A7SIII-PART 2: With ProRes RAW POWER...comes RAW RESPONSIBILITIES!

welcome back to part two of the a7s3 prores raw series if you haven't watched part one already please check it out in the link below and up there as i mentioned before with raw power comes raw responsibilities in this episode i'll be showing you those amazing powers you get from raw and those responsibilities you need to take on as you handle it in post [Music] [Applause] i'll compare the quality between raw and internal recording which reveals some unpleasant surprises and discrepancies between both formats i'll show you the tools to fix those issues which will include two free corrective lots i've developed to help you while grading i'm here to offer you my full unbiased and objective nerdy analysis about the pros and cons of shooting in pro res draw on the a7s3 and let you decide for yourself whether it's good for you or not i must warn you even though i try hard to simplify things for you some parts will get pretty technical so clear your mind grab a drink and let's begin [Music] starting with post workflow let's jump to final cut the native environment for pro is raw you'll get similar settings in other compatible nles in all cases if you're not planning to work and export to hdr then just set your library to standard and your project to standard rec709 once you import your footage first thing you'll notice is how awful it looks your waveform will look a bit scary with highlights blown out of proportion i won't bother you at the moment with the reasons behind this but let's focus on how final cut automatically applies the standard lock curve in gamut that corresponds to the camera you use in this case it's the e7 s3 which corresponds to slog3 as gamut 3. i would just switch the log to s gamma 3 cine since it's a bit friendlier to work with then you'll notice that final cut also applies the built-in slog3 as gamma 3 lut automatically which looks like a low quality monitoring lot to me and i highly advise to totally ignore it and set it to none this way you'll get the slog look you're used to as a starting point with a waveform that looks a lot better and more familiar the other more advanced way to use raw footage is to set both the lock conversion and lut to none but don't panic from what you see keep your eyes on the waveform here and just pull down the highlights and adjust the mid-tones to a reasonable level this could be considered as another starting point to grade from which is based on a linear raw data instead of the s-log and just to be clear what i just did here by pulling down the highlights was not magically recovering clipped highlights as many claimed in other videos circulating on youtube this is just bringing the linear raw's white point value within the monitor's brightness capabilities no raw voodoo happening here it's just a different workflow from the typical xavc you're used to i would only recommend this last method to highly experienced filmmakers though or even pro colorists who know exactly how to deal with this kind of linear image which will make more sense probably in an hdr project but for everyone else including myself i would just recommend to use the standard route to lock conversion which is the subject of our next point so what is draw to lock conversion and why i see it as a very powerful tool that's missing from xavc to understand it i gotta briefly explain the difference between recording raw and internal xavc which i warn you it will get a bit technical but i advise to stick around as i will explain many things coming in this episode otherwise feel free to skip to this time code ok so when recording xavc footage the sensor is pretty much recording a digital signal that makes a pattern of rgb pixels that holds the information of that image you shot it's called a bayer pattern something you don't really need to understand honestly this bayer pattern nonsense is sent to the processor to make sense of it through a bunch of actions first the debayering which is the process of converting this pile of gibberish into an image you can understand at this point this in fact is the image in its raw form inside the camera and it hasn't been touched yet second the process applies a set of image corrections which can vary from the noising sharpening and lens corrections amongst other things then comes the process of applying the color profile which is the one you picked from your picture profile menu in this case i usually use slog3 as gamma 3 cine keep in mind all this is happening to the image in its raw form still but not for long since the last process is the encoding this is where this raw image loses its rawness as it gets compressed and encoded into the xavz flavor you chose from the camera menu whether it's si s or hs also in the 4k or full hd resolution you chose so all those compressions and color settings are now irreversibly applied to the video file it's the point of no return you can't change anything here anymore the results of which we also refer to as a baked image so all this technical orchestra is happening in camera then get saved on your card so you take it on your computer to color grade it and that's all about it now when it comes to prores raw the story is much shorter coming from the same starting point where the image is captured on the sensor in a form of rgb gibberish pattern aka bayer pattern the camera skips everything we just discussed and sends that data straight to the ninja 5 recorder to be encoded into prores raw think of prores raw at this point as a container that holds all the information the sensor was able to capture without any interference from the camera whatsoever unlike in the xavc scenario where the camera baked all the settings into the image here in prores raw there's no de-bearing corrections or even color profile applied to the camera anymore remember this point very well no color profile is applied yet all this now need to be manually applied on your computer if needed so technically it's not an image yet it's just the ingredients you need to mix together with the settings you want that will