Write 10bit Cineon Or Dpx Files

[user_deleted]

Hi!

I imported some 10bit log DPX sequences to Shake 4.1, just did a SmoothCam and wanted to export them again as DPX or Cineon files in 10bit. I only see 8Bit, 16Bit or float in the globals and as well just could export as 16bit DPX or Cineons. That wouldn't be too bad besides wasting disk space but Combustion 4 doesn't seem to be able to import these files and I have no clue why? Once imported Combustion seems to be able to work in 16bit or some kind of float but not import them.

Could anyboy explain me how to export to 10bit DPX or Cineons, or maybe someone has an idea what else I could have done wrong.

Thx a lot.

macsepp

[user_deleted]

Cineon files will ALWAYS render out as 10 bit. As for DPX, it will render out as 10 bits, unless you bring it down to 8 bits. In that case it will render as 8 bits. But if you're working at 16 or float, any DPX or Cineon file you render will be 10 bit, no matter what your viewer says...

[user_deleted]

I'm even more confused now than I was before. Your answer was exactly what the manual says and what I expected to happen but it somehow it doesn't. I did set the global settings in Shake to 16bit. In the manual I read that Shake automatically uses 16bit for 10bit Cineons when they get imported anyway.

The Cineon files that I rendered as DPX and Cineons are 16,1 MB per file in 2k full res. That looks pretty much like 16bit, 10bit would be 12,5MB. Now I used a Byte node set to 8Bit in Shake and rendered one frame again.
9,1 MB, that looks like 8bit. I just can't open any of those files in Combustion 4.0.3. It says "Corrupt File".

Something is going wrong with my Shake installation. Again, I'm using Shake 4.1 on an Intel Mac.

Any other suggestions? Could I have rendered with wrong settings?

Thx a lot.

[deke-kincaid]

Just make sure you strip out the alpha when you write out the file. The DPX/CIN file formats allow alphas but many programs have issues with anything more then rgb in these two file types. So in the fileout just set the "pixel format" to "rgb" instead of "as-is".

Quick note though, if your just going to another compositing app, why not just use something like .sgi? File is smaller and less issues. Fully guessing here, but if your writing out log files to cin/dpx, it would be faster to write out just linear files to read into Combustion.