8-bit video
Also known as: 8-bit colour, 8-bit recording
Video recorded with 256 levels per colour channel, the default on most action cameras and the limit most grading problems come back to.
Updated
What it means
Eight bits gives 256 steps per channel. That is plenty for a finished image and very tight for one that still has to be pushed around, because every adjustment made to it spreads those steps further apart than they were.
The contrast with 10-bit color is four times the steps per channel, which is the difference between a gradient that survives a grade and one that breaks into bands.
Almost all action camera footage is eight bit in practice. It is what the standard shooting modes record, and the higher bit depth usually appears only alongside a log profile and the newer codec together.
How it works in practice
Exposing accurately matters more here than it does almost anywhere else. Eight bit material has little room for recovery, so getting it right at capture replaces any attempt at fixing it afterwards.
Flat profiles are a mixed blessing at this depth. A Log profile in eight bit spreads the range thinly, and a standard profile exposed well frequently grades better than it does.
Grading gently is the practical rule. Small corrections survive intact; large moves in Curves reveal the step size immediately in skies and in skin tones. Restraint is not a style choice here.
What to watch out for
Banding is the signature failure. Color banding appears first in smooth gradients, which in action footage means skies, water and snow more or less constantly, and nothing available in post repairs it properly.
Noise reduction makes banding worse. Smoothing removes the dither that was hiding the steps, so a Denoise pass can produce visible bands where there had been none at all.
It compounds with compression. An eight bit clip at a modest bitrate has two separate reasons to break in a gradient, and the two are difficult to tell apart from each other.
How RawClip handles it
Grading on eight bit material is deliberately restrained for exactly this reason, since heavy moves produce banding rather than a look. Footage shot at a higher bit depth tolerates considerably more, and it is used in exactly the same way otherwise.