Looking for RAW 4K 60p 4:1 footage for testing

I've been a Resolve user for years and I couldn't live without it. With the release of the new Pocket Cinema Camera 4k this year, I'm thinking about moving to Blackmagic cameras as well.

I've been doing extensive testing with my post production workflow over the last couple of days. My biggest concern was throughput as I mainly edit off a high end laptop with external drives. I downloaded the John Brawley RAW files (105MB's) and am happy to report that I can stack 3 on a timeline under a heavy grade and the playback is still smooth as silk.

My only concern is that these files are only 2.5k with no compression. I need to know if that silky playback will change at 4k with 4:1 compression. I found some uncompressed 4.6k URSA footage but it won't play smoothly because it's over 500MB's a second. You need a RAID to edit on that kind of throughput and it's not practical for the mobility I need and the amount of footage that I store for my feature films. I'm pretty sure I can't go much over 150MB's before I will start running into problems on fairly standard external drives. The new Pocket 4K 4:1 compression is only 96MB's so throughput should work fine. The only question is if the CPU and the graphics card can deal with the 4K and the extra compression.

I can't seem to find any RAW compressed files anywhere. Does Blackmagic provide them and I just haven't found them yet? I'm specifically looking for 4K or 4.6K 60p 4:1 RAW files. I do a lot of ramping in my edits so I work with a lot of 60p footage on a 24 timeline.

I love the Blackmagic footage. It's beautiful and a joy to work with in post. I'll buy at least 2 of the new Pockets if I can figure out an efficient post workflow. Any links, advice, or recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks

Michael

Michael, there’s been no sample footage released to date. It’s quite possible there will be some footage closer to the actual release of the camera around the end of the summer.

If you don’t need to shoot 4K day one, you could shoot raw in the HD window up to 120 fps. Your laptop may handle that subject to frame rates. You might be able to use a two drive RAID 0 but let’s see what your budget is like in early September.


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Rick,
I think Michael is looking for RAW files from any BM camera in the resolutions he mentioned. I myself wouldn't mind seeing how 4K RAW 4:1 (or whatever's available) runs on my new computer. I just caught up to the BMPCC's raw processing demands and am now wondering if the BMPCC 4K will put me behind the eight-ball again.

I can appreciate that offering these large files for (free) download may not be free for the provider.

Steve

Rick is right. I'm just looking for any 4k or 4.6k 4:1 60p footage. Regular 2.5k CDNG RAW plays ridiculously smooth on my laptop. The RAW footage is way, way smoother than 4K 60p h.264. I'm assuming the main reason the h.264 60p footage has problems is that it is having to do a 3:2 pulldown on an Interframe codec. An Intraframe 3:2 should be much easier even if it's RAW.

I'm also curious about the throughput needed when playing back 60p CDNG on a 24p timeline. If Resolve reads the metadata in a way where it skips frames completely then it's requirements should be much less than playing on a 60p timeline. If this is the case and if it's compressed 4:1, then theoretically it should be able to work off of fairly standard external drives.

Michael

John Brawley post a lot of 4.6K sample RAW footage in his blog long time ago. Check here:

https://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2016/ ... e-by-side/
https://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2016/ ... -carnival/
https://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2018/ ... uick-test/

For 60P you can just speedup it in file settings.

Michael, don't forget about the cache option in Resolve. If you use a lower bandwidth codec for caching it will
definitely skyrocket your workflow even without RAID - although that's the first upgrade I'd look for in your position.

4.6K RAW 60p 4:1 will be around 270MB/sec, so should not be a problem for SSD in laptops, but definitely no go for HDD. You will need bit CPU though- not sure maybe 4 cores at 3GHz+.

Why do you work with 60p footage on 24p timeline? What good it meant to do except jerky end result or interpolated 24p?

Michael, I've recorded you some RAW 4K 60p test footage just now from my UM46k.
It will take some time to slimRAW convert and upload though (I've accidentally recorded in lossless and not 4:1).

Okay, I'm uploading now 30 GB of 4.6k RAW 60p 4:1 footage.
This will take a bit - around 2.5 hours.

Okay, I'm uploading now 30 GB of 4.6k RAW 60p 4:1 footage.
This will take a bit - around 2.5 hours.

Robert, would you please allow me to download the files too?
Thank you in advance

Daniel, of course. It's nothing special, just used the sunny weather today for some quick sample shots.

