10 vs 14bit quality?

[favvomannen]

Has there been any comparison of 10 vs 12vs 14 bitdepth mlv rawvideos? How less good is 12vs14? can anyone notice the difference?

im guessing 10bit vs 14bit raw is pretty noticable?

[reddeercity]

No different , it's still raw --I use 10bit in 3x Crop on my 5d2 to record 2144x1076 continuously , without it in 14bit i could barely do 1920x960 continuous @23.976 fps . If in doubt do a A-B compare frames from each with same setting and discover for yourself .

[favvomannen]

cool i will test.

i often drag the higlights recovery pretty far down. what i have read , the hilights recovery wont be as good? is that the main drawback of 10 vs 14bit?

i also dont ever do white balance, can i still forget setting the right wb in 10 bit raw?

[sys73r]

I was looking for the same answer and this post helped to understand little bit more.

https://digital-photography-school.com/12-bit-versus-14-bit-raw-which-is-right-for-you/

[favvomannen]

oh man. that was a 5 hour read with loads of info i dont care about. wish someone would summarise it with magic lantern video raw aspect in mind. practical use, less theorizing.

thx anyway.

[Danne]

12bit and 14bit. I can't tell no difference.
10bit vs 14bit. There is a difference. Mostly in shadows. For most uses it will work, for critical use and if working with darkframes, go for 12bit/14bit.
You can compare all bits by filming a 14bit file and export it to 12 or 10bit in post with mlv_dump for steroids by selecting -b (1-16 bit) to check losses.

[Levas]

Alex did a post about bit depth and quality in the crop sec on steroids topic.
He posted a table with different bit depth settings, bassically you want to be in the black number range:
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=19300.msg183231#msg183231

According to Alex: using 14 bit adds no extra quality/detail.
From ISO 100 to 800 -> 12 bit should be able to capture all the detail.
At ISO 1600 comes the tipping point, 12 bit or 10 don't differ that much.
Above 1600 you could use 10 bit, 12 bit has no advantage here because of the noise.

So ISO 100 - 800 -> 12 bit
ISO 1600 and above -> 10 bit

[favvomannen]

i just tried 12bit and i notice the hilight recovery is 50% of what it normally is in 14bit. could that be right or am i using the new tool mlvproducer wrong?

12bit mlv producer -> cinemadng-> acr (less things happen on the hilight recovery slder in acr)

14bit mystic mlv -> dng -> acr (more hilight recovery when maxing the slider in acr).

The colour quality looks the same on iso 100 .. BUT...  is the hilights reduction possibilities bit dependant that its noticable betwen 12 and 14 bits?

[Levas]

Must be the software I guess
Quality difference in bitdepth should be in the shadow parts...
How do the files look in acr without any settings adjusted, is the exposure the same?
I'm using software that generates genuine 12 or 10 bit dng's, and in some software the standard exposure is off, like it's reading it as an 14 bit file. So the file is a bit darker from the start, but the data is all there, only have to adjust exposure.

[favvomannen]

yeah, when adjusting exposure i got some more detail like the 14 bit file from mystic mlv, but that also darkens the entire image more. well then its probably a software thing then. mlv mystic cant do 12bit mlv, ill just have tö hope they update, or fiddle a bit more with the 12bit to suit my workflow.

thx

[Danne]

Could you try this script?
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10526.msg186929#msg186929

In the menu you can select (11) and get 16bit unpacked data for instance.
More info here
https://bitbucket.org/Dannephoto/batch_mlv/overview