Re: [Avid-L2] Is there a way to improve 8 bit artifacting when rendering to DNX_115? Solved thanks to Dave H.

The purpose of 8 bit rendering is speed.  I would be curious if it also allows more effects to be realtime.

As primarily a finishing editor these days I always set to 16 bit.  It's a site setting for me.

If one is doing offline and on a time crunch with a slower machine the 8 bit might help in the case of big and long renders, but with the speed of most computers these days it's probably a lot less impact than in "the good old days".

Dave Hogan

Burbank, CA

On Feb 15, 2020, at 6:00 PM, John Moore <bigfish@pacbell.net> wrote:

So the culprit was as Dave Hogan suggested the effects processing setting in the media creations render tab. I had unchecked same as source and choose DNX_115 but the effects processing was set to "auto."  Checking 16 bit and the banding goes away on render.  I choose 8 bit to test and the banding returned as it also did if I set it back to "Auto."  From this I assume "auto" effects processing looks at the render choice of DNX_115 not using same as source and decides 16 bit processing is not necessary for a DNX_115 render because it is an 8 bit codec.  Empirical data would suggest this is a wrong assumption.

What is the point of 8 bit processing of effects?  I would think it is to improve real time performance but would it also have an impact on render file sizes?  I wouldn't think effects processing would effect the final size of the  rendered file but would improve processing speed resulting in faster renders.  Would this setting in the render tab effect real time playback or is that solely the timeline quality setting? I'm thinking the effects processing in the render tab would only effect render time.  Seems to me in this day and age it's kind of an out dated concern that might have had more practical use on older system with less cpu power.  I guess because I rarely do anything in 8 bit for delivery I've not noticed this issue.  I'm assuming based on what I've seen that the "Auto" setting will choose 16 bit processing when the render codec is 10 bit like DNX_175X.  Not sure what it would do for DNX 175.  I'll have to try that later.

From now on I will always force 6 bit processing.