rick.lang wrote:Andrew Kolakowski wrote:The savings in storage space in the camera is a potentially significant improvement and the savings in processor cycles may lead to support for higher frame rates subject to the recording media.
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Bandwidth savings depend on what you compare it to. Average rate for ProRes RAW HQ is 15% above ProRes HQ (and about the same situation for normal mode). No saving here.
ProRes RAW HQ should save about 20% bandwidth compared to ProRes444 though.
I would not count on
compression efficiency boost (but quality can increase thanks to monochrome nature of RAW data) as ProRes RAW will be most likely based on the "old" engine.
Some changes were made in terms of sensitivity and average/min/max bitrate values, but core math is probably the same. Without Apple comment it's hard to say for sure, but even fact that only 12bit is supported atm. is some indication about old engine.
In the same time I don't think that much more can/should be done- if you start making it more complex you will lose on decoding speed. The only valid refinement could be possible thanks to fact that bayer data is monochrome (and maybe this was done).
There is a possibility (in my opinion very small) that a whole new engine was developed, but I would still not count for massive quality difference compared to e.g. R3D or Cineform. One of the reasons for this are quoted decoding speeds, which indicate that algorithm is fairly simple. Fact that Atoms and other manufactures are going to provide it "so quickly" also suggest old engine, which means that companies can fairly quickly adjust their existing hardware encoders for ProRes RAW mode. White paper is also vague about it and I think if it would be new and shiny algorithm Apple would say so and maybe even give it new name.
For me it looks like just a quick job of adding RAW mode to old and proven ProRes engine. There is no information atm. which would suggest otherwise. If anything surprises me is fact that it has not be done earlier. CinemaDNG is just a half baked product and there was always massive need for some RAW video data standard.
For those who says it's proprietary- well R3D is 10x worse as it's also encrypted. Future will tell, but I expect many free tools (aside of Apple SDK) for decoding ProRes RAW. I don't see fact it's Apple developed being real issue here as we just need decoder on NLE side. It's quite a different than normal ProRes and mainly affects companies which produce cameras/recorders as it's them who will have to fight for licensing. I don't really think Apple will be making any problems with this and in the same time I hope they will be strict about implementations, so we will have good reliability.