8bit vs 16bit - Why most PROs get Bit Depth WRONG?

Part of the reason you don't see the gradation is the DACs that converts the digital values to analog is 8 bit DACs for each of the color channels just as it were for an Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 back in 1991. This means the gradation of each of the color channels like greyscale. The more shades per channel is like the shades of the 8bpp grey scale vs 16bpp grayscale but now apply that to each of the three color channels. Most TVs and monitors are using 8bit DACs (DAC = Digital to Analog Converters). Some newer TVs with the touted high dynamic range, in order to do it not only widens the gamut but also widens the range from darkest levels of the color channel to the brightest level of the color channel. Then you have that divided by 1024 shades of the component colors of R, G, and B. Hence, 10 Bit DACs per channel being used. The most extreme end of TVs currently that I have heard of uses 12 bits per channel. 16 bits can be used and you would notice it more IF you look solely in the gradation of that channel and the smooth transitions along it just as you compare between 8bit greyscale, 12 bit grey scale and 16 bit greyscale. Human eyes will notice most on the green channel and the red channel. Human eyes are weakest on the blue channel. This is due to the area of color spectrum our eyes are most sensitive. As creatures of nature, our eyes evolved to perceive the shades of green more and that's due to evolving from our earliest ancestors in woods, forests, and jungles. This is the natural spectrum our eyes are sensitive to. Red and Blue are near the ends of our visual spectrum. Hardware will generally mixes the channels blindly within a minimum and maximum output level in each channel in steps. Be they, 256 steps, 1024 steps, 4096 steps, or 65536 steps. If the DACs are 8 Bit DACs for each component, the limits are 16,777,216 colors. You could have had 9 bits of each of the RGB color channels and you wouldn't see any more than 256 shades of red, green, or blue. This is due to HW. Your eyes could perceive more than 256 shades of red or green or blue. However, your display won't output more than the DACs bit resolution. If you have 10 bit DACs, it's limited to 1024 shades of red or green or blue. The human eye could conceivably see as many shades of each of those mixes as it can perceptively discern with grey scale based on steps of brightness or intensity from lowest output level to highest output level. However, once you mix colors into pixels it becomes less and less distinguishable. At some point, you reach a point of practical use. There is a diminishing perceptable return. Going from 16bpp to 24bpp was less perceptible than it was to go from 8bpp to 16bpp. Anything more than 24bpp (RGB888) is more wasting bit size in most end use practical purposes especially in something like games. Heck, even game graphics were sometimes still 16bpp (65536 colors) to save space and look good. You'd be hardpressed to tell a 16bpp picture of ultra4K resolution (3840x2160) from one that is 24bpp. Visually, won't make much difference but saves you 1/3 in data space. Animate it and have lots of frames at that resolution, you can save space and have quality. Further techniques of image data compression and you'll save more space. With good computing power, you can decompress in real time and still have realtime video yet saved space. 16 BPC (Bits per Channel) is probably overkill and won't be needed on something animated. If something was static, maybe if you look at it long enough, you might see a slight shade difference but when you are above 4096 shades of red, or green, or blue, it would be hard.

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The difference of a higher internal/working bit depth is noticeable on an 8-bit screen on clean digital gradients, such as the ending screen on your video, especially grey where all the color channels switch nearly simultaneously. The final 8-bit output will approximate the gradient better through dithering (error diffusion). Dithering noise is often misunderstood as only masking quantization noise, but it actually prevents it if it is added to a more accurate value. JPEG/MPEG has around 7-bit depth and will usually remove high frequency dithering and create banding again.

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