ProRes RAW - Expectations and Reality | PART 2: DEEP ANALYSIS

welcome to part 2 of my ProRes wrong analysis if you haven't watched it already I invite you to check part 1 that talks about ProRes draw on the s-1 each and how it compares to Raw from other cameras I'll leave a link up there and in the description below throughout my career as a DP I had the privilege of owning cinema cameras such as red as well as shooting in various raw formats on different cinema cameras namely Alex's ARRIRAW Reds our 3d phantom flex for case scenario off and of course the recent Blackmagic ROM so the s1 is joining the wrong club with its codec of choice pro res Raw is pretty much stepping into the pro sanam plug phiren which means it will fairly be compared now to the big players than the raw cinematography club so the main question I'm asking the spores Raw live up to our expectations and all this hype around it [Music] since the first pour is wrong announcement I must say that this hype has given us a lot of frosting but not much cake we heard about promising features but after my first hand experience I realized it spread a lot of misinformation and give us very high hopes and expectations from this format some of which were very impressive and some were disappointing so I'm here to make sure you get the most correct information reality as it is without any sugarcoating I warn you that this episode might get a bit technical so I'll leave timestamps here in case you want to skip all the nerdy tech stuff let's dive in before we get too excited about raw let's understand what it really means in case you don't know working with raw isn't all sunshine and rainbows there are as much drawbacks in raw as there are privileges the trick is to have a raw codec that can tip the scale towards those privileges first thing you need to know is there are two types of raw first is there all that's created exclusively for a specific camera and can only be recorded in it take for example a 3d for red peri raw for Erik hammers and veera for very cam their proprietary to that camera brand and their ecosystems so let's call them proprietary raw keep in mind that red raw files are compressed wrong which was a breakthrough when it was first introduced as their relatively very small than the uncompressed raw from airy and very cam for example the second type of raw is the open format type which is not exclusive to any specific camera but rather is an attempt to unify all cameras under one format a concept we've already seen in the standard version of pro res which explains why you see it in many cameras so pro res raw is no different just like its standard cousin it's already adopted by all those cameras and the list is growing as we speak other similar open raw formats out there are cinema D and G by Adobe and of course the most fierce contender Blackmagic Raw which you might think is proprietary to Blackmagic cameras but in fact it's an open source meaning it's a free-for-all any camera can use it if they want to unlike pro res raw where you need to pay royalties to Apple in order to use it now let's focus on our subject pro res wrong and briefly refresh our memories with what we know about it it's the latest compressed raw codec that sits on top of the pro res family of codecs when it comes to efficiency and image fidelity it comes in two flavors pro res raw and pro res raw HQ where HQ obviously is a slightly higher quality meaning less compression the codec was developed by Apple which means it's optimized for the Apple ecosystem to expect Apple to ensure it performs flawlessly on their machines and apps atomists was working very closely with Apple as an early adopter / developer of the format to enable it on its recorders to expect a lot of ice from atomists as well towards ProRes raw which is not a bad thing since a thermos creates really awesome products and Perez raw would potentially add to their awesomeness unlike its other ProRes formats ProRes raw is an acquisition format not a delivery format meaning you can't export to ProRes raw from your computer you can only record straight from the camera then export it from your editor to all other Pro res flavors finally just like pro res cousins it's a very efficient format optimized to balance between performance and high quality image and it pretty much delivered on that front we'll explore that in detail shortly now to understand pro res wrong we need to understand what raw means to have a frame of reference first just like how the name suggests raw means unprocessed that's the golden rule in raw in case you don't know everything we shoot starts in raw form then cameras usually apply heavy set of adjustments and corrections to the raw image which gets baked into the video clip to permanently change its properties then it gets compressed before it's stored on your media so because this process applies permanent changes the rock clip loses its raw title and becomes processed which is the case with pro res for example now with raw formats by default none of the Corrections or adjustments are applied you should get the image straight out of the sensor and in most cases these days raw gets compressed before it's saved onto your media with that said let's now explore pro res wrong features and categorize them under pros and cons and see whether they meet filmmakers expectations again it's all based on standard form of Raw were used to from industry standard cinema