Prores 4444 workflow

[Blair Thornton]

Is anyone working in a pure Prores 4444 workflow yet? i.e. with fast Fibre Channel or SSD raids? Is there any advantage to it, besides already having prores 4444 prepared for davinci and all your colour data available in Final Cut Pro X?

 

[Marc Wielage]

Yes and yes. Most current American network dramas are shot in ProRes 444, edited in 444 (or sometimes 422), then conformed in 444 and color-timed & finished in 444. I've down quite a few Alexa Log-C projects this way, and they work fine and look terrific.

The advantage is not having to debayer anything on-the-fly within the computer, so you free up a lot of processing power that way. The limitation is you won't have access to the Raw controls (ISO, color temperature, etc.), but if the Log file is correctly prepared and the material is well-shot, you should be able to color-correct the material quickly and conveniently.

I've only done 1080 ProRes 444, but I'm curious to see whether 4K ProRes will take off and how well it'll work in the real world.

 

[Mark Toia]

It's called my hotel room (laptop) work flow.
I make 4444 or 422(HQ) 4k or 2k Redlogfilm (color balanced) PRO RES Files.
I do everything with them and I fly...

When I use a big box, I stay in R3D's as long as I can, even for edit, grade the lot as RAW. But this is not a fast portable work flow solution as you need fast RAID's for it to work at the same pace as a PRORES work flow.

I master everything when finished as PRORES 4k or 2k 422(hq)

 

[Blair Thornton]

Mark, 4K 4444 is a huge rata rate. What are you using for storage to avoid non-drop frames? I'm trying to figure out a semi-portable 4444 solution.

 

[Mark Toia]

For my away jobs and trying to keep weight down, I just use a Mirrored RAID , fire wire mostly.. thunderbolt is they way to go though.
4444 - 4k PRO RES is very easy to edit from a single spinning drive via a laptop. Don't thinks its not.
I'm actually doing it right now as I type

 

[Blair Thornton]

Mark,

Prores 4444 is like 1,131 Mb/sec in 24p, what drive do you have and how can it not drop frames?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Prores 444 has been working fina at 2k from laptop-fw drives since like 2011...

 

[Blair Thornton]

Ah, proxies !

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Ah, proxies !

Proxies?

Nope. or... what do you mean?

Exporting 444 RLF, finnish from that.

Not optimum as to IQ, but pretty darned nice...

 

[Brian Merlen]

technically hes right, prores 444 tho relatively high bit rate is a proxy of r3d merely in the fact its not as processing intensive AND has been "baked in" color wise since its lost some of the raw malleability.

I try to push the stay in r3d format as long as possible mantra too, but some productions it aint there style. for jobs like these if shooting at speed an off board recorder to generate real time proxies is best practice i think since no rocket or overnight encodes are needed for the price of a pix240 or hyper deck, many choices.

if shooting high speed easiest solution is rocket, just batch it all in advance for them, ideally with a one light if they will allow it.

and for the record one drive solutions are always bad, and its more then just speed, its potential drive failures and losing your work that is the main threat. unless your working off bus power you should at minimum use a raid 1 drive with 2 bays and ideally be on a raid 5 multi drive solution (for both speed and further risk mitigation). stuff happens guys, i seen the happenings far too often and its much cheaper to protect yourself with a multi drive solution then schedule a pick up day in many many situations.

on yahoo news recently an article stated: most major companies suffer a signifiant data loss every 2 years on average. i can believe it, people need to really save their assets and avoid one drive solutions like the plague. end of rant, and hope i drive home the point, mechanics fail and drives are a time bomb

 

[mikeburton]

Another consideration is that 4K ProRes 444 is only 1/6 the storage demands and only requires about 1/3 the RAID bandwidth of 4K DPX and is visually comparable. So, if you are doing a VFX heavy show that would normally be a DPX workflow it's conceivable that a 4K ProRes444 workflow be considered over DPX for the storage and bandwidth savings alone.
Also, your DCP is going to be more loss than ProRes444 files so even though it's a compressed format it's safe to say that you won't be seeing that loss in theatre. This is assuming the RaW files are debayered at Full Res.

 

[joe hedge]

technically hes right, prores 444 tho relatively high bit rate is a proxy of r3d merely in the fact its not as processing intensive AND has been "baked in" color wise since its lost some of the raw malleability.

A "proxy" file as it referred to R3D's in the past is a QT reference file that only plays back if the raw R3D file is online. The original Red One, in addition to recording the raw file, also gave you 4 different resolutions of proxies. These weren't stand-alone QT's, as a ProRes 4444 transcode is, but QT reference files.

