Newbie to compositing - Good file formats?

[Hugh]

If it's HD, then it'll almost certainly (unless you shot with a Viper, or Genesis or some other higher-end camera) be 8-bits per channel.

In your situation, I'd probably go with either .tga or .tif.

Because your original bit-depth was only 8-bit, there's no point in going 16-bit or float as a file format (although, if you're pulling the colours around a lot in whatever you're doing the comping in, you might want to change the images to 16-bit or float internally and then change them back to 8-bit at the end)

[ruddiger52]

cool thanks for the response I will try try 16 bit tga.

[Hugh]

Do be aware of the different ways of specifying the bit-depth....

I usually think in terms of bits per channel... So 8, 16 or 32.

24-bit tga is actually 8-bit per channel. Which is what I was recommending.

16-bit tga is either less definition (4 bits per channel including alpha?), which would be bad or more than is in the source material (16 bits per channel) which would waste disk space, as you'd be using twice the disk space than you wanted.

I don't know what compositing software you'll be using, but you should be able to convert it to something like 16-bit or float internally before your colour corrections/composite and then convert it back to 8-bit before writing out.

[beaker]

Just to make sure, what camera/tape format did your HD file come from?

[Hugh]

Good point, Beaker....

Always asking the sensible questions ;)

[ruddiger52]

It came into Premiere CS3 from an HVX-200 P2 card

[beaker]

oh ok, dvcpro-hd is still only 8 bit, so your fine.

[ruddiger52]

So 24 bit targas are actually 8 bits per channel, which is what the camera gives me anyway so Im cool with 24 bit targas?

[beaker]

Personally I would use tif or sgi (pending your apps all support it) over tga. Many apps don't write out compressed tga, so a tif or sgi will give you a smaller file(both are lossless compressed).

[ruddiger52]

Cool thanks for the quick replies. I am mainly a 3d guy and have had requests for deliveries to be rendered in sgi.
Are these formats a standard bit depth??

[beaker]

what do you mean by standard bit depths? Both tif and sgi support 8, 16 and 32 bit per channel bit depths.

[ruddiger52]

That answers my question. thank you :)

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