cameras such as red and Alexa I'll also add the Blackmagic pocket Cinema Camera with the Blackmagic Raw in the mix to spice things up keep in mind that everything I'll mention here is based on my first-hand experience with all those formats as well as the common knowledge in professional cinematography circles let's start with the pros the first one is actually written in its slogan performance of pro res if you haven't experienced it already Pro res is probably the fastest korok that's designed for speed with no visible compromises in image quality no wonder why it's adopted by all major cinema cameras such as Alexa red Venice and very cam they all have internet ProRes for for for recording I mean when Eric calls something a high quality Couric on their website then it must be something worthy of our attention it even said images recorded at four four four codec are almost indistinguishable from uncompressed HD or UHD material with such a bold statement from a respectable camera brand it's no surprise that despite the fact Alexa offers Internet raw recording most dps including myself choose poorest four four four overall when shooting with Alexa I want you to hold onto that thought as we'll get back to it later also standard raw is famous for suffering from slow performance it sucks all processing resources from your computer with ARRIRAW for example you'd probably need a beefy Mac Pro to handle it we'll just create proxies while editing to avoid speed frustrations which of course takes time and even more space red raw is a more manageable file works good with an imac pro mostly without the need for proxies but you need them if you're handling 8 k footage with effects and heavy grading editor on top yet pro res wrong does not suffer from any of this it's a fast performing codec you should be good with a medium to high spec MacBook Pro even when shooting at 5.9 K it's nemesis Blackmagic Raw also enjoys awesome performance similar to pro res Roth even at 6k resolution let's confirm that with some actual numbers from Apple's white paper chorus raw renders almost 12 times faster than our 3d which is Reds raw codec and almost 7 and a half times faster than Canon raw it can also export to h.264 almost 5 and a half times faster than our 3d and three and a half times faster than Canon raw forget about other raw formats I compared exporting s1h own internal 5.9 K h.265 clip with multiple effects against the same in pro res raw and despite the fact it's almost 10 times bigger than internal h.265 it was between one and one and a half times faster at rendering and exporting there's some sort of digital voodoo magic here that I surely salute Apple for I mean with that kind of performance proxies will become obsolete second RAW files usually have high bit depth there's the first obvious and great advantage of raw formats over compressed formats and as we know as 1h has 10 bit internal recording in most of its presets which is already awesome but what's better than 10 bit internal well it's too with external and again the difference between ten and twelve bit is much bigger than you might think let me explain to visually simplify things imagine the color spectrum in ten bit is divided into a thousand twenty four steps per channel I'm talking about the RGB channels of course each step represents a shade that shifts from any color towards the neighboring color this will result in almost 1 billion steps or as we call them 1 billion shades of colors while in a 12 bit image you'll find over 4,000 steps per RGB channel resulting in a much smoother transitions from one shade to the other and adding up to a total of almost 68 billion colors which is almost sixty eight times more shades between colors than in a ten bit image this next point is where people start getting confused both 10 bit and 12 bit represent the same colors start and end points we're not talking about more colors here only more steps in the transition between the same colors so to be precise the camera will have more colors in its bag in a 12 bit image to paint more subtle nuances between colors then what it has in a 10 bit image which also means a 12 bit image would have more color accuracy how would that help you it gives you a much higher latitude in post while grading and way more precision with color masking and selections something I'll demonstrate in my post-processing video about the teaser film and finally 12 bit pretty much eradicate any color banding that would normally occur in a 10 bit image another common misconception which is also one of the main faults rumors circulating these days about the ProRes wrong when talking about the s-1 each shooting in v-log 12 bit does not offer you more dynamic range than 10 bit both have the same identical and fixed dynamic range believe it or not here's a quick test shot in both internal and pro is wrong both in v-log as I increase their exposure in the same increments they both clip at the exact same point 12 bit does not provide you with additional steps of light but just like in color it just smoothens up the transition between those steps dynamic range is the direct result of the v-log which is designed to extract every bit of visible light variations the sensor can register and for the record panasonic published an official 14 plus stops of dynamic range while it's more like twelve point seven stops in the best-case scenario this is based on a real-life scientific conducted by