What the heck is 10-bit? Does it really make images look amazing?
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There are always countless mysteries and gimmicks in the world of audio and video. Various strange concepts make people feel confused and powerful, and weak-willed consumers even want to spend money immediately. Among these seemingly mysterious and intimidating terms, 10-bit is one of them. The most important thing about display devices is the image quality, but the quality of the image is a very subjective thing. Unless the screen has problems such as serious color cast, everyone has their own ideas about the image quality of the device. It is precisely because of this that manufacturers have room to make a fuss, and all kinds of unclear terms and technologies are promoted as selling points. With the improvement of people's consumption level, many people have gradually moved away from the idea that "as long as the monitor can see things", and began to pursue better image quality. If you don't know much about audio and video, the selling points of the display device have become a reference for people. Among them, many people have noticed the so-called "10bit". At the PhotoPlus exhibition in New York not long ago, BenQ released two new professional monitors, namely SW320 and PV270. In addition to 4K resolution, 10-bit panel is also a major promotional point. In addition, people have also found that 10-bit is not necessarily those expensive monitors. There are many 10-bit monitor products at the 2,000 yuan level on the market. They all have better color performance as their highlight, which has attracted many people to try it. So, what exactly is 10bit? How should we view the manufacturer's promotion when purchasing a monitor? What is bit? If we want to talk about what 10bit can bring to us, it is best to start with "bit". If it is translated into Chinese, it is generally translated as "bit depth". Of course, even if it is translated, it is still difficult for us to understand its concept from the translated name. In this case, it is better to give an example. What is the use of 10bit? If you want to describe it in the most intuitive way, it can make the color present a more delicate gradient change, because the color level in each color channel has suddenly increased from 256 levels of 8bit (currently most of our display devices use 8bit, and even 6bit) to 1024 levels. In this way, the color presentation is naturally more delicate. We can start with the simplest black and white channel. From black to white, we can regard it as passing through 256 color segments in 8bit, while this number will increase by 1024 in 10bit. The more color layers in the middle, we can easily imagine that the gradual transition from black to white will be more delicate and natural. If the bit depth is lower than 8bit, we may see obvious layering in this transition. If there is a low-bit-depth sunset landscape picture, you will see that the orange-yellow transition from the inside to the outside of the sun is not natural. This is because the color level is not enough and the delicate changes cannot be reflected. To give another extreme example, if the bit depth is only 1bit, then the color can be said to have no transition at all, only obvious black and white. In general, every time the bit depth is increased by 1, the amount of layered information contained in a color channel can be doubled. For example, 1bit can only present black and white, while 2bit can have 4 possible layers from black to white. Because of this, the 256 levels of 8bit have 1024 levels when 10bit, which is actually a very large improvement. Since the gradient layering in the color channel will become more delicate, it is conceivable that there will be more types of colors that can be presented under 10bit. We always say that 8-bit can present 16 million colors, that is because there are three primary colors of red, green and blue, and the actual number of colors is 256 x 256 × 56. If it evolves to 10-bit, a simple calculation shows that it can present more than 1 billion colors. In fact, it is not that beautiful. Seeing the above text, many friends may start to get excited and make up their minds to stick to 10-bit monitors, after all, everyone loves delicate colors. But wait, the problem is really not that simple. At present, only those professional-level monitors can achieve 10-bit, which is the real positioning of the two new products of BenQ mentioned above. These monitors are expensive and not affordable for ordinary consumer users. Although the prices of BenQ SW320 and PV270 have not been announced yet, it is clear that their prices will definitely not be lowered. Under low-bit-depth encoding, the color gradient area of some pictures is large, but the color change is small, which can easily lead to very serious stratification in that area, because the delicate difference between the two layers of color can no longer be reflected in 8-bit. This phenomenon is called Banding. Banding is not unsolvable. People can add small dots of similar colors to the edges of color layers to blur those obvious layering lines. This method is called "dithering". In fact, those cheap 10-bit monitors that claim to be consumer-grade basically use dithering to achieve the 10-bit effect, and do not use native 10-bit panels. If we pay attention to the product specifications of such products, we can easily find the problems. In addition, there are many 10-bit encoded resources on the Internet, such as videos, pictures, etc. When we use 8-bit or even lower display devices, we cannot enjoy the best effects they bring. So what is the use of 10-bit? This will make everyone discouraged, as if ordinary people cannot enjoy the benefits of 10-bit at all, but this is not the case. Suppose you use 10-bit encoding to record a video, this means that you will have more editing room during post-processing because the information stored in the video is richer. If you process 8-bit video extensively, it is easy to encounter banding, because it does not store so much color information, so the image processor can only classify an area into a group of colors. The same is true for photo editing. Naturally, videos or photos encoded in 10-bit have more room for various processing (the simplest one is saturation adjustment) because of the large amount of information. Because of its high precision and large room, 10-bit content can also be converted to 8-bit through corresponding processing to obtain a better presentation effect. We are basically still out of luck with 10-bit display, unless you are willing to spend a very high price to pursue the so-called "perfect effect" for daily use, not to mention that most of the image content is still 8-bit. However, we also need to see that professionals have already brought us a lot of pleasing content by using 10-bit. As an ordinary consumer, we don't need to pursue such things now, it is enough to know this.As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity. |
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