Apple’s ProRes has been a staple codec for video editors for years. But as RAW is being adopted by more cameras, people are starting to stray from ProRes. Apple’s response has been to release a new ProRes RAW format. But so far, nobody’s really been able to see how it is to work with or what it’s capable of.
But now, thanks to the Panasonic EVA1 and Atomos Shogun Inferno, and Filmmaker David J. Fernandes, we get some insight. Fernandes shot a short film, Binge, entirely using that setup with ProRes RAW and it appears to be the first one out there. Here’s the trailer for that film.
The biggest advantage of ProRes RAW over other formats like CinemaDNG is file size. CinemaDNG can eat through some truly massive storage requirements. 4608×2592 resolution CinemaDNG on the Blackmagic URSA, for example, can be 513MB/sec (megabytes, not megabits). That’s 30GB per minute of footage or 1.86TB per hour.
With the Panasonic EVA1 & Atomos Shogun Inferno setup, however, filmmakers Fernandes and DP Gregory Bennett were able to shoot for three days using ProRes RAW, and it required only 3.5TB. And unlike formats such as RED’s R3D RAW files, there’s no need to transcode these to another format in post, which saves a lot of time in the edit.
Fernandes says that much of the footage was shot at ISO800 and T2.0 using the Zeiss Super Speed prime lenses with the Wooden Camera PL Mount Adapter. Occasionally, they’d bump it up to ISO2500 for the darkest shots.
Compared to the All-I codec used in the camera, Fernandez says that ProRes RAW was a breeze to work with.
[T]he All-I codec is a hog and even with a brand new MBP 15” with 4gb Radeon 650, I cant play it smoothly. PRR plays like butter, even on an older iMac. [The] file sizes are the same or even smaller than the All-I, so why not?
I’ve found in the past that ProRes has always been one of the cleanest and smoothest codecs to edit with. So, it makes sense that they’d apply that same ease of use to ProRes RAW, too.
Not having to transcode the footage to another format to be able to work it and being able to run on fairly modest hardware is a huge deal for video. Not only in the time saved but also the storage requirements to store multiple copies of the same footage in different formats.
The completion of the final film is scheduled for sometime during July, but the trailer looks impressive, from a technical standpoint. Hopefully, they’ll find a way to add the format to the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K after it’s released. Hopefully, too, we’ll be able to edit the format at some point in something other than Final Cut Pro X.
[via No Film School]
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