GH6 with ProRes

I think by 2010 it was definitely really hot and maybe that's even why ARRI decided to use it in 2010.

And then for the next 10 years, almost everything was ProRes out of the world's best camera (and its variations), so how could one not living under a rock not know about ProRes.

Then you had some of the best IQ on the planet from Blackmagic 2 years later for an extremely low price further contributing to the education.
 
NorBro said:
It better have worked better vs. uncompressed, ha.

The funny thing about history is that sometimes in hindsight people might remember it differently than how it was. I remember it being big news, but I don't remember it immediately being an overnight success.

There is no doubt ProRes is awesome and if there was a DVXuser truth-detecting brain test, there is a good chance I shot more ProRes than most of this forum besides a few who are guaranteed to have shot more of it than me, and on much more important 1%-type work.

At one point, I was inseparable from Blackmagic cameras or Atomos recorders.

I love ProRes. But it is absolutely a no-brainer ARRI and Blackmagic helped make it universal knowledge within the industry working on different levels.
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Let’s not forget Atomos. Before them we all used a tower with a Blackmagic or AJA capture card. Having a camera monitor that could record to ProRes is really what put it in the hands of many people that were not shooting big budget productions on Alexa.

the popularity of FCP helped a ton as well. I’m talking before FCPX. I switched from PC to Mac for FCP 6 solely because of how good ProRes was.
 
Yes, no doubt, I included Atomos...they played a huge part.

But only really starting in 2015 as the first Shogun shipped in 2014 and people usually need a year to catch on so it was 2015, 5 years after ARRI and Blackmagic had a good run sharing it.

I know they had the little ones, but the big monitors/recorders is what took the company to another level, not just with financials but with exposure, especially once they started working with camera manufacturers.
 
BTW, Thomas, I also met many people who hated - maybe even despised [based on how they spoke] - Apple, which is why I don't remember it being so rainbows and flowers.

Apple was not what it is today in 2007.
 
NorBro said:
Yes, no doubt, I included Atomos...they played a huge part.

But only really starting in 2015 as the first Shogun shipped in 2014 and people usually need a year to catch on so it was 2015, 5 years after ARRI and Blackmagic had a good run sharing it.

I know they had the little ones, but the big monitors/recorders is what took the company to another level, not just with financials but with exposure, especially once they started working with camera manufacturers.
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Sorry missed the part where you mentioned Atomos.
 
NorBro said:
BTW, Thomas, I also met many people who hated - maybe even despised [based on how they spoke] - Apple, which is why I don't remember it being so rainbows and flowers.

Apple was not what it is today in 2007.
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Agreed and some of those people still hate Apple. That doesn’t take away how good of a codec it is however. I think it’s silly for people to refuse to use a codec just based on what kind of computer they use. To me a computer is just a computer. It’s the video format that should drive what we do and ProRes is still one of the best formats and the closest thing we have had to a high quality standard.
 
My take is that Red will become a lot more amenable toward licensing its Raw codecs within a few years, sooner if their hardware sales tank.

Which they should, given their stiff competition in Canon and, presumably at some point, Sony. With Nikon and Blackmagic in the background.
 
When the DSLR revolution hit in 2008, and people started recording in H.264, they needed to transcode to an intermediate codec in order to have smooth playback in their NLE, So the Mac people used ProRes, and the Windows people used AVI, DNxHD, and later CineForm. I know that's not 100% universally true, as I used the Apple Intermediate Codec, and know someone who used DVCPRO HD with his 60D footage, but that's probably because he was used to using it with his HPX170.


There are other good, non-processor-intensive intermediate codecs, but I think one reason why ProRes is still popular is because it stands up well to multiple generations of rendering, which is very handy for VFX. See this article that compares multiple generations of ProRes to DNxHD and CineForm.
 
One of my main cameras in 2012/2013 was a Panasonic HPX250 and I enjoyed working with DVCPRO HD.

I briefly had a Kinefinity KineMINI 4K that I used with CineForm, but I don't remember much about it. [They had proprietary software that you had to use to transcode with "KineStation".]
 
I don't know about Adobe's transcoding, but if you by any chance have FCP (if you have a Mac), try it at least once as it's world-class. (And there's no relinking involved.)

As far as the worth of shooting in ProRes, I don't think it matters as much anymore if your computer can handle HEVC and you're doing all of the editing yourself.

Newer cameras are providing their best specs in different formats/flavors and I don't know why you would want to spend the time transcoding if you're already easily editing your footage and it's holding up well to your grading.

