x265 - Always choose 10bit?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Riffing on the same topic-- what about scenarios where a 10bit file made from an 8bit source gets fed through an 8bit display pipeline? I'm assuming the negatives of a proper dithering wouldn't be enough to outweigh the positives of a 10bit encode, but what about truncation?

That's a good point.

Many consumer TVs for example have horrendous display pipelines filled with format conversions and many bit depth conversions. Often these will produce better results with 8 bit input over HDMI even if they have a real 10 bit panel.

It's worth noting that one of the major benefits of Dolby Vision is that it takes over the display and has sensibly designed pipelines. In my experience a well crafted Dolby Vision encode will often have less banding than a well crafted HDR10 encode.

[microchip8]

I've disabled all of image processing I could find in its settings on my 8 bit Panasonic 1080p TV and 10 bit still looks better than the same encode done in 8 bit (same settings for both, just bit depth differs). I'm especially pleased that I no longer encounter banding as I used to do sometimes with 8 bit encodes

So I see only benefits of 10 bit encodes even when displayed on 8 bit displays. At least that's my own experience here

[RanmaCanada]

As a side note: Aside from missing hardware decoding support on older hardware, how about using 12bit? :)

I don't know of any devices other than PC's that can decode 12 bit. No android boxes, no game consoles, no phones, tablets, nothing outside of PC's. Do you know of any?

Any of the 12 bit encodes I've seen have been mind blowing, but playback can only be done on my computer :(

[aymanalz]

I don't know of any devices other than PC's that can decode 12 bit. No android boxes, no game consoles, no phones, tablets, nothing outside of PC's. Do you know of any?

Any of the 12 bit encodes I've seen have been mind blowing, but playback can only be done on my computer :(

Mind blowing in what sense? How are they better than 10 bit? Less bitrate required, or better visual quality, or both? Any specific aspect of visual quality that gets improved, like 10 bit having less banding than 8 bit?

I only want to playback videos on my PC or laptop (connected to the TV), so if 12 bit offers any advantage over 10 bit, I might start using that. Provided encoding times don't go up like crazy.

[RanmaCanada]

Mind blowing in what sense? How are they better than 10 bit? Less bitrate required, or better visual quality, or both? Any specific aspect of visual quality that gets improved, like 10 bit having less banding than 8 bit?

I only want to playback videos on my PC or laptop (connected to the TV), so if 12 bit offers any advantage over 10 bit, I might start using that. Provided encoding times don't go up like crazy.
The encodes I have seen and have done, are to my eyes, visually transparent to the source material with the usual shrink in size. No banding, no dithering, and no bleeding of bright colours into dark areas or vice versa. Though the last could have been done with filtering before encoding as it was not my encode that I viewed.

As for encode times, I will be honest and say I do not know if it will increase times or not as I no longer do encodes in 12 bit because of the lack or hardware support outside of PC. I mainly do anime, and I honestly would use 12 bit HEVC over 10 bit Hi-P for anime (only a handful of devices support it in hardware) if there was 12 bit support. My current setup is just a placeholder until the 3950 is released (if I can even get my hands on one), a measly Ryzen 2700. Once I replace it with a real CPU, I may attempt 12 bit again.