rob norton
Veteran
For anyone's reference here are a few stills from a corporate shoot using canon raw. With massive white walls everywhere, my goal was to not have nuclear blobs all over the place.
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C200: corporate shoot - raw
- Thread starter rob norton
- Start date
Eric Coughlin
Veteran
A can of paint costs less than storing RAW footage and would have solved your white wall problem.
rob norton
Veteran
Haha I'll pitch it next time. I'm "dealing" with raw - it's fine but I adopt a pretty ruthless footage deleting policy (when I handle post). I've never handed raw over to a producer/client though and I can only imagine the headaches of holding someone's hand as you take them from having no knowledge to being OK with the files. I'd like to step into the space where I'm shooting higher end material and handing it off, in which case a 10 bit option seems absolutely necessary.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Not sure why everyone still acts as if shooting CRL or giving it to clients is a big deal, it's really not. All of the big four handle it natively or with the Canon plug-in now, it's just a bit bigger than equivalent Prores.
Just have your clients watch this video, it's clear that if you can load and edit off of an internal laptop, it's not going to be un-doable on the average editing station. If they have old and slow gear, use a proxy workflow. If they have anything even remotely modern, CRL is a breeze.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1P1hzAPbHM&t=10s
Just have your clients watch this video, it's clear that if you can load and edit off of an internal laptop, it's not going to be un-doable on the average editing station. If they have old and slow gear, use a proxy workflow. If they have anything even remotely modern, CRL is a breeze.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1P1hzAPbHM&t=10s
mothmachine
Active member
I just shot some CRL last week for the first time with my C200 (using the cheapo Silicon Power 256 GB CFast Card!).
So it seems that 10 minutes of footage is about 100 GB -- which I knew. But I thought I'd save space on the transcode to ProRes HQ -- I was wrong, the Prores HQ equivalent is almost twice the GB! I guess I'd never dealt with 4k 422 HQ before. Well that doesn't help anytihing, if I'm going to shoot CRL I should just keep it in that form, or be going to 1080.
So it seems that 10 minutes of footage is about 100 GB -- which I knew. But I thought I'd save space on the transcode to ProRes HQ -- I was wrong, the Prores HQ equivalent is almost twice the GB! I guess I'd never dealt with 4k 422 HQ before. Well that doesn't help anytihing, if I'm going to shoot CRL I should just keep it in that form, or be going to 1080.
Eric Coughlin
Veteran
I shoot 3.2K ProRes 4:4:4:4 (not HQ) with the Amira which comes at around 800 gb/s, while Canon RAW Lite is I believe about 1000 gb/s. So not that much different. That said, if I'm shooting, providing memory cards, and storing these higher data rates, particularly for long things like interviews, I feel it'd be a tougher sell for me at a C200 day rate compared to an Amira day rate.
Let's see, if you've got three hours of RAW lite footage in a day, so about 1.5 TB of data, a 5 TB Seagate drive costs $130, so you're spending about $45 on backup just for the shoot (assuming you backup most or all of your shoots like I do). Now if one is only making say $850 as their day rate then that $45 starts to mean something, while if one is making north of $2k for their day rate then the $45 isn't as much of a consideration.
I've read that HQ doesn't give you much benefits for ProRes unless you're keying.
Let's see, if you've got three hours of RAW lite footage in a day, so about 1.5 TB of data, a 5 TB Seagate drive costs $130, so you're spending about $45 on backup just for the shoot (assuming you backup most or all of your shoots like I do). Now if one is only making say $850 as their day rate then that $45 starts to mean something, while if one is making north of $2k for their day rate then the $45 isn't as much of a consideration.
I've read that HQ doesn't give you much benefits for ProRes unless you're keying.
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mothmachine
Active member
I must have used the Cinema RAW Development software incorrectly then? I don't get it.
For instance, I have a CRL clip (4k, 60p) that is 52 seconds long, it is 6.55 GB.
The same clip that I converted to Prores HQ (not even 444) is 11.95 GB
What gives?
For instance, I have a CRL clip (4k, 60p) that is 52 seconds long, it is 6.55 GB.
The same clip that I converted to Prores HQ (not even 444) is 11.95 GB
What gives?
Eric Coughlin
Veteran
I was talking about ProRes non-HQ being slightly smaller than RAW lite. I would imagine HQ would have a higher data rate than RAW lite.
mothmachine
Active member
Prores 4:4:4 is what you said, right? That's less compressed than 422, maybe you meant Prores 422?
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_ProRes#ProRes-Overview
At 50p and 4k, the data rate is 1573 for HQ (and 2359 for 444).
Anyway, I can't tell that there are any advantages to converting to Prores over keeping the CRL files and editing them natively. Except the Prores probably takes less GPU and CPU power to playback on the timeline.
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_ProRes#ProRes-Overview
At 50p and 4k, the data rate is 1573 for HQ (and 2359 for 444).
Anyway, I can't tell that there are any advantages to converting to Prores over keeping the CRL files and editing them natively. Except the Prores probably takes less GPU and CPU power to playback on the timeline.
chris f
Veteran
For commercial stuff I stay in raw all the way through post, but for corporate stuff I transcode to Prores 422. Saves a little on file sizes and looks great. As long as you don't totally botch the original capture, 422 will look 100% as good as the original to the naked eye.