 

[Brian Merlen]

A "proxy" file as it referred to R3D's in the past is a QT reference file that only plays back if the raw R3D file is online. The original Red One, in addition to recording the raw file, also gave you 4 different resolutions of proxies. These weren't stand-alone QT's, as a ProRes 4444 transcode is, but QT reference files.

correct, but i meant more generally a proxy as a means to edit with on a dated machine. for instance some reconform to the r3d files later and use dnx or prores as merely a way to cut. others simply delete or don't even save the r3d files and the prores or dnxhd is there master file as far as they are concerned... lots of variety out there... but the point is as someone who works at post houses quite a bit they can't realistically deal with r3ds at all places, and most big ops cant update machines often so they got some older bays laying around. so a low res proxy format for editing is the goal, be it dnx or prores in those kinds of instances... but i can see how with the QT ref files/wrappers of red one that could get misinterpreted easily

 

[Blair Thornton]

Another consideration is that 4K ProRes 444 is only 1/6 the storage demands and only requires about 1/3 the RAID bandwidth of 4K DPX and is visually comparable..

OK, DPX is a format that can pack these bits together without wasting so much space. Assuming you output in some 10-bit space you would need for DPX:

4096 x 2304 at 24 fps in 10-bit DPX: 270 MB/s
4520 x 2540 at 24 fps in 10-bit DPX: 329 MB/s

Back to my original question, I should re-phrase it more clearly perhaps: Is anyone working in a pure Prores 4444 workflow yet ? i.e full 4K, full bandwidth prores 4444 without using proxies (i.e 2K prores 4444), no DPX conversion, but full bandwidth 4K 4444 prores?

Keep in mind at 4K 24p, the prores 4444 codec's data rate is 1,131 Mb/sec and fast storage is required.

Would there be any technical advantage to working full bandwidth 4K 4444?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

There is little/no gain working 4k prores over working from RAW.

 

[Blair Thornton]

There is little/no gain working 4k prores over working from RAW.

Except that you can immediately do colour correcting with Davinci, right?

 

[M Most]

Except that you can immediately do colour correcting with Davinci, right?

You can do that with either one.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

You can do that with either one.

+ 1001

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

OK, DPX is a format that can pack these bits together without wasting so much space. Assuming you output in some 10-bit space you would need for DPX:
4096 x 2304 at 24 fps in 10-bit DPX: 270 MB/s
4520 x 2540 at 24 fps in 10-bit DPX: 329 MB/s (snip)

Are you sure about those data rates? I generally spec 1,200MB/s for 4K 10bit log DPX @24fps - with some headroom if possible.

If Mike Most is still around perhaps he can provide definitive info on this.

IIRC, 4K ProRes 444 @24fps is roughly 140MB/s and engineered to perform well on Apple hardware.

Finishing from R3Ds has some real advantages - that said - with a decent "one light" to ProRes 444 in RLF your finals colorist should be able to get excellent results from well shot material.

Cheers - #19

 

[M Most]

OK, DPX is a format that can pack these bits together without wasting so much space. Assuming you output in some 10-bit space you would need for DPX:

4096 x 2304 at 24 fps in 10-bit DPX: 270 MB/s
4520 x 2540 at 24 fps in 10-bit DPX: 329 MB/s

That is incorrect. A DPX file use 32 bits per pixel. That means that the size of the file in bits would be 4096x2304x32, or approx. 302,000,000. In bytes, that would be 302000000/8, or approx. 36 megabytes. Per second, that would be 36x24, or approximately 864 MB/sec. That would be the base rate you would need. Since all storage systems have overhead, you usually figure to need at least 1GB/sec to play it reliably.

Back to my original question, I should re-phrase it more clearly perhaps: Is anyone working in a pure Prores 4444 workflow yet ? i.e full 4K, full bandwidth prores 4444 without using proxies (i.e 2K prores 4444), no DPX conversion, but full bandwidth 4K 4444 prores?

Keep in mind at 4K 24p, the prores 4444 codec's data rate is 1,131 Mb/sec and fast storage is required.

Would there be any technical advantage to working full bandwidth 4K 4444?

The data rate for 4K Prores 4444 is similar to that of uncompressed HD (which is roughly 1.4Gb). Many systems are more than capable of handling that. As for "advantages," that depends on what you're doing. If you're doing color grading, it often helps to have the deeper bit depth to allow for more precision. If you're doing visual effects, it helps considerably to have more information for matte extractions and accurate rotoscoping. If you're doing basic creative editing, I would argue that you don't need 4K at all, and that it really only serves a purpose during final finishing, which of course depends on what kind of pipeline you've set up. Some people here seem to want a pipeline that eliminates the concept of offline and online. Others - including nearly all major finishing facilities and essentially anyone doing studio level work - never do that because the level of perfection required in that environment and the need for integrating material from many different sources (original photography, multiple VFX vendors, etc.) while maintaining a consistent color pipeline makes working with uncompressed RGB files (usually in the form of DPX or EXR) almost imperative.