So, here is the link:
https://fil.email/JISk3Mue?&showconfirmation=true

Thank you Robert!!! I am super curious about how Resolve deals with a 3:2 pulldown on 60p footage in a 24p timeline. And if that doesn't work off of a standard drive then I also have an internal SSD RAID I can check for dealing with the 4:1 compression playback on my system. I'll let everyone know my findings.

Dmitry - Thank you for those links! I had tried uncompressed 4.6k which was too much for my system but I didn't see the 4:1 samples.

Octavian - yeah I know about the cache and I may end up needing to use it. And yes, a RAID is probably the best solution out of my bottleneck. I'm just very portable right now and I would like to keep it that way.

Andrew - I work with a ton of action and fighting footage. The 60p footage is constantly being ramped in and out of slow motion. I also think most interpolated 24p looks fine as long as the correct shutter speeds are used and appropriate for the footage.

The John Brawley 4:1 footage Dimitry linked to is no longer available. This is the main problem I ran into. Full RAW 24p footage is fairly easy to find, but no seems to post 60p or RAW compressed footage.

Thank you again Robert! It's downloading right now. It may take 24 hours, but I'm patient and grateful.

Very good of you, Robert. Apologies for thinking the footage should have been from the Pocket4K.

If one is editing and grading on a laptop, the option in the Media tab to generate Optimized Media will save your bacon. Trying to run 4.6K raw in real-time on my iMac 27” 4 GHz late 2015 isn’t impressive. Running it a quarter size still gives good images for the purpose and then you Deliver whatever you want from the original raw files.


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Finally had a chance to do some testing. The good news is that the footage plays back great on my laptop. The bad news is that it doesn't work off of my slow external drives.

I tested one of my external hard drives and it's much slower than I thought. It was only getting about 90MB's read speed. The 60p 4.6k footage is 270MB's but if it's played back on a 24fps timeline then it's actually only 105MB's. But unfortunately that's still too much for my weak drive.

However my internal RAID SSD has a read speed of almost 1100MB's which makes reading the footage childs play. My laptop is actually fairly old. It has a Nvidia 980M graphics card which is decent but the processor is only a i7-4710HQ which is very old and speed boosts out at 3.3GHz. However the playback is perfect even with a couple LUT's and a decently complex grade.

So 4.6k 60p 4:1 CDNG RAW at 270MB's plays back much smoother in Resolve than GH5 4k 60p H.264 at 150mb's. And it is so much better footage and easier to grade!

It looks like I'm going to need to edit off a RAID but I probably don't need a new laptop, at least for my portable trash one. I'm going to do some more testing with externals because I'm still curious if Resolve skips reading files when playing 60p footage back at 24fps. It looks like it does but I need to test it on a slightly faster external drive to make sure.

Thanks again for the footage Robert! I've been playing with it quite a bit and I'm beginning to love the UM!

You are welcome
BTW, I was not able to get fluid playback of the 60p files on my postproduction workstation in Resolve 14. I was playing from my internal RAID5 with 8 HDDs. I'm not sure if this was the only factor or if my GPU was too weak too. It's a GTX780 with 6GB.

I'm only getting smooth playback on a 24 timeline, were you using 60? I was also playing with the beta of Resolve 15. And yes, a 980m with 8GB is more powerful than a 780 with 6GB. But the graphics card wasn't my bottleneck. It was using 85-90 percent on my CPU but only like 6-7 percent of my GPU.

Daniel, of course. It's nothing special, just used the sunny weather today for some quick sample shots.

So, here is the link:
https://fil.email/JISk3Mue?&showconfirmation=true

Robert, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Best regards!

These issues with external drives are one of the primary reasons I recommend buying as much internal flash storage as your budget will tolerate. Especially if you’re on a laptop in the field.

I put the maximum 1 TB in my iMac 27” late 2015. Now one is offered 4 TB internal flash that also has superior performance to my flash. For most people, having a couple of terabytes of internal flash will get them what they need that day. At night, you offload to your desktop RAID.


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Here's some eye watering files for you to download.

Ursa Mini 4.6K uncompressed @ 24 though.

http://bit.ly/2ksCKeb
http://bit.ly/2j5eHlz
http://bit.ly/2j5e63j

JB

If your computer has a really fast connection, like USB-C/TB3, you can use the SanDisk Extreme 900, a small SSD RAID. It offers short of 2 TB external storage with excellent speed.