Maybe before you make a final decision, heavily grade some of your different formats to see if there any major differences you may be missing out on.
 
filmguy123 said:
I’m on a 5950x / RTX 3090 and the performance seems good.
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No doubt.

beyond that alder lake quicksync is even better at these codecs than my AMD so I might upgrade again which would still be cheaper than high capacity CFExpress cards and storage + backup space in the office of switching to ProRes. Just not sure it really matters anymore for a solo operator?
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Only you can decide but I would rather have the Ryzen and let the 3090 manage h.265 encoding/decoding.
 
filmguy123 said:
Do y’all really think as a single operator it’s worth shooting in ProRes vs HEVC?

I’ve had strong NLE performance with 4K 10-bit h.265 footage even on larger projects with grading and FX. I know it’s not suppose to be an editing codec, but I’ve done most of my editing in h.264/h.265 until now because the workflow is so easy and the storage space is friendly. When I’ve tried transcoding I always find hassles in relinking (such as when I interpolate 60p to 24p, archive projects, etc). Its not as smooth a process and linking and storage can be a hassle, and finally, it eats up a ton of space.

I’m on a 5950x / RTX 3090 and the performance seems good. Now that GH6 has internal ProRes it’s a tempting proposition to “do it right” but I’m also sort of wondering if that’s outdated advice. By the time we get to 600-800mbps HEVC, and even intra frame options, does it matter that much when running a very high end PC that doesn’t struggle?

beyond that alder lake quicksync is even better at these codecs than my AMD so I might upgrade again which would still be cheaper than high capacity CFExpress cards and storage + backup space in the office of switching to ProRes. Just not sure it really matters anymore for a solo operator?
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Its not just does it work or work well but how much processing is being used to make that happen. You may be able to edit well but your system could perform even better. Maybe that doesn't really matter and you don't need more.

ProRes is about better editing performance, consistency across systems and multi generational rendering and about not needing a $3,000 3090 GPU just to edit video. Its frankly kind of ridiculous to need that much horsepower just to edit video formats. Thats kind of the point of FCP and ProRes. You can likely get equal or better editing performance with 1/2 the horsepower. Even if Macs appear to cost more than equal Ghz and teraflops PCs the reality is we tend to get aware doing more with less so it really balances out in the end.

For example I was editing 4k ProRes on a 2011 17" MBP and a 2012 27" iMac. Other formats nope not a hope. ProRes allows modest systems to handle professional work. As long as one has the storage that is.

With that said I no longer transcode my 10bit HEVC video on the M1. It handles it so well I just leave it as is most of the time. So in a way I'm kind of in your situation. The M1 MBA plays back and can do some CC/luts/basic effects in realtime so why bother with ProRes? Because the system can work even better. I can add more layers, more effects and the exporting is faster when I use ProRes. When it comes to exporting its a brute force do it as fast as it can type of action. If 30p is realtime the playback only needs to handle what you have at 30p. Then its realtime. Any faster doesn't make it playback faster. Just means you have more overhead to do more complex effects.

Exporting however will go as fast as it can decode, process and encode frame data. If a HEVC format can do that at one speed and ProRes at a 2x faster speed or so then exporting will always be faster with ProRes no matter if you have a $1,000 system or $10,000 system. Its about less processing cycles and ProRes uses much less processing and therefore can export faster and do more in realtime. Does that really matter is only up to you.

I don't use ProRes just for that reason. ProRes HQ also offers about as close to perfect quality at a compressed rate as one can get while also being very fast and very universal. Well universal on a Mac at least. I can use ProRes mov files just about anywhere including as a texture on a 3D model in Blender. I can't do that with Braw or other raw formats. ProRes444 is pretty much visual perfection in a non raw 12bit 4:4:4 RGB format. Yes massive but its about as good as it gets really. You lose the ability to change WB and ISO but beyond that its pixel for pixel the RGB raw is capable of. Unless you are lucky enough to have a 14bit raw format.

mpeg2, H264 and HEVC are lossy compressions with tricks to get the size smaller. That can have a huge benefit of better quality with a smaller file but whenever you toss out that much data something is lost. visually it may be impossible t see any potneitla loss but the more the material is graded the more that loss may become visible. Its the variable macro block sizes I have a problem with those formats. Visually not a big deal but macro blocks works based on similar colors. On green screen that means slight variations of green could be blocked together in 2x2, 4x4 or 8x8 macro blocks. That becomes very evident when you pull keys and you get to see those macro blocks cut out as you increase the sample range. Sometimes it doesn't clean up by the time it hits the edge of your subject. With high enough data rates that may be totally fine but there is the potential there for some funny business. Why take a chance? The higher the ISO on a camera the harder that data rate has to create those macro blocks as well. Ironically noise actually helps the over aggressive use of larger macro blocks in green screen material.