make the image so when you open those ingredients on your computer first thing that happens behind the scenes is the deba hearing which again is the computer's transition of this rgb gibberish pattern to an image we can understand remember that previously was done in camera for xavc recording now it's done on your computer when it's raw but at this point as we said this image we have here has no color profile yet you need to assign one to it and this is what the router lock conversion is here for it will give you the choice to translate the original raw image to the log profile you like which is the same process that happens in camera when shooting xavc but only limited to slot 2 and slot 3. while here you now have the choice to set it to anything you want so it won't really matter what you choose while recording you probably think that since you shot on a sony you're expected to set it to one of those slot flavors but the fun thing and one of the things i enjoyed the most in prores raw is how you can actually choose other log profiles such as panasonic vlog for example which matches panasonic's lock curve response making it act like a panasonic camera so to speak if it had a sony a7s3 sensor or maybe even set it to run and just deal with the linear raw image which is the raw image without any log profile i mentioned earlier in the first point enough talking about theories and let's see it in action here are two clips i shot in prores raw one with the a7 s3 and the other with the s1h let's check the sony first i'll set the lock conversion to s gamma 3 cine and a lot to none to give us the standard s log 3 look i added an adjustment layer with a creative lot i created recently and this is what i got from the sony let's now get creative and see what happens when i set the lock conversion to v-log instead you'll get a slightly different result with a bit less contrast and smoother color transition in the mid-tones not bad right what you're seeing here is in theory the result you would get if the camera had a v-log profile installed in it something that would never happen if you're recording an xavc but with raw this can happen in post keep in mind this does not mean you'll get the same exact result from the s1h to prove this let's take the other shot from the s1h with the lock conversion set to panasonic vlog and with the corrective lot of raw gamut to v-gamut applied that's what panasonic recommended to use whenever shooting in raw and as expected looking at them side by side you obviously get a different result from the one-shot and v-log on the s3 you can see that the skin tones in the a7 s3 with v-log are leaning more towards the warmer red orange while the s1h is leaning more towards magenta again it's the difference in sensor's color science that comes into play here now let's go back to the sony and play a bit with these other lock conversions here's the nikon for example having a strong look leaning towards the darker contrasty vintage style i would say and here's the canon log a bit faded out not that interesting but it's a different result that might work in some cases still as you can see with every camera log profile you get a different look from the same lot that you just applied i find this pretty interesting it opens a whole new set of color responses and grading options from the same looks or lots that you have all with a simple click of a button so go ahead have fun start playing with it and you'll discover some looks you've never seen from your sony cameras before next comes white balance and iso control it's something i briefly discussed in my last episode but shortly after publishing it the ninja 5 updated its firmware to 10.55 which enabled both iso and exposure offset control in final cut so let's go back to my previous chart from my other episode comparing it to the s1h let's first update final cut logo here since they just announced 10.5 then update those controls down there and pray for the white balance to make its way eventually in that list everything else stays the same which is bad news for premiere users since it's still lagging behind on those metadata based controls again prores draw is still being developed and all those updates should keep on rolling out slowly let's just hope white balance is a matter of when not if and also as mentioned in my last episode scratch is not giving us accurate results with white balance control the results of which were confirmed by their team so maybe soon they'll fix all those inaccuracies and lastly it's still dark at the davinci tunnel when it comes to supporting prores raw so my advice for davinci users is to export prores draw from final cut or compressor to prores 444 and use that in davinci you'll actually get better results when grading there than what you get in final cut using raw something i tested myself and i was not very surprised seeing how much of a struggle it was to grade in final cut versus in da vinci which is a much more powerful tool when it comes to dealing with color which leads me to my next point color accuracy i discovered some inconsistencies in results you get from the prores raw and internal xcvc here's the xavc footage shot on slog3 as gamma 3 cine and here's the prores raw version set to the same log and gamut settings it's obvious that raw has more contrast and some color shifts compared to xavc which means if you apply the same lot on both clips it'll give you different results on both formats at this point i'm honestly not sure which one is officially correct that's a question sony should be able to answer so bottom line you'll need to match your clips luma and contrast levels if you're mixing xavc with raw footage on the same timeline and don't be surprised if the same luts look a bit different on raw but i didn't stop there and i wanted to dig deeper to try to understand the reasons behind these inconsistent looks between formats and while doing so i discovered how the s3's colors were pretty off and inaccurate let me show you what i mean but be aware this will get a bit technical so feel free to skip this part if you're not interested