Editing & Post-Production
Bit depth
Also called: 8-bit, 10-bit
Each colour channel holds a fixed number of steps between black and white: 8-bit gives 256 of them, 10-bit gives 1,024. The difference is invisible on untouched footage and becomes obvious the moment you grade, because pushing contrast spreads those steps apart until gradients show as stripes, usually in skies and on defocused walls. Log profiles make it worse, since log deliberately flattens an image expecting you to stretch it back out again, which is why log on an 8-bit camera often finishes uglier than a standard profile would have. Audio bit depth measures something unrelated.