the awesome guys at cinema 5d which is still impressive considering that the $80,000 Arri Alexa being the Hollywood quality benchmark in cinema camera is 14 stops of usable dynamic range now let's talk about compatibility row compatibility is always an issue since most of the codecs are proprietary to the camera manufacturer as we discussed before such as ARRIRAW and r3d where you usually need a plug-in to let them work within your editing suite now if we compare pro res raw and black magic raw both our new raw formats that are created by Apple and Blackmagic to democratize raw recording and hopefully save us from those incompatibility nightmares by having two formats in the market only means another format war but with each one owning market leading editing and grading software's this competition probably means that you won't see pro res wrong in the Vinci or Blackmagic raw and Final Cut anytime soon but we are the winners in this compatibility race and it seems that pro res is ahead of black magic since it's native and Final Cut avid and soon in Premiere and premiere will be using Apple's metal engine which means it's likely to perform as good as it does in Final Cut while Blackmagic Raw is only native in DaVinci Resolve which is a great free editing solution and is lightyears ahead of Final Cut when it comes to grading and post-production but Blackmagic Raw only works with avid and premiere through a plugin which means it won't operate at its optimal performance unfortunately all this is compatible with apple OS on both fronts when it comes to windows it's all working fine in Blackmagic raw and the good news is that pro res raw just released its beta 1.0 for Windows but the bad news again Final Cut cannot operate under Windows not now and probably not ever another raw advantage you can't find in compressed formats is the ability to select your log curve which is the way the computer will interpret the colors and gamma in the raw file giving you some flexibility imposed usually you need to match it with the gamma curve design for the camera to maximize its output so in the case of s1 each I would usually select panasonic v log to get the most optimized gamma range selecting other profiles will still work but will give you different results that wouldn't be optimized for the camera so they would probably underperform remember this is what I talked about before about the z6 that it doesn't have a lock curve built in within Final Cut forcing you to set another cameras curved resulting in not ideal case scenario for post-production red camera actually has so many combinations between in scholar space and gamma you can choose from each offering different results and they're all optimized for the camera let's move to the next point video metadata which usually covers three types of info camera lens and video file related metadata yet some important informations are often missing in many compressed formats I'm talking about record settings such as ISO white balance and lens information such as focal length and aperture amongst others and that's the great thing about raw formats they offer full metadata in their files leaving nothing behind I confirmed with Panasonic that the camera sends all metadata through and ProRes raw apparently stores it in full but the strange thing is not being able to fully access it from within Final Cut Pro he had third-party software such as media info could reveal this missing metadata again I would say that porous raw is relatively new and still being developed so maybe this would come and future updates even though I honestly feel it's a very basic feature that should have been implemented since the launch of pro res raw two years ago now let's talk about file sizes first compared to compressed formats RAW files are usually huge in size which is the case with Airy raw while red has more manageable sizes since its compressed raw unlike standard raw formats both pro res raw and Blackmagic raw are relatively small in size their average sizes sit nicely between standard RAW files and compressed formats yet Blackmagic is generally a bit smaller than torez raw the relative small sizes are a great advantage that's been a major factor in their success especially that Blackmagic raw has 6 compression settings that can literally reach down to one third of the size of pro res raw compared to its Pro res family this is where both pro res raw flavors compare in terms of data rates and size to their cousins keep in mind that they are also quality based correct meaning they fluctuate their bit rates up and down based on the scenes details to preserve the highest quality within their designated bitrate range similar to the Q 0 and Q 5 settings in Blackmagic row if you're familiar with them surprisingly the raw HQ size at maximum bitrate would still be smaller than Pro res 4 4 4 which is also 12 bit as we know while the smaller Pro is wrong false the pro is 40 to HQ despite the fact that it's 12 bit not 10 bit like the 42 or all others below it which is pretty impressive how they managed to outperform themselves with such a super efficient codec makes you think that pro restaurant might turn all other pro res formats obsolete if all cameras adopted now let's move to the cons starting with raw controls this is where I'll drop the first bomb about ProRes wrong one of the most unique advantages of raw formats is the ability to tweak the white balance in post for example