okay so i use the color chart to analyze xcvc and raw color accuracies using vector scopes when i took the leading raw without applying any conversions i saw how all vectors are almost perfectly pointing to their corresponding targets meaning colors are pretty much accurate i wouldn't ask for better accuracy but once raw to lock conversion is set to slog3 as gamma 3 cine watch what happens this color accuracy is thrown out the window as you can see vectors are now pointing off their targets especially the primary red and green and a subtle shift in the blue which might be part of the look you get with that log and gamut profile but i felt it's a bit beyond the acceptable limit especially that sony is famous for its green tint that plagued its other cameras keep in mind this test is not about what looks good to your eyes but rather about achieving color accuracy while keeping your s-log profile information so to solve this i created two corrective luts that attempt to point everything back to where they should the first one affects only the hue basically making the green green the red red and the blue blue not touching the saturation or contrast leaving you room to get creative once you add your look on top of it but the problem now is that you still get inconsistent saturations which can be seen here through the different length of those vectors the short ones mean less saturated while the long ones mean more saturated this is where the second lot comes in it will adjust the hue as well as balance the relative saturation distribution across all colors let's see how it looks here's the original shot i applied one of the lots i recently created and just to answer some of the requests i've been getting recently yes i will be releasing my first slot pack very soon i'm just fine tuning things further but you can see a preview on all the following clips okay so as of now all colors here are technically missing their designated targets and here's how it looks with the correction lot applied her skin is less orange now it's more skin like and the green in the background is also more green it kind of lost the yellowish tint that it had changes might be too subtle to your eyes but in some cases those subtle nuances could make the huge difference in your shot especially if it's predominantly red or if you're shooting a green screen that will not be as green as it should for perfect keying in post to be clear these are not creative luts they should be added before any creative lot you want to apply so be cautious while using them and be aware that you'll still need to fine tune things on your side and fyi same color shifts were also present in xavc and the same luts would fix everything there as well moving on to noise and iso where i discovered some unexpected surprises considering the a7s iii being the hero camera of low light film making let's go back to what i said earlier about the corrections that happened inside the camera while shooting xavc if you remember i mentioned that denoising was part of those corrections the camera applies to your footage internally and if you thought that the sony a7s3 has a clean image then think again raw will now uncover what sony has been sweeping under the rug all this time with its internal denoiser let's check this clip i shot on xavc at the base iso of 640. it looks ok at first glance when you zoom in towards the shadow areas we will start seeing some noise with subtle artifacts created by this internal denoiser which is not the most elegant looking result but nothing abnormal or different from all other cameras out there but if you compare this to the raw version of the sink clip you can clearly see the sheer amount of chromatic noise that hijacked the details of the image this is basically the amount of noise the camera didn't want you to see and attempted to fix it in xavc but with raw you see the naked truth of what the clip really looks like i honestly wasn't expecting to be that bad from a backlit sensor that's supposed to be the best in its class but the good news when we denounce this raw footage you get better results than the internal denoiser but i gotta warn you the pose is extremely slow and is a nightmare to work with so you'll have to account for the time spent on it to fix it in post when shooting in raw let's bring another xavc clip this time it's shot at 3200 iso and as you can see both have a great deal of noise in the shadows but raw has the uglier and more aggressive chromatic noise we saw earlier but again both can be fixed in post so bottom line raw expresses a lot more noise than internal and you'll need to consider fixing this in post especially in high iso clips with visible noise which is a very processing intensive task that will test your patience but i personally prefer that over the sloppy results you get from xavc especially on high isos i'm planning to work on another in-depth episode that will dive deeper in this subject so stay tuned for that now moving on to another small drawback in raw which is the absence of all lens corrections as mentioned before the camera not only improves the image by denoising but also by applying corrections and compensations for optical phenomenons caused by the lens such as vignette or what sony calls corner shading chromatic aberration aka purple fringing and distortion all of which can be found in the image quality menu they're usually set to auto by default in all xvc presets but all this will disappear from your raw clips there will be no corrections whatsoever when recording external pro as wrong take this clip for example shot and raw with a 50 millimeter lens and here's the same clip shot internally in xcvc when i toggle between them you can clearly see how the xavc version corrected the lens barrel distortion while prores raw left it uncorrected so bottom line just keep your eyes on those small things as you might need to fix those as well in post yourself last point for this episode is value so far the minimum setup of ninja 5 recorder plus 500 gb ssd media plus batteries and accessories would fall under a thousand dollars which i find