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Opinions On ProRes Raw


Freya Black

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I'm writing an article for Broadcast Tech on Apples new ProRes Raw technology and was wondering if anyone had any opinions or ideas about the technology and how it might affect aquisition or post production. Do you think it will be a popular technology or do you think that Red already has this part of the market sewn up with red .r3d's?

 

How do you think it will affect the future of cinematography or do you think it might not.

 

I'm looking for quotes for my article so let me know if I can quote you on it!

 

Freya

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Do you think it will be a popular technology or do you think that Red already has this part of the market sewn up with red .r3d's?

 

redcode only applies to the small niche of cameras which are RED cameras, nothing else uses it. So yes, it is great, but not in anything else non-RED.

 

ProRes RAW has the potential to become the standard for everything else, just like ProRes has (ProRes has become so popular as standard that in RED's DSCM2 bodies they're even offering ProRes themselves!!

 

ProRes RAW will not become popular overnight though, will take a while though, for it to trickle down and get implemented in more and more cameras internally. At the moment it is very rare indeed.

Edited by David Peterson
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Within limits, the technical implementation barely matters. What matters is how difficult, expensive and time-consuming it is to get the thing certified.

 

Apple and their trademarked word "prores" is effectively being used as a standards body in this instance. It's good that the format will be robustly standardised, but it's not necessarily a great overall situation considering that Apple is a for-profit cellphone manufacturer with very little ongoing interest in film and television.

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Coming from the low/mid range camera budget world... To me it's a big deal. I'm a one man band for the most part so budgets are stretched very thin. Odds are if I'm shooting I'm editing. I have the capability to shoot RAW, but as everyone knows it's a nightmare to edit with unless you have an amazing expensive system. So the only real choice after that is to shoot ProRes and make the data sacrifice for editing's sake.

 

That brings me to ProRes RAW. To have the work ability of ProRes and the flexibility of RAW is huge to someone like me. BUT WAIT!! It's only on final cut... so I'm not going to use it. What's the point of all that power in post when you are only able to work with it in FCP? snore. If they open it up to the other NLEs I expect huge adaptation.

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That brings me to ProRes RAW. To have the work ability of ProRes and the flexibility of RAW is huge to someone like me. BUT WAIT!! It's only on final cut... so I'm not going to use it. What's the point of all that power in post when you are only able to work with it in FCP? snore. If they open it up to the other NLEs I expect huge adaptation.

 

What NLE are you using Matt?

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The main question for me is whether ARRI will start using it in the Alexa line-up. Could be useful for those higher resolution cameras like the Alexa LF and Alexa 65 because the uncompressed raw data rates are insane for those cameras.

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I can barely get producers to sign off on standard 2.8k arriraw due to the high data rates, let alone 4.5k or 6k of the same thing!

 

It would be fantastic to get the more managable raw option of Prores Raw into the Alexas.

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One of the things to be aware of is that there is no spectacular new tech in prores raw.

 

What it does can be done in ways not beholden to Apple and personally I'd rather it was.

 

Cineform did this, so do compressed DNG sequences. The tech already exists.

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I still have yet to see the actual benefit over 12 bit prores 444. Seems like extra post work with little benefit. You get to adjust your color space and your iso, but with a wide gamut baked in with a log gamma, the chances of you being able to do all the same transforms as you did with raw with minimal additional artifacts is pretty high. Plus I heard the raw file is smaller than the prores files, so I'm concerned about the compression artifacts. My gut is telling me that lifting and underexposed 12 bit 444 file with a large datarate might be easier than lifting the smaller raw file in post.

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Plus I heard the raw file is smaller than the prores files, so I'm concerned about the compression artifacts.

Yes, but, the raw is intrinsically smaller data to begin with, so not necessarily.

 

There's a certain truth to the idea that when we debayer an image in-camera then compress the result, what we're actually doing is making up some information using algorithms, then compressing the result, which actually doesn't make much sense.

 

That said, there is also some value to the idea that we're creating a standardised output from the camera, so don't let's overlook that.

 

In my view, a unified raw is both technically possible and a good idea, and may even save some data space without compromising image quality or requiring more work in the compression. My view remains, though, that it's a much better for these things are not run for commercial gain. That's not really the point of a standardisation effort.

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One of the things to be aware of is that there is no spectacular new tech in prores raw.

 

What it does can be done in ways not beholden to Apple and personally I'd rather it was.

 

Cineform did this, so do compressed DNG sequences. The tech already exists.

 

Totally agreed, none of it makes any sense. Cinema DNG and Red Code are pretty efficient.

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