Instruction manual

16
Apple ProRes 422
and Apple ProRes
422 HQ
(SD or HD)
Data rate: Approximately 18 MB/second ProRes 422, Approximately 31 MB/second ProRes
422 HQ— supported by internal system drive or attached storage
Quality: Excellent, broadcast quality
Captured media is virtually indistinguishable from pristine uncompressed sources. Better
yet, ProRes maintains the quality during editing, surviving multiple encoding/decoding
generations without degradation. It was designed by Apple for editing, rather than as a
transmission/distribution codec as are most popular codecs. Some of the advantages
include:
• Full-size 1920-by-1080 and 1280-by-720 HD resolutions.
• Full-size 720-by-486 and 720-by-576 SD resolutions.
• 4:2:2 chroma sampling. Provides precise compositing and blending at sharp saturated-
color boundaries.
• 10-bit sample depth. Preserves subtle gradients of 10-bit sources (perfect for green-
screen compositing, graphics or color correction) with no visible banding artifacts.
• I frame-only encoding. Ensures consistent quality in every frame and no artifacts from
complex motion.
• Variable bit-rate (VBR) encoding. “Smart” encoding analyzes the image and allocates
more bits to complex frames.
• Low data rate requirements make for more storage options and require less drive
space to store high quality video.
Uncompressed
8-bit
Data rate: 21 MB/second standard definition, or 100-124 MB/second high definition (see
later “Storage Capacity” chart in Chapter 1 for the various transfer rates per format)—
requires SCSI, Fibre Channel, or ATA drive array
Quality: Excellent
Uncompressed media is KONA LHi’s native storage format, offering the highest quality
available. Capturing in uncompressed results in no compression artifacts, and video is
sampled over the full raster at a 4:2:2 rate.
Using uncompressed maintains a higher quality in your project from capture all the way
through effects rendering. Final Cut Pro supports RT with uncompressed media using RT
Extreme. KONA LHi supports capture of uncompressed through any of its inputs, and
uncompressed projects are output to all of its outputs simultaneously.
Uncompressed
10-bit
Data rate: 28 MB/second standard definition, or 133-166 MB/second high definition with 3G
double that—uncompressed 10-bit requires SCSI, Fibre Channel or SATA drive arrays.
Quality: Excellent, very high quality
Offering all the benefits noted previously for 8-bit uncompressed, 10-bit additionally offers
the very highest quality available. With 10-bit media and Final Cut Pro’s 32 bit Floating Point
YUV Codec, video quality is second to none. For more information on this subject, please
see the topic at the end of Chapter 4: Installation and Configuration, titled “Using 8-bit Versus
10-bit Video.”