Apple Final Cut Pro 6 - Manual (Page 1450)

Chapter 29 Rendering and Video Processing Settings 665
IV
Render in 8-bit YUV
Most codecs supported by Final Cut Pro use 8 bits per color sample, so this option is
usually selected by default. However, if you are doing any compositing or adding
footage with higher bit depths, you may want to use high-precision (32-bit) processing
to maximize quality.
8-bit YUV is the fastest Y´C
B
C
R
processing option, so you may want to use this during
offline editing and then switch to high-precision rendering before rendering for output.
Render 10-bit material in high-precision YUV
Use this option whenever your sequence or source footage uses a 10-bit Y´C
B
C
R
codec
such as the Apple ProRes 422 codec or an Uncompressed 10-bit codec. Several
third-party codecs also capture and output 10-bit video.
Render all YUV material in high-precision YUV
This is the highest-quality option for processing video in Final Cut Pro. This option
processes all 8- and 10-bit video at 32-bit floating point. In certain situations, such as
when applying multiple filters to a single clip or compositing several clips together, a
higher bit depth will improve the quality of the final render file even though the
original clip has only 8 bits of color information. The tradeoff is that 32-bit rendering is
slower than 8-bit rendering, so you’re essentially trading speed for quality.
Note: Selecting this option does not add quality to clips captured at 8-bit resolution
when they are output back to video; it simply improves the quality of rendered effects.
About Bit Depth and 32-Bit Floating-Point Processing
When using the Y´C
B
C
R
color space, Final Cut Pro supports either 8- or 10-bit video
media files. To determine which color space and bit depth your video interface
supports, see the documentation that came with the interface. For more information
on which filters and transitions support 10-bit resolution, see “
Video Filters Available
in Final Cut Pro ” on page 241 and Volume II, Chapter 22, “Refining Transitions Using
the Transition Editor.”
Final Cut Pro supports high-resolution video processing of Y´C
B
C
R
sequences by
performing calculations in 32-bit floating-point number space. Compared to 8- and
10-bit integer calculations, 32-bit floating-point numbers have an extremely high level
of precision, which helps to avoid rounding errors that can accumulate as you add
more layers to a composite or add multiple filters to a clip. In most cases, you should
choose to render your sequence using 32-bit floating-point space (called high-precision
YUV) for final rendering before output or export.