Scarlet-W 4K Prores LT vs 5K RAW 12:1

[Andrey Blanco]

I may be wrong but 3.5Hours of 4K Prores LT needs about 512GB of Space Which is very close to the amount of times you can record 5K RED Raw 12:1.
If I'm correct with the above Why in the heck do I want to shoot ProRes? missing all the benefits of RAW recording?

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

You need to do some testing you might be surprised at Prores especially the higher-quality formats

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Yeah, in my preliminary testing on my Epic-W, the prores (even LT) has consistent noise rendering that is far better than almost all R3D compression ratios which seem to really mess up sharp rendering of noise and increase the appearance of noise quite drastically at higher compression ratios. I hope I'm wrong somehow since I originally figured R3D should be more efficient and more flexible, but I'm very concerned that R3D may just have a fundamental issue with how it compresses pre-debayer data in a way that makes it very hard to the debayer to accurately reconstruct noise texture. Prores on the other hand comes from debayer of uncompressed raw data which bypasses all the issues with raw compression, so it may even be better than the very highest quality R3D compression in some ways. It always seemed strange to me that so many people swore by 7:1 and higher compression even for 6K or 8K but it's starting to become clear to me why one really might need to be shooting at 2-3 times prores bitrates to get similar performance from R3Ds.

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

Yeah, in my preliminary testing on my Epic-W, the prores (even LT) has consistent noise rendering that is far better than almost all R3D compression ratios which seem to really mess up sharp rendering of noise and increase the appearance of noise quite drastically at higher compression ratios. I hope I'm wrong somehow since I originally figured R3D should be more efficient and more flexible, but I'm very concerned that R3D may just have a fundamental issue with how it compresses pre-debayer data in a way that makes it very hard to the debayer to accurately reconstruct noise texture. Prores on the other hand comes from debayer of uncompressed raw data which bypasses all the issues with raw compression, so it may even be better than the very highest quality R3D compression in some ways. It always seemed strange to me that so many people swore by 7:1 and higher compression even for 6K or 8K but it's starting to become clear to me why one really might need to be shooting at 2-3 times prores bitrates to get similar performance from R3Ds.

Funny you bring this up Noah, I've actually noticed something similar in my Epic-W as well. I have even tried shifting to the lowest possible compression ratios but theres something getting smoothed out in the prores without sacrificing any sharpness. I wonder if it's my post-pipeline (which is probably very basic compared to most).

I'm looking down the barrel of shooting a few features in the next year and the R3D vs ProResHQ debate is raging in my head. A lot of these features won't end up with some huge color session or workflow so I'm thinking HQ might preserve things better.

I'm sure I'll get called out for this but if I am, please lend some guidance! haha

 

[Michael Lindsay]

Interesting observations ... little bit contrary to the very limited tests I did when QT 1st appeared...but then I was testing against 4to1 R3ds ...I want to go back and look into it...

If you are seeing better QT files how are you doing the debayer and downscale from the R3d that you are comparing against?

By any chance Noah are you talking about very low light work? Also what OLPF?

 

[David Peterson]

I may be wrong but 3.5Hours of 4K Prores LT needs about 512GB of Space Which is very close to the amount of times you can record 5K RED Raw 12:1.
If I'm correct with the above Why in the heck do I want to shoot ProRes? missing all the benefits of RAW recording?

12:1 is a heck of a lot of compression! That level of compression isn't free, it comes at a compromise cost.

 

[Dean Butler]

12:1 is a heck of a lot of compression! That level of compression isn't free, it comes at a compromise cost.

I concur. I don't generally shoot with anymore compression than 8:1 on my Scarlet MX. My W arrives next week