This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] Sony FS7 colour conundrum

Friday, May 13, 2016

Re: [Avid-L2] Sony FS7 colour conundrum

What if you do a video mixdown in 10 bit DNX then export a QT Ref, which avoids the QT engine within Avid, then in QT Pro7 just do a save as. I do that all the time with my series deliveries and that maintains the DNX175X codec as far as I know.

---In avid-l2@yahoogroups.com, <kahelia@...> wrote :

Hi Bogdan,

I meant DNxHD180X, just sloppy typing on my part.

If seems the only conclusion from my extensive testing is that there is no direct method of exporting from MC into a quicktime container, maintaining a 10-bit bit depth.

Wow.

I also just tested exporting a mix down SameAsSource. Apparently looks a bit better, but it too shows suspect banding when stressed, that is not apparent in the source footage.

Wow.

Saving the same sequence as I just exported using SameAsSource to an AAF file linking to the media, and opening this in After Effects (via the Pro Import plug-in, thank you Wes!) yields: No banding at all, everything in pure 10-bit condition.

Wow!

So to conclude, 10-bit QT export from Avid is just totally broken.

My final workflow will be to render down in MC, transfer as AAF to After Effects, and finish from there. I'm doing the deliverables myself (this is for an event, final format is ProRes422 HQ), so quicktime is unavoidable.

(Really should have done this project in Premiere from the start. Oh well.)

On 13 May 2016, at 16:45, Bogdan Grigorescu bogdan_grigorescu@... [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

your best bet is render, mixdown and export SameAsSource. that way you can avoid the QT export engine.
And there is no DNxHD180 - only 185. You need the X flavor in order to get 10bit. At 25FPS, that would be DNxHD185X.

If you or your client does not insist on QT wrapper(check with them), other solid option is MXFOp1A, where you can get to by using AMA file export, but that's a whole other discussion.

cheers,
BG
www.finale.tv

From: "'Knut A. Helgeland' kahelia@... [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com>
To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 7:04 AM
Subject: Re: Re: [Avid-L2] Sony FS7 colour conundrum

Thanks for your suggestions. It would've been perfect if this was due to the quality toggle in the timeline, but my problem lies in the export from MC and not the playback quality inside MC. Once I export to file, there are obvious banding and artefacts in the video files, and I cannot find any way to work around it.

Getting quicktimes out of MC correctly is a really convoluted process isn't it. I've been trying all the tricks I can come up with to find a formula that works. It looks like any export I do is truncated to 8-bit before entering the codec stage. This goes for all codecs, I'm testing DNxHD 180, ProRes in all variations etc.

In the Avid export settings window I am selecting Keep as Legal Lange, and then depending on which codec I use and the codec settings, the results vary between full RGB, legal range, full range clipped - and all with 8-bit banding issues.

This is when I first render all effects I'n TL or render a video mixdown and export from that. The effect is actually worsened if I export from a timeline with any unrendered realtime fx - In this case there looks to be a double set of bit depth truncations going on.

I'm at the end of my options here, how am I supposed to get this footage out of MC intact?

For reference, a tiff sequence @16 bit comes out correctly. But all quicktime exports are various degrees of broken for me.

What to do?

K

On 13 May 2016, at 04:30, bigfish@... [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

What if any I/O hardware is on the system. It sounds like you don't have any I/O hardware but if you do try toggling the hardware off and back on with the button over the timeline. It seems to eliminate some strange behavior although your situation doesn't sound like that's the issue it's worth a try it there is I/O hardware on the system. Definitely check the timeline quality box already mentioned in this thread you want to be green or green with a 10 for 10 bit. I always have a program monitor and don't rely on the computer screen for color correction but perhaps the quality setting is causing this.

---In avid-l2@yahoogroups.com, <kahelia@...> wrote :

I don't edit that much these days, so I'm a little rusty. I don't know if this is a known issue or not.

I've taken on a project that involves editing 40 short segments with 1 minute discussions in a panel. We filmed with a Sony FS7; 1080@25p with a Sony SLog3 profile. I've linked the footage into MC 8.5.0 directly, applied the appropriate colour adapter, and everything apparently plays nice.

But as I try to give this a little grade, it brakes apart as if it's badly compressed 8-bit footage already pushed to the limit with the LUT in the colour adapter.

To check source integrity, I drop a source file into Premiere. It looks perfect 10-bit, can be pushed in every direction, no visible noise or artefacts. But in MC it just looks horrible.

What basic step did I miss here? Something obviously goes wrong on the way into Avid, but I don't know where to start looking for it.

This is on an iMac Retina 5k running OS X 10.11.4. Bin info says I'm using the MSP_MXF plug-in and the footage is XAVC Intra 100.

K