decoding 10bit video

shino-boy — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:14:58 -0800

Decoding a 10bit video file ain't easy... I own an HD camera mod that records uncompressed 8bit and 10bit video files directly to a Mac's HDD. The camera company provided software to capture and render the video files. The rendering software never worked correctly with the 10bit files and we were waiting for an updated release. The company was sold and the rendering software was *not* updated and is now no longer supported.

:(

I wondered how hard it would be to write a Quicktime component under OS X 10.4 to directly read both the 8bit and 10bit files.

I bought some red, green and blue felt from the art store and recorded 8bit and 10bit clips of each color on an overcast day.

Starting with the 8bit files, I used a hex viewer to examine the "red" video file, and saw numbers like this (converted to decimal):

114 31 32 112 29 32 [...]

Well, that was easy. A quick check of the "green" video file confirmed that the byte order of each pixel is stored R G B. And indeed, my codec can now open successfully open an 8bit file. Hooray! But wait...

Using the same hex viewer I peek at the 10bit "red" video file, which was recorded using the same exposure as the 8bit file so I kind of know what numbers to expect, and I get this (again converted to decimal):

212 245 129 137 120 123 44 130 156 32 142 136 71 200 34 [...]

The italics are mine, they are (kinda) the R G B values I'm looking for, I just didn't expect them to show up like that. I've seen examples of how 10bit DPX image files are packed but the pattern I see in my files just doesn't make sense to me.

Do they make sense to anyone else? I really want to use these 10bit files, and if I can figure out the R G B pattern I'll be good to go.

For the record I did email the rendering software's developer asking for a hint. He did not reply.

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decoding 10bit video