if I open this red file on Final Cut you can see it was shot at 5600 Kelvin similarly this one was shot at 2500 Kelvin when I can tweak it to match the white balance of the 5600 clip this basically means that the white balance is a dynamic metadata that I can change to my liking during or after the shoot behaving the same way raw photography does if you're familiar with raw photo workflow this post white balance adjustment helps a lot when you're shooting in mixed colored light conditions where the image could have more than one correct white balance similar to what I had in this music video I shot recently with the gh 5 where I mixed coolant warm lights it made me a bit nervous when deciding on which white balance I should set the camera to risking it not being the ideal choice for achieving a great looking skin tone something I'll only discover when grading when it's too late to go back and fix it so if I had this post white balance control I wouldn't have to stress about which white balance to set the camera to and just focus on the creative side of my shoot knowing that I have more creative freedom to experiment with impost so if you don't have that what kind of white balance control do you get then well just the standard you get from Final Cut when importing any h.264 clip let me demonstrate here's a clip shot at three different white balances twenty-five hundred fifty six hundred and eight thousand Kelvin when you open your clips on Final Cut it will always display five thousand Kelvin completely disregarding the setting you set the camera to while shooting if you try to match all 256 hundred the results will never be a perfect match close values such as the 5600 and the 8000 had decent results except for colors affected by the red channel such as the purples and the Pink's here but the 2500 clip is totally gone I tried everything and there's no way to get it even close to 5600 such dramatic white balance shift goes beyond what a 12-bit could do I know you might say that you would never set a white balance that far off target but again I remind you of the mix color scenario this demo only proves that there's a great deal of color information that's lost or maybe hidden which would limit your color control over Pro is wrong and this is the first major drawback in progress wrong as of now it does not offer you white balance control in post don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise strangely I've been watching and reading Oracle's from respected sources such as this one from DP review stating that pro res raw provides similar capabilities to raw photo editing such as the ability to set a new white balance after footage is shot which unfortunately is incorrect I'm optimistic and almost confident that this could come in future updates but no one knows when that could happen so again my first-hand experience confirmed that there's no raw type white balance control in pro res raw at the time of this video I gotta say this is a major flaw in pro res RAW format and Apple needs to give us back control over white balance if it really wants to label it as wrong same goes for both ISO control it's also baked in the pro res raw file you can't change it there isn't even a slider for it in Final Cut keep in mind this ability to change those controls in post is the flexibility pros look for in a raw format it's a major advantage that gives draw its charm over other codecs such as the traditional pro res makes me wonder if this is what Apple meant by flexibility of raw here in their slogan I want you to hold that thought for a bit please the following points are fairly a set of disadvantages that all raw codecs suffer from not just for res raw and I'm talking about all those Corrections and adjustments cameras apply to their clips before they're saved to your cards starting from denoising so in case you didn't know this one each and mostly all other cameras applied in using to their footage before they recorded onto the media but pro res raw doesn't apply any again because it's raw unprocessed image that's why you can see more obvious noise in RAW compared to internal recording but the good news is that denoising on your computer would offer a much better result than denoising in camera so it really depends on how you see it as a good or a bad thing whether it's a disadvantage that you'll have to Dino is imposed which would take time of course we'll look at the advantage of having a lot more control over the amount and quality of the denoising I personally see it as an advantage in the film I shot for Panasonic I only denoise the indoor shots the outdoor shops looked perfectly fine without any denoising having worked with many rock codecs especially with red I learned that stepping into a pro post-production workflow you need to understand that denoising is a standard procedure in all raw workflows you can't change that fact you gotta accept it you should draw you denoise then comes lens Corrections again all cameras apply some sort of Corrections - they're compatible lenses the first type is diffraction compensation or in simple terms correcting this barrel distortion at the edges of the frame typically found in lenses with wider focal range basically trying to make their perspective more rectilinear and their lines more straight the other kind of corrections that's missing from raw is vignette Corrections just like the distortion Corrections cameras usually corrective