Blackmagic Forum

Ok guys, please explain something to me.

What's the difference between prores and raw?

Do you INITIALLY get a better image quality from shooting RAW over Prores (more resolution, better definition, less noise, etc...??)

Or is RAW just more malleable in post production???


I guess the real question: if I shoot PRORES and I get everything right - lighting, exposure, noise in shadows, focus - can I make it look just as good as RAw, or at least pretty close??

Thanks for bearing with me. I must be the dumbest guy on this forum.

Raw has more bit depth which is why it takes up more memory than just about every other video format. What this means is that each pixel has more color information which means that you can stretch that color information further before hitting a wall(metiphorically). When you use a format with a lower bit depth such as h.264 or jpeg or whatever, when you try to turn down the darks, turn up the lights, or increase the saturation/contrast too much, you hit a point where those darks and lights just become featureless blobs or the noise in the image becomes really pronounced or both. With videos that have more bit depth, such as 12, 14, or even 16 bit raw footage, you have far more "room" to work with. So when you shoot a scene in a room that is brightly lit except for one corner, where it is hard to see what is going on, with enough bit depth, you can brighten up that shadowy area so you can make out the details in it.

In essence, when recording images to digital format, the camera tells each pixel what colors are supposed to be in it, as much as there may be. More bit depth leaves room for the camera to tell a pixel that there are minute traces of red in a predominantly blue pixel, or green in a red pixel, etc. When you compress that footage to have less bit depth, you round off some of that information, so you lose those trace colors that aren't that noticeable at first, but would have shown up during the color grading process.

While prores is still a good format for doing post work and has less artifacting and noise than you get in codecs like mjpeg or h.264. If you are shooting something like a documentary or an event where you are going for a more natural look, using prores is perfectly fine, but if you really want to jack up the colors for narrative purposes or where color matching it to some other kind of footage from a different camera is crucial, then raw is more preferable.

Raw also requires more work in post to get it to a finished state. Personally, I like the extra flexibility of raw and have no problem taking the time in post to make sure my footage looks just the way I want it, so I'm perfectly happy shooting in it.

Whirled_Peas wrote:Raw has more bit depth which is why it takes up more memory than just about every other video format. What this means is that each pixel has more color information which means that you can stretch that color information further before hitting a wall(metiphorically). When you use a format with a lower bit depth such as h.264 or jpeg or whatever, when you try to turn down the darks, turn up the lights, or increase the saturation/contrast too much, you hit a point where those darks and lights just become featureless blobs or the noise in the image becomes really pronounced or both. With videos that have more bit depth, such as 12, 14, or even 16 bit raw footage, you have far more "room" to work with. So when you shoot a scene in a room that is brightly lit except for one corner, where it is hard to see what is going on, with enough bit depth, you can brighten up that shadowy area so you can make out the details in it.

In essence, when recording images to digital format, the camera tells each pixel what colors are supposed to be in it, as much as there may be. More bit depth leaves room for the camera to tell a pixel that there are minute traces of red in a predominantly blue pixel, or green in a red pixel, etc. When you compress that footage to have less bit depth, you round off some of that information, so you lose those trace colors that aren't that noticeable at first, but would have shown up during the color grading process.

While prores is still a good format for doing post work and has less artifacting and noise than you get in codecs like mjpeg or h.264. If you are shooting something like a documentary or an event where you are going for a more natural look, using prores is perfectly fine, but if you really want to jack up the colors for narrative purposes or where color matching it to some other kind of footage from a different camera is crucial, then raw is more preferable.

Raw also requires more work in post to get it to a finished state. Personally, I like the extra flexibility of raw and have no problem taking the time in post to make sure my footage looks just the way I want it, so I'm perfectly happy shooting in it.

You just answered a lot of questions for me. Thank you my friend. Actually, your answer was kind of epic.

Great explaination, and the difference goes even further than that.

RAW is literally a recording of all the sensor data without (theoretically) any interpretation. It's way too nerdy to detail, or for us mortals to fully grasp, but CMOS sensors are 'bayer pattern sensors' meaning that there are adjacent photosites, individually tuned to red, green, or blue. Kinda. Recombining those into the an image of, say 2,073,600 pixels (1920x1080) is called 'debayering.' For most codecs, the image is also processed for color balance, and, in order to reduce the amount of data that needs to be stored, the amount of red and blue info is 'sub sampled,' so there's less steps of detail in those colors - that's a whole other explaination... the resulting reduced data set is then mathmatically compressed - more-or-less losslessly in the case of prores.

Shooting RAW gives you back all that information that is processed out in the camera, and gives the colorist the ability to manually make all the choices about contrast and color that the camera does automatically when making prores internally. Of course, you can't even look at the DNG files without doing some of that work - so it's kind of a pain in the ass for basic work.

Play with it when you have some spare time. It's super powerful, but a lot of extra work.

http://www.cinema-dng.com/?page_id=24

Ahrg. Are you trolling? If you're not, well... I'm sure you understand 'epic' is the camera from RED that ONLY shoots RAW - RED poplularized shooting raw for motion.

The differences between raw and prores workflows are significant; depending on your experience, your timeframes, the kind of footage you intend to shoot and a lot of other things you might find that one is better suited for you than the other.

From your persistent questions about raw and prores i deduct that you haven't done much grading? In that case raw might be a bit of a challenge at first - unless you rely on prebuilt LUTs, but then you don't use much of the potential raw has to offer. Get resolve light (it's free!), grab some demo-footage, and dig into it. After that you can decide yourself what footage better fits your needs.

No, I've never played with RAW footage and never graded anything in resolve. I downloaded resolve light on my laptop but the thing is just too massive (why I also created a post on which mac or pc I should buy).

Obviously the new excellent 1995$ price for the bmcc is kinda ridiculous, and it made people like me (who were waiting for the pocket cam) on the fence about which one to buy.

I guess I'm just worried about the ''actual'' cost of owning a BMCC over the pocket and shooting 2.5k raw. I'll just create a new post for that.

Max Normandin wrote:I guess I'm just worried about the ''actual'' cost of owning a BMCC over the pocket and shooting 2.5k raw. I'll just create a new post for that.

I believe that you'll find ProRes on any of the BMD cameras to be a HUGE step forward from what you've known before. I am going to use ProRes for almost any of my intended work, and only go the raw way for some specialty shots that need a lot of additional work anyway, like greenscreen or motion tracked cgi insertion etc.