What are the pros and cons of recording Pro res versus Raw ?

[Ivan McCullough]

Ok, so if it is a debayered image out of the hdsdi how much processing power is that eating up?

Is that not processing that could be put to better use and giving an option of a crappy line-skipped hdsdi feed instead if it means a few more fps or better compression?

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Ivan,

The fact that the debayer is fairly good doesn't mean it won't aliase. You'r probably right saying you've allready seen that as the camera isn't debayering at full res. This does eat some power and may heat up the CPU as does RAW compression. There was a lot of pressiure to put this CPU power in favor of Prores encoding. IMHO this could have been possible... But I'm not an engeneer. ;-)

Pat

 

[Marc Wielage]

On a alexa proress you got baked in iso and kelvin... when you shoot log. So yes you do "bake stuff in" on alexa process.

It looks fine and we can still get to where we need to go. It's not a big deal. I would always rather they shoot ArriRaw, but I have no problem dealing with LogC. As long as you have the range to give them pretty much any look they need, the Raw isn't absolutely necessary.

Jarred confirmed some time ago that this 'add-on' (module) is dead and will not be coming to market.

I seem to recall they said late last year the Meizler Module was dead, but they were redesigning something else to provide real-time proxies as a separate file, most likely on a separate disk. Do you have a link with more information beyond that?

 

[Ivan McCullough]

It looks fine and we can still get to where we need to go. It's not a big deal. I would always rather they shoot ArriRaw, but I have no problem dealing with LogC. As long as you have the range to give them pretty much any look they need, the Raw isn't absolutely necessary.


I seem to recall they said late last year the Meizler Module was dead, but they were redesigning something else to provide real-time proxies as a separate file, most likely on a separate disk. Do you have a link with more information beyond that?

I can't remember the thread name but like other things of note it is buried in a thread about something else. Unless I am hallucinating, (always possible), its is dead.

 

[Tarquin Cardona]

For what it's worth. Been shooting Epic with Pix 240i with excellent results in pro Rez for last two years. No funny business. But I think people sometimes just see whatever they want to see. In the wrong hands I have been equally underwhelmed by every camera made practically. I have often wondered if there is a qualitative difference in recorders. No one seems to discuss this in same way they go on at great length about whatever camera they are plugging. I have found Atomos to not be as good for sure. So maybe some investigating needs to be done. I think Sound Devices put a lot of effort into how their units pull the footage. What comes out of the camera is partially raw in look still and grades really well.

It is obviously not the same as Red Raw which can be beautiful ... Like a great still. And this is the future really. I can tell you that editing in large pro Rez output from Redcine as 4K HD then reduced to 1080 later gives awesome results. Yes you can see a difference.

I think where Red will see an edge in the next couple of years is that it produces the big picture in a small box. No add ons except to go down - not up. I agree that had Red made a module that spat out beautiful pro Rez they would have kicked some butt. I am not sure the reason why they didn't but it did hurt them till now. Maybe less so as we become comfortable with 4K workflows and above in the same way we used to shoot 35mm for TVC in SD.

 

[Ivan McCullough]

I have used the PIX, mainly with Phantom footage as there is not much benefit financially or quality wise to transcoding the RAW's from that cam as its such a big job.

Love the PIX, its really easy and effective..

With the Epic though?...I already explained my aliasing issues with wardrobe but the other thing is not being able to send RLF to the recorder and RC3RG3 to a client monitor at the same time.

When you are losing out on the benefits of log while having the advantages of ProRez its a bit annoying so I have never used one with the EPIC.

 

[Tarquin Cardona]

Typically the Pix went on the Epic as it was the best answer I could come up with for giving an editor something to run with right out the gate and then swapping in Red colored PR footage later. I usually find the Pix footage to be a bit raw looking and in need of sharpening and saturation to make it pop in rough cut. But then sometimes I don't think I have pushed my looks as hard out the HDSDI.

 

[Peter Majtan]

Not sure what you mean. So if I shoot only 24FPS I can suddenly get 100fps by just shooting RAW??

No. What I meant was that while you can record over cranked footage in the native RAW format onto the REDMAGs - your ProRes external recorder will only record in the basic frame rate (be it 24, 25 or 30) as it comes out of the HD-SDI / HDMI ports.
Even if you had a ProRes recorder capable of recording higher frame-rates, you are limited by the frame-rate of the DSMC's brain outputs.
The only way (for now) to record higher frame rates onto external ProRes recorder is to first record it as RAW onto the REDMAGs and then play it back in the camera (which will slow it down to your set project FPS).
So lets say you set your project frame rate as 25 fps (for simplicity of explanation). You then record at 100 fps. If you were recording to your external ProRes recorder at the same time - you would have only captured the frame rate of the HD-SDI / HDMI output.
But if you then play back the captured RAW file on the camera - it will play all the frames at the base frame-rate - so it will play at ¼ the speed (4x slower) - which you can then capture to your external ProRes recorder.
This is the only way (for now) to record high-speed footage from RED on a external ProRes recorder.
And as Björn correctly pointed out - it introduces double compression as first the RAW is compressed using the proprietary wavelength RED CODE compression, which is then de-compressed for playback and then compressed by your recorder to ProRes...
So yes - not good - but for now the only way to do so with ProRes - and that was my point in favour of recording RAW in the first place...

:sifone: Peter

 

[Timur Civan]

Why not do do both? I use a 1,000$ samurai blade. Gives you 1080p prores hq, with matching filenames and timecode to an ssd. Often they cut the prores with a baked in custom 709 lut, and can go back to raw with same look in the metadata , for final adjustments.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Hi,
Is there big disadvantage in recording pro res?

File size for UHD footage.

Is pro res recording good enough for professional work?

The answer depends on what type of professional work and which type of Prores.
In many cases where fast and practical workflows are a priority 12 bit Prores 4444 is considered as good enough.

Do they record/shoot movies and commercials mainly Raw or Pro res?

It varies.
Many Alexa projects use Prores 4444.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Pros
You can edit it directly, export to final grade without EDL's.
It has a faster workflow and is easier to grade.

Cons
Not 4K (yes there is 4K proves, but it's not really working in realtime and gets as heavy as working with RAW-files)
Cannot store additional metadata like RAW does
Limited in grading & post
Can be as large as R3D-files but with less information
Not as hardcore cool as R3D