ProRes and Weapon

[Stacey Spears]

Unfortunately no, all "looks" are burned into QTs because they are linear video

Technically its non-linear.

One thing to point out with all the bitdepth discussion is that when recording RAW, its linear light. It needs more bits than gamma or log encoded. I think Poynton is currently saying ~2-bits. So 12-bit non-linear would be comparable to 14-bits linear. Linear is not efficient for storing. You need more bits down below and fewer bits up high. With linear they are simply spread evenly and it is wasteful.

 

[Nick Morrison]

The Arri Amira stores a 3D LUT in it's quicktime files so even when the recorded image is in Log certain programs will play it back with the 3D LUT applied, like Premiere.

The editor gets to look at a nice colorful image and when you bring it into your grading program you go back to working with the Log image.

Cool - so the log is baked in, but a LUT is provided? Smart. Curious is RED will make this option avail with Weapon for Prores exports...

 

[David Battistella]

I wonder if they are doing that with a sidecar file. I don't know if prores can store the image data of a LUT and have the software activate or deactivate it. (choose to play it back or not).

Let's are great, and their implementation is great. It will be interesting to see how they are used.

Still have not figured out if 4K and r3d is possible.

 

[David Battistella]

Also,

I won't put this in another thread but would anyone be down for a NO PRORES version? Call me a traditionalist or "legacy user" but I am just not into the prores features.

Maybe if it reduced the cost of the package because there would be no Prores License required for those cameras that would be cool.

Another thought. If 4K is only going to be available on the 8K versions then I would not be too keen on 2K versions of prores and I'd much rather stick with a RAW workflow anyway.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

LOG + LUT sounds pretty smart, or ACES + LUT (yup... kids are hungry and demanding... )

David and I seem to constantly be on oposite sides of the 2k prores table

I'd take a prores 444 XQ 2k file any day over a 4k 422.
Given that it's a fulldabayer and a lovely scaling algorithm, but I'll trust Graeme with those.

Nothing wrong with either approach, but a nice illustration of the userbase (and difference in mods hahaha)

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Cool - so the log is baked in, but a LUT is provided? Smart. Curious is RED will make this option avail with Weapon for Prores exports...

Yes - the 3D LUT or CDL is just stored in meta-data in the QT wrapper - non-destructive. The NLE reads it and lets the GPU apply the color transform in realtime.

THIS is going to be the new workflow of choice. Apple is working on it - Avid is working on it - Adobe already did it.

And of course - the NLE's will be able to do this for RAW as well - not just LOG footage.

Transcoding is going to be a thing of the past - faster than Mike Most thinks - I promise.

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

422 is 8bit
422(hq) is 10
4444 is 12

I don't know where you obtained this info guys...

ProRes is 10 bit in all its variants, except ProRes 444(4) which is 12 bit.

It can be limited to 8 bit if the user decide to do so but it's NOT the normal approach.

 

[Phil Holland]

From Apple:

Apple ProRes 4444 XQ and Apple ProRes 4444 support image sources up to 12 bits
and preserve alpha sample depths up to 16 bits. All Apple ProRes 422 codecs support
up to 10-bit image sources, though the best 10-bit quality is obtained with the
higher‑bit-rate family members—Apple ProRes 422 and Apple ProRes 422 HQ.
(Note: Like Apple ProRes 4444 XQ and Apple ProRes 4444, all Apple ProRes 422 codecs
can in fact accept image samples even greater than 10 bits, although such high bit
depths are rarely found among 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 video sources.)

 

[Phil Holland]

I'm up stupid late working on things and had a few thoughts. Weapon's release is fairly close and RED has now announced UHD 4K ProRes support.

A couple of notable Dragon data rate numbers:
- Scarlet Dragon = 72 MB/s
- Epic Dragon = 200 MB/s
- Magnesium Weapon = 225 MB/s
- Carbon Fiber Weapon (Woven and Forget) = 300 MB/s

I have no real clue how ProRes is going to be implemented just yet, but it looks like we can dual record .R3D and ProRes as that's what was announced at NAB 2015. In the case of Weapon that means ther'es 25-100MB/s more room in the pipe to push files. If I recall correctly ProRes 422 HQ at 4K is around 95 MB/s. ProRes 4444 XQ at 4K is about 263 MB/s if we are talking 24fps. There's other variables involved here in terms of writing and how the data is written, but that gives you an idea of the pipes needed.

However, I think we've recently learned that Carbon Fiber Weapon has the potential to record at lower REDCODE RAW compression ratios to help fill up those pipes a bit. However, it appears that if you consider Epic Dragon's current REDCODE compression ratios you get about 100 MB/s of headroom that conceivably could be filled up with some Quicktime ProRes files. 2K or 4K.

We'll have to wait and see as to what can be recorded at the same time and individually. There will be data rate restrictions based on where the MINI-MAGs write time top out.

The cool thing is that this alludes to some of the potential here. Lower REDCODE RAW compression ratios = higher quality footage. Certainly super important for overcranked shooting.

We'll have to wait and see just how RED implements all this new tech, but it looks like there's going to be options for nearly every type of workflow on the horizon. Realtime encoding of 4K or UHD 4K ProRes is a big deal and I'm curious to see what frame rates are supported there as well.

 

[David Battistella]

Exciting times. Many choices.