Prores 422 compared to the compressed option on the C200 looks much better and compared to the original raw file is pretty hard to distinguish outside of rare/extreme situations. Once you start wading into HQ territory your file sizes are going to jump considerably.
Prores 422 compared to the compressed option on the C200 looks much better and compared to the original raw file is pretty hard to distinguish outside of rare/extreme situations. Once you start wading into HQ territory your file sizes are going to jump considerably.
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What about a color reference when processing the RAW footage ?
Will your client always be able to determine what the correct color balance is when editing your footage ? ( once you hand over your footage does this become the client's problem and not yours )
I know that I can generally make a pretty good guess as to what the final color-balance should be, but if somebody hands me their footage and I've never seen the environment they are shooting in, and I have no clue if the metadata stored in the footage shows the correct color-balance, all I can do is take my best guess at getting it right.
mothmachine
Active member
I don't know what the difference would matter between giving the client RAW without a reference and anything else, if they can't trust the metadata. There's never going to be any other way of having the footage give you the correct answer other than having a chip chart. At least they can fix easily with RAW.
With IPB footage you have to get the color-balance right when shooting or you may end up with an unfixable mess in post. ( this was the main reason why I bought a Sekonic C-500 color meter back when I shot 8-bit footage )
Do most shooters take the same care when setting the color-balance when shooting RAW ?
mothmachine
Active member
Interesting Chris, but the data rate for Prores 422 is almost the same as for CRL, so again I wonder what the advantage is in conversion -- other than 1)may play back more smoothly or 2)handing the footage off to clients directly in a format they understand.
chris f
Veteran
Those are pretty much the main two reasons to be honest. If I'm shooting something corporate where I know they would be fine with the internal 8-bit AVCHD, but I still want to hand over something better quality I'll do ProRes 422 LT which still looks good to me.
It seems like I do something different on almost every project based on circumstances (hard drive space, transfer time available, how much I trust the client will handle post, whether I think something might make it into my reel, which one of my contractors is editing, curiosity, current mood, ha).
Sometimes I'll even shoot AVCHD but then transcode that to ProRes 422 LT just so I have a smoother post experience if I'm doing the edit even though the file sizes are much bigger because Adobe Premiere on my iMac struggles with AVCHD or MP4 files.
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rob norton
Veteran
Good points and maybe I’m jumping the gun. I think I’m more worried about hard drives required (selling clients on coughing up) for transfer in the field but it sounds like if the data isn’t too far off high quality arri files then it shouldn’t be an issue. I guess I’d rather have a dead easy solution in the form of more recording options for times when people are making things difficult. Within reason, it can be a huge help if you’re an absolute yes person. “Do you have a slider?”, “jib?”, “client monitor?”, “x-recording format?” etc. where you can give them everything they want (I said within reason), which can be a huge factor in getting more work.
I agree the c200 raw workflow is very straightforward. Maybe I made this issue up!?
I didn’t mean to start a raw vs non raw debate, sorry guys!
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Grug
Veteran
As a general rule, anything approaching 1Gb/s (4k Sony Raw, 4k CRL, 4k ProresHQ) and certainly anything exceeding it (2.8k Arriraw, 8k Redcode etc.) needs SSDs for offloading.
Unless you're shooting really low volumes of footage, there simply isn't enough time in the day to physically transfer that much data (512GB-ish per hour of footage) to spinning harddrives.
I'm slowly managing to convince producers I work with, to buy pairs of 2TB SSDs to use as their "transport" drives (which they then transfer to spinning drives when they get back to wherever they're going). But it's a long slog, and a hard fight to do so. Everyone have I brought around to the idea though, wishes they'd done it years ago (it just makes life SO much easier).
Unless you're shooting really low volumes of footage, there simply isn't enough time in the day to physically transfer that much data (512GB-ish per hour of footage) to spinning harddrives.
I'm slowly managing to convince producers I work with, to buy pairs of 2TB SSDs to use as their "transport" drives (which they then transfer to spinning drives when they get back to wherever they're going). But it's a long slog, and a hard fight to do so. Everyone have I brought around to the idea though, wishes they'd done it years ago (it just makes life SO much easier).
puredrifting
Major Contributor
That's why I usually want to talk to thier editor. I tell them to bring it in or let the program convert it to C-Log 2, what will generally give the best results with CRL and the most dynamic range.
I try to always shoot a chip chart too. But CRL output as C-Log 2 is no more difficult than any other LUT format to deal with. Compared to some of the competition,
it's easier to make look good.
In FCP X, if I only shot CRL, I leave it CRL, then do my final output to Prores or Prores HQ. If I have mixed media, which is most of the time, I let FCP X "optimize it" (convert it to Prores on ingest). I agree with Chris, I can't really tell the difference, even full screen on my iMac 5K Retina display, either looks great.
rob norton
Veteran
Which 2TB SSDs do you suggest, the samsung 2TB T5s? - https://www.umart.com.au/Samsung-2TB-T5-External-SSD-Black_40046G.html