4444 ProRes ???

[PJ Porter]

Hey all,

Does anyone know if the Epic/Scarlet series will be upgraded to 4444 ProRes Output/Delivery format anytime soon?
If so, where can I find the info?


Keeping my fingers crossed for a "yes" haha

 

[Dunkan Wolf]

I don't think Epic is capable of transcoding to ProRes incamera due to the way ASICS work... even if they wanted to.
As in the ASIC / CPU is optimized to encode to the wavelet codec only.

 

[Bob Gundu]

No way thats happening.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The ASIC is a JPEG2k(REDCODE) ASIC so very unlikely that it could be repurposed for ProRes. Also 444(4) includes Alpha (last 4) so to be super pedantic no there is absolutely 0% chance anybody would include an alpha channel on a Dragon. Maybe if it had a Time-of-Flight depth channel but for no other reason.

If REDCode was a DCT based codec like ProRes and DNxHD then yes I bet it would be possible to repurpose the ASIC but JP2k is just so wildly different from DCT inter-frame codecs that I highly doubt it's flexible enough to do both.

Also if you record RAW there is no reason to use 4:4:4 since the color channels are already in a 4:2:2 ratio on a bayer sensor. Most likely they would use the current approach of decomposing the image into their HSV/YUVesque pre-encode and then use that.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I have worked on many, many projects that have shot on Red 4K and then had the DIT debayer the files to ProRes 444 RedLogFilm for color timing. This works fine provided the files are decoded correctly, the exposure is correct, and the color temperature is correct. Very often in TV, the schedules are so frenetic, they wind up doing entire episodes as ProRes HD for this reason. In a perfect world with very fast computers and pipelines (and more time), Raw is a better way to go.

 

[Keith Putnam]

There are many, many outboard recorders in existence which will create ProRes 4444 files for you from an SDI input.

 

[Bob Gundu]

There are many, many outboard recorders in existence which will create ProRes 4444 files for you from an SDI input.

True. But be aware only 4:2:2 is spit out of the camera.

 

[Brian Merlen]

its easy enough to encode stuff yourself these days, esp with a rocket x. the entire advantage of red is that its not shooting prores... its like buying an XT vs an Amira...your paying more for the raw, and then paying even more again to process it, cuz you want control to an insane level. that is the entire point vs easy to shoot straight to prores/mxf workflows...but between resolve, redcine, on board recorders, capture cards, there is a ton of ways to make it do both

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

If immediate recording of ProRes444(4) is a requirement of your situation then you will want to record directly to an outboard recorder that supports that format. SDI and HDMI are both viable options depending on your hardware. I'm a fan of the PIX recorders from Sound Devices as I can feed audio directly to the recorder at very high quality, and only take picture from the camera outputs. YMMV.

Cheers - #19

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

As Bob points out, only 4:2:2 is spit out of the camera's SDI port and only at 1080p too. If you want to go beyond that, then you need the 4K broadcast module and still to an external recorder. There was at one point the mention of a proxy module to record ProRes and/ or DNxHD proxy files right on the camera, but it never materialized. RED could offer that at some point or they could release another module that could record full ProRes 4444 in up to 4K if they felt there was sufficient desire out there for such a box. IMO, there probably is enough of a market for such a module, especially if they priced it aggressively. However, I don't foresee it happening as it would defeat much of the purpose behind shooting RAW. Which is the primary reason many of us choose to shoot on RED to begin with. And the proxy module apparently died over internal concerns that its recordings could supplant the RAW R3D files as primary acquisition, seeing how this industry tends to gravitate towards that which is "good enough" as long as it's easy.