anything from compatible lenses now looking at all the facts Apple said performance of Pro res which met and maybe exceeded our expectations fully agree with it now comes flexibility of raw what does that mean to me and I'm sure most of filmmakers who dealt with raw before would agree that flexibility of raw is purely based on three factors the ability to control white balance and ISO setting it in post as well as having the latitude from the high bit depth that offer more control over color to experiment with in post these are the main three reasons that may draw a desirable format there the reasons that made us put up with the setbacks of shooting raw mainly from being huge file to handle slow to work with noisy that they need cleaning amongst others of course so with white hands and I suppose control taken out of the equation then you pretty much took away all the flexibility you're talking about and just left us with those undesirable raw properties so I'd rather call it performance or pro res properties of Raw instead but hang on the positive side is we're left with a higher 12 bit file which is great but the funny thing is standard pro res already has a 12 bit format the pro res 4 4 4 remember how I said earlier how pro res 444 is the format deep is choosing Alexa over ARRIRAW in most of their shoots the answer is again given by area itself when it said images recorded in 4 4 4 correct are almost indistinguishable from uncompressed HD or UHD material so in this case pro res 4 4 4 would be the clue this thing to standard all you can get yet it's faster smaller and more compatible with all Anneliese let's go back to that chart and you'll see that even though ProRes 4 4 4 is way smaller than uncompressed trough the highest quality of ProRes raw is still slightly smaller than Pro res 4 4 4 which is possibly the only visible yet insignificant advantage of pro res wrong over pro res 4 4 4 so the conclusion here is that Perez wrong as it stands now is in essence pro res 4 4 4 smaller sibling in that case I would remove flexibility of raw and just say performance of pro res 4 4 4 but smaller but me personally following the way apple names their products these days I would just call it Apple ProRes Pro so who is for res raw for generally speaking with the need of a monitor and probably additional rigging along with their associated extra costs then it's more for a pro filmmaker shooting in a rather controlled environment less of a gorilla setup this is also for filmmakers with post-production experience someone who's familiar with the using raw footage for example and who meticulously grade their footage in other words someone who would appreciate a 12-bit codec and milk every drop of it in post it's also for others who are planning to take the leap to learn advanced color grading and need an easy raw format to deal with in a simple greeting interface such as Final Cut basically testing the waters with how raw feels like before diving into a more advanced RAW format in a more complex setup such as Blackmagic raw and da Vinci again I confirm the pro res raw is still being developed and as of today's date it's missing some of those essential features until that day comes and those features are introduced to pro res raw I would say this codec is not ready for you if you're a hybrid filmmaker expecting the type of flexibility and latitude we get from raw photos I regret to say you'll be up for an unpleasant surprise Pro res raw does not behave like raw for rules it doesn't magically recover clip highlights the way you see in photos and most of all you can't readjust your white balance on the computer it's not just about pro res wrong by the way all other raw formats and their workflows would be a considerable downgrade from what you're used to in a typical raw photo environment I learned that the hard way coming from photography background and buying my red camera to realize that raw video is not like raw photo again just managing your expectations not destroying your dreams also if you're a pro filmmaker with advance experience and other raw codecs and expecting the same type of flexi then ProRes raw would be a downgrade from what you're used to but an upgrade when it comes to speed and performance as mentioned pro res raw is a very complex subject to cover in one go believe it or not I still have a lot more to share with you so I'll be working on another episode to cover how I got the best out of this codec through the making of the teaser film mostly covering my post-production and grading workflows even sharing all the tools and lots I developed to reach that final look so stay tuned for that in the meantime feel free to ask me anything in the comments below thanks again for sticking around I hope you liked this episode stay safe and I'll see you next time [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The DP Journey

Views: 40,751

Keywords: ninja v, prores raw, lumix s1h, panasonic s1h, raw video, final cut pro, atomos prores raw, apple prores raw, raw recording, atomos ninja v, final cut pro x, prores raw review, raw workflow, apple prores, external recorder, raw signal, prores raw files, 6k RAW, bmpcc 6k, RED RAW, Arri RAW, s1h vs bmpcc 6k, s1h vs z6, prores raw codec, prores raw vs blackmagic raw, prores hq vs braw, panasonic s1h footage, Panasonic, S1H, S1H firmware 2.0, premiere pro prores raw

Id: LlkiPWCUhik

Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020