 

[Tarquin Cardona]

I guess the tricky question for many will be if the Magnesium is enough, because for a lot of work getting the best quality pro rez option is going to be a more immediately practical capability than the 8K. Not that the 8K is anything but great - just not for many. Looking at the specs it seems the CF will always be able to deliver the better quality 'period' and will perhaps be preferred in the marketplace. The Magnesium would then fall more in the 'good enough' category and the CF be considered the superior camera. I guess all good problems to have. But are we going to see the Magnesium kind of become regarded as the new Scarlet and the CF really be the heir to the Epic M D?

 

[Elsie N]

Exciting times. Many choices.

I'm glad we didn't have so many choices up 'til now. All that legacy footage would have been frozen in time and unable to be reborn, as new color science was released.

 

[Robert Berger]

I'm up stupid late working on things and had a few thoughts. Weapon's release is fairly close and RED has now announced UHD 4K ProRes support.

A couple of notable Dragon data rate numbers:
- Scarlet Dragon = 72 MB/s
- Epic Dragon = 200 MB/s
- Magnesium Weapon = 225 MB/s
- Carbon Fiber Weapon (Woven and Forget) = 300 MB/s

I have no real clue how ProRes is going to be implemented just yet, but it looks like we can dual record .R3D and ProRes as that's what was announced at NAB 2015. In the case of Weapon that means ther'es 25-100MB/s more room in the pipe to push files. If I recall correctly ProRes 422 HQ at 4K is around 95 MB/s. ProRes 4444 XQ at 4K is about 263 MB/s if we are talking 24fps. There's other variables involved here in terms of writing and how the data is written, but that gives you an idea of the pipes needed.

However, I think we've recently learned that Carbon Fiber Weapon has the potential to record at lower REDCODE RAW compression ratios to help fill up those pipes a bit. However, it appears that if you consider Epic Dragon's current REDCODE compression ratios you get about 100 MB/s of headroom that conceivably could be filled up with some Quicktime ProRes files. 2K or 4K.

We'll have to wait and see as to what can be recorded at the same time and individually. There will be data rate restrictions based on where the MINI-MAGs write time top out.

The cool thing is that this alludes to some of the potential here. Lower REDCODE RAW compression ratios = higher quality footage. Certainly super important for overcranked shooting.

We'll have to wait and see just how RED implements all this new tech, but it looks like there's going to be options for nearly every type of workflow on the horizon. Realtime encoding of 4K or UHD 4K ProRes is a big deal and I'm curious to see what frame rates are supported there as well.

i'm so happy about the fact that i went for the Weapon 8K !! Prores 2K and 4K and love also love the idea of ACES + LUT......

New showreel on www.camlight.nl

 

[Mark Toia]

I don't know where you obtained this info guys...

ProRes is 10 bit in all its variants, except ProRes 444(4) which is 12 bit.

It can be limited to 8 bit if the user decide to do so but it's NOT the normal approach.

On the actual APPLE website under PRORES Codecs.

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

From Apple:

Apple ProRes 4444 XQ and Apple ProRes 4444 support image sources up to 12 bits
and preserve alpha sample depths up to 16 bits. All Apple ProRes 422 codecs support
up to 10-bit image sources, though the best 10-bit quality is obtained with the
higher‑bit-rate family members—Apple ProRes 422 and Apple ProRes 422 HQ.
(Note: Like Apple ProRes 4444 XQ and Apple ProRes 4444, all Apple ProRes 422 codecs
can in fact accept image samples even greater than 10 bits, although such high bit
depths are rarely found among 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 video sources.)

On the actual APPLE website under PRORES Codecs.

On the APPLE whitepaper PDF it clearly says that all the 422 variants are 10 bit capable
and ALL the major players (BMD, AJA, Sony, ARRI, etc etc) implement BOTH plain 422 and 422HQ using 10 bit as APPLE suggest.

Again, I don't know where all this misinformation came from, really.

BTW

On projects that require a fast turnaround, having the option of using ProRes 444(4) XQ (even 2K) is phenomenal.

And on documentary projects, where having longer recording times is key, and where even skipping the transcoding process of huge archives is a time-saver,
a nice 422 10 bit (HQ for a little more headroom) with RLF+Metadata LUT for REC709 is a godsend!!

And in tough lighting conditions (mixed, HPS sources, fast changing, etc etc) you can chose to have the R3D backup.

 

[Karl Krings]

why isn't it possible for normal EPIC-X? this would burst RED in alle categories...this would be a major update...

 

[Nick Morrison]

why isn't it possible for normal EPIC-X? this would burst RED in alle categories...this would be a major update...

I dont think Epic has the boards or processing power - ie I don't think this is just a software update...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

why isn't it possible for normal EPIC-X? this would burst RED in alle categories...this would be a major update...

You mean EPIC recording prores INSTEAD of raw on a standard Epic? (as the bandwith isn't sufficient for prores AND raw)
I can imagine a few reasons that wouldn't happen anytime soon.

 

[Paul E. McCarthy]

You mean EPIC recording prores INSTEAD of raw on a standard Epic? (as the bandwith isn't sufficient for prores AND raw)
I can imagine a few reasons that wouldn't happen anytime soon.

What would be the best thing that RED could do is create a damn Pro Res module like they promised everyone and who bought an Epic and Scarlet because of the "modularity" ( their big selling point). To this day I have never seen a properly working module, just Upgrade paths... in my world we call that Bait and Switch. I'm sure that the Weapon is amazing but I can assure you no one in the commercial world wants to manage 8k files of any kind in 2015.

I also don't like that one of the big promoters of the non-existent Meizler module is now selling a line of 3rd party modules.

 

[Paul Kalbach]

If a Weapon were set up to just record ProRez 4K UHD, wouldn't that signal be available at the HDMI output to directly drive a UHD monitor?