pretty reasonable especially when nowadays if you're shooting raw hdr external monitors are crucial for any serious filmmaker also pretty practical for shooting in the sunny outdoors i mean the ninja 5 is a 5 inch monitor with higher resolution and brighter screen compared to the camera's tiny 3 inch low resolution screen also note the ninja 5 can record prores raw from more than 20 other compatible cameras and the list is still growing pretty reasonable value in my opinion also it's worth noting that the other option to record prores draw from a sony camera is in the new fx6 which is like the entry cinema version of the s3 but it's only possible over sdi on the shogun 7 instead which is a great monitor but costs more than double the price of the ninja 5. and accounting for the batteries and accessories you'll have an average total of 1600 the last option is in the bigger and a lot pricier fx9 but the bigger shocker about it is not only being restricted to record prores raw on the shogun 7 but you need to attach this huge dead weight of a module to its back which weighs more than one and a half times the weight of the whole e7 s3 itself and costs a staggering 2500 alone accounting for batteries and accessories it will cost you more than four thousand dollars to record draw from this camera which is almost the same price for buying the whole new a7 s3 with the ninja 5 and the needed accessories absolutely ridiculous to say the least so yeah that average of 900 extra cost to invest in the s3 for shooting raw now sounds like a pretty reasonable deal i know at this point you're probably wondering whether prores raw is worth it or not honestly i'm not here to tell you what to do but rather help you make that decision yourself so let me summarize everything i shared in both episodes in a lightning round of pros and cons let's start with the pros prores raw has 4.2k resolution almost 24 percent higher resolution than internal uhd it comes in 12 bit color which is the maximum you would ask for when color grading also being raw you don't get any color compression or resampling such as 4 to 2 you get in all xcvc formats again better for color grading and ideal for chroma keying and green screen also you have the option of selecting your log curve after shooting so you're not stuck with the s-log offering more results with different log responses to the same luts or grades you apply to your clips something you can have a lot of fun with while grading and recording raw can happen simultaneously while recording internal xcvc think of it as recording a very high quality redundancy backup or in-camera proxies something that can save the day if anything happens to your raw files also compared to other raw formats it's one of the fastest ones out there you won't feel the typical sluggish performance from a heavy raw file also competing on that title is blackmagic raw that might actually beat prores raw in speed and efficiency and lastly it's pretty good value for money since the ninja 5 recorder is also a very capable touch screen with 10-bit color and viewable in broad daylight compensating from the low res small screen you get from the s3 now when it comes to cons first of all raw is pretty big in size so you gotta invest in some storage space you don't have 120p high speed recording no active or post stabilization with catalyst browse also prores raw is much noisier than xavc but once you denoise in post you get better results than in xavc but that again kills your computer and takes so much time to process so this point flip-flops between being an advantage and a drawback depends on how you look at it with raw you don't get any lens corrections such as corrections for distortion and chromatic aberration of course it all depends on the quality of the lens in the end so be careful when choosing cheap or vintage lenses also one of the major drawbacks is not having mere data-based white balance control yet we only have that in scratch but it doesn't yield the most accurate results and let's face it how many of us are using or planning to use scratch after all so let's pray to get white balance control soon across all nles finally compatibility prores raw is and probably will always perform better on final cut and unlikely to work on resolve anytime in the near future sadly because of political issues not technical ones i personally like the fact that prores raw offers higher resolution and most of all the practicality of raw to lock conversion also raw offers you a much cleaner chroma key over xavc prores raw is truly not for a quick turnaround kind of project i personally will be very selective choosing which project i'll use it for it doesn't magically give you a better image out of the box like many filmmakers thought quite the opposite actually with a very noisy image and the lack of any lens correction the picture looks worse coming straight out of the camera after all it's a high maintenance format but in the right hands you can make it look much better than xavc you just need to understand what you're dealing with and how to handle it i hope after watching this you cover the understanding part and you've got a good head start on how to deal with pro as wrong the only thing missing now is for you to start shooting so grab your camera and start putting into practice don't forget to share your thoughts in the comments below hope you enjoyed this episode thanks again for watching stay safe and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: The DP Journey

Views: 105,354

Keywords: sony a7siii, sony a7s iii, sony a7s iii footage, a7s iii, sony a7s3, sony a7s iii review, prores raw, sony a7siii specs, a7s iii review, a7siii prores raw, sony a7s iii video test, prores raw workflow, sony a7iii review, sony a7iii video, sony a7s3 review, atomos ninja v 5, fcpx prores raw, Premiere Pro ProRes, premiere pro prores raw, Scratch Prores RAW, Scratch prores Raw, assimilate scratch prores raw, atomos ninja v sony a7siii, sony a7iii cinematic video, free lut

Id: lq8UqQlO7I8

Length: 20min 57sec (1257 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020