhere in Apple's documents. I'd definitely like to see Gary's article that reaches that conclusion.
[walter biscardi] "We have had more issues that I care to discuss with HQ and 720 and 1080 formats. We have had no issues with ProRes. "
HQ being buggy is another issue. I've heard people complain about HQ but I haven't been able to replicate. Can you share a few of the problems? I've recently been trying to find info on this topic since I don't want to provide my indy clients with files that are buggy or quirky.
Patrick Inhofer
Finisher-in-Chief
Fini, nyc