Now ProRes can have macro blocks as well. Its a DCT based image compression. Jpeg also has macro blocks. The data rate has to be pretty low for them to show up however. ProRes LT can have visible macro blocks. I consider ProRes HQ to be the only format worth using besides ProRes444. A format I have asked Atomos and BMD to support for years. Would help if a camera actually supported HDMI 4:4:4 I guess. ProRes and ProRes LT is like shooting HEVC normally at 200mbps and suddenly wanting to save space and use 150mbps and 100mbps instead. You are going to lose that much more visual data which I don't suggest. Storage is cheap and pretty easy to solve.

With all this said h.264 and HEVC formats in cameras today are insanely good. Its kind of splitting hairs but you could still visually lose something. Its really about it could happen vs ProRes likely will never break. how important is what you are shooting to not have random artifacts?
 
Imamacuser said:
When the DSLR revolution hit in 2008, and people started recording in H.264, they needed to transcode to an intermediate codec in order to have smooth playback in their NLE, So the Mac people used ProRes, and the Windows people used AVI, DNxHD, and later CineForm. I know that's not 100% universally true, as I used the Apple Intermediate Codec, and know someone who used DVCPRO HD with his 60D footage, but that's probably because he was used to using it with his HPX170.


There are other good, non-processor-intensive intermediate codecs, but I think one reason why ProRes is still popular is because it stands up well to multiple generations of rendering, which is very handy for VFX. See this article that compares multiple generations of ProRes to DNxHD and CineForm.
Click to expand...

It isn't just about being less processor intensive vs h.264 or HEVC. ProRes is extremely well optimized in FCP. While starting off as an intermediate its when ProRes was added to external recorders, video capture cards and some cameras that it really solidified its place as an industry standard. The Pocket cameras don't get as much attention for their native ProRes support since everyone is all about raw these days but thats really a huge thing. Using a P4k to shoot ProRes means plugging in that external USB-C record drive directly to a laptop and cutting perfect 4k projects within seconds and exporting a ProRes master at very fast speeds. Its really a gorgeous and solid workflow with the only negative being the file size. Realistically however a 1TB SSD now costs less than a 256 GB SD card fast enough for similar visual formats so I don't really consider the file size a big negative at all anymore. 1TB SSDs are pretty cheap now and cost less than the 1TB raids I used to have to use for video like this. In fact even a 2TB SSD S5 costs much less than crappy raids we used to have to use.
 
Thomas Smet said:
I consider ProRes HQ to be the only format worth using besides ProRes444. A format I have asked Atomos and BMD to support for years.
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Blackmagic introduced 444 and 444XQ in the URSA in 2014 and then it made its way to the Minis since then, but not the Pockets.

444XQ had me trippin'...some of the highest IQ I've ever seen in my life back then.
 
NVIDIA has had hardware-based h.265 encoding and decoding for YEARS. M1 is a revelation because it's new. There hasn't been a need to transcode, and the Intel/Ryzen systems being talked about here are not about raw CPU horsepower. It's the inclusion of GPU hardware specific h.265 encoders/decoders paired with 11th and 12th generation Intel processors (that have their own h.265 capabilities) to support *all* variants of h.265 through 8K and beyond, not just 10 bit and 4:2:0. A HTPC with an 11th or 12th generation Intel or Ryzen CPU paired with an NVIDIA RTX 3090 GPU not only decodes 12K in real-time but renders HEVC superfast. Also has HDMI 2.1 and so supports 8K 60P and above to any of the latest 8K televisions.
 
makes a perfect companion to the S1H. same V-log, TC, adds more High frame rates in 10 bit 422 that S1H lacks and I love that they took the LCD setup from the S1H which is the best implementation of its kind. Its a winner.
 
CVP Panasonic LUMIX GH6 | In-Depth Review & Test Footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JHnhy44OzM
Chapters:
Intro - 00:00
Context - 00:35
Benefits of MFT - 02:07
Creative - 03:56
Sensor Specs - 06:55
DRBM - 07:50
Latitude - 10:38
DRBM Explored - 11:22
Noise / Noise Reduction - 18:30
Aliasing - 21:19
Rolling Shutter - 21:39
IBIS - 22:06
Colour - 23:38
Tech Specs Formats - 24:58
High Frame Rate - 27:58
Anamorphic - 30:26
Media - 31:09
HDMI - 32:39
Internal Fan System - 34:52
Autofocus - 36:21
Audio - 39:43
Powering - 41:37
USB-C - 42:09
Connectivity - 43:43
Physical - 44:21
Operating System - 46:11
Accessory Overview - 46:19
Reflections - 50:07
Outro - 53:20
 
filmguy123 said:
Yeah, it's awesome. Now I have an S1H that feels outdated. I mean, I can only hit 4k60p in the S1H in S35 crop mode, and that at 10-bit 420. Still love it, but, bring on the S1H mk ii! GH6 will be a travel video workhorse for me.
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im going to use the S1H with a leica M 35mm prime to shoot regular speed and throw my 50 or my 90 on the gh6 for closeup slomo telephoto b- roll stuff
 
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