zcam zraw support

as a new user of a zcam F6 i would love to be able to shoot raw and use it in resolve.
i know there's a plugin developped for premiere.
so when will it be possible to use zraw in resolve ?

This would be good.

+1


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+1 !!!

any news there ?
am i dreaming of zraw support with the braw beeing there ?

looks like native support for zraw is coming in premiere...
just saying...

The more the merrier.
+1 from me as well.

Resolve developers decide for themselves what to do, it's zcam developers listen to the people ...

+99999999 love that beast

Mark me up for z-cam raw support. Have an F6 and standing by to be able to grade and cut Zcam raw in Resolve!!

Does anyone have any word on this yet? I'm planning a production and am hoping to be able to edit in Resolve.

i guess we will have proresraw far far far before zraw

did anybody send a couple of shots form that camera to the Dev? (so they can actually have a look)

Getting more clients bringing me ZRAW files to my editing desk. I'm getting sick of editing in Adobe. Any update on this?

If no plans should I ask them to start filming in ProResRaw?

Any update on ProResRaw? I'm also getting some Sony fx6, A7S3 ProResRaw hitting my desk as well.

CATCH UP!

Can't you just use Z CAM's VideoSuite to convert them to a usable format? https://www.z-cam.com/software-update/

I've tried in the Z CAM group several times to get more information about an API and how third parties are supposed to implement support for ZRAW since they don't publish any details. Their CEO is a bit coy on the subject (at least publicly) and sometimes the answer is "use ProRes RAW instead". It usually ends with other users claiming angrily that "there is an API" and linking to the camera control API which has nothing to do with ZRAW whatsoever.

Unless BMD can get some info that Z CAM seemingly doesn't want to be public, I don't see this happening. If it's a simple format I guess BMD can reverse engineer it but that doesn't seem like their M.O. If anyone from BMD reads this you can contact their CEO on kinson@z-cam dot com (email published on their home page).

It works in Premiere but only if you install a plugin supplied by Z CAM themselves. Resolve doesn't have an open third party plugin architecture for decoding files at this time (only for encoding, since v17).

on the other side, zcam claims it is up to bmp to set zraw in resolve...
i guess we'll never see the end of it.

Of course, what this thread needs now is a 1.8x anamorphic ZRAW clip of a sleeping cat.

Download:
A012C0019_20210116112006_0001.ZRAW (294 MB)

3696x2772 pixels
108 frames
24 fps

Here's a single OpenEXR frame converted by ZRAW VideoSuite:
A012C0019_20210116112006_0001_01_15_2021__11_28_45_000000.exr

Took a deeper look at the files. The good news is that they use the QuickTime container. That should make it a bit easier to reverse engineer. I don't know the codec though. JPEG2000 maybe? That would be pretty funny if it's basically unencrypted R3D in a QuickTime file.

Since it's QuickTime, if you add the .mov filename extension to a ZRAW file, Resolve can open the audio and timecode tracks (but not the video track).

Took a deeper look at the files. The good news is that they use the QuickTime container. That should make it a bit easier to reverse engineer. I don't know the codec though. JPEG2000 maybe? That would be pretty funny if it's basically unencrypted R3D in a QuickTime file.

Since it's QuickTime, if you add the .mov filename extension to a ZRAW file, Resolve can open the audio and timecode tracks (but not the video track).

did you try with something like ffmpeg (or whatever that app is called)

Yes, FFmpeg fails immediately on ZRAW files: "error reading header"

They've xor'd the stco (frame offsets) atom/chunk of the 'vide' track with the creation timestamp (in the mvhd atom) of the file. In the case of the sample zraw file above, it's 0xDC286E56. If you reverse the process by repeating the xor, it's a valid file and you can then access the frame data directly. There are some non-standard atoms, but it's a normal QuickTime file otherwise. One of the non-standard atoms at the start of the file is 'jpeg', a thumbnail.

Taking a look at the first 8 frames there are a few interesting things. The first frame is 20b larger than the next 7, and its first 20b are 'PVVVMVVV~VVV[VVV[VVV' which looks a lot like some kind of header. Does anybody recognize that from a compression/encoding/encryption format? The next 3b of the first frame are 'rVY'. The first 3b of the next 7 frames are all 'WVx' where x is 'S', 'Q', ']', 'Y', 'Z', 'Y', 'B'. Taking a quick look at a few random frames and they all continue the pattern of 'WVx', and x is always a printable ascii character but not necessarily alphanumeric. The 4th byte is rarely a printable character however.

Another observation is that each frame has a 0x2904 byte chunk preceeding it that appears some kind of descriptor. Notable atoms at the start of that chunk are 'ptsb', and 'n3a ' (which is a 0x28A8 atom with 'IMVT' at bytes 4-8; ImageVision Technology is the company behind Z Cam).

Here's the xor'd stco atom to save everyone the work (offsets start after the 0x6C; 108 frames):

Code: Select all

00000000 0000006C 000445F8 002B8445
0052C27E 007A00B7 00A13EF0 00C87D29
00EFBB62 0116F99B 013E37D4 0165760D
018CB446 01B3F27F 01DCC1C4 0203FFFD
022B3E36 02527C6F 0279BAA8 02A41B2B
02CB5964 02F30ED1 031B246E 034656D1
036FFDA8 039AA1D6 03C74B97 03F2B271
041E1228 044AA8B7 04775924 04A2B5C6
04CED117 04FB3E6D 05279727 05531080
057F3085 05AB6C6C 05D78024 0604CAF4
0630F5A5 065D21DB 0689393B 06B4FC43
06E0E17A 070D417C 07396A9C 0764F410
07912FB0 07BD93D6 07E989EC 081CD36C
084B492B 08779639 08A3B5EA 08CFB496
08FBCE00 0927DCEB 09541467 097FFE87
09ABECCE 09D7DD93 0A03D68C 0A2FA370
0A5BC6AC 0A89B3BE 0AB5BC6C 0AE1CE92
0B0DDD1C 0B39FF50 0B662C9F 0B922267
0BBE1BEE 0BEA1856 0C162F16 0C4B464F
0C77DD48 0CA4411E 0CD2065E 0CFDB2EE
0D29D162 0D55F2D4 0D82499E 0DAEA0AD
0DDAFF65 0E06F6C9 0E3314F5 0E5F021C
0E8B8CAD 0EB7E7C2 0EE59E7D 0F116DD9
0F3DBBB9 0F69D613 0F9626C1 0FC1CF93
0FEDFC32 1019D681 1045F95B 107B1556
10A7B4F2 10D3C81C 11003E22 112D9C93
1159AAC3 1185C584 11B1B255 11DD8B52
1209BE2F 1235EFA5

That's some great detective work!

If you look at the ZRAW plugins for Premiere and Assimilate Scratch they provide, as well as ZRAW VideoSuite, the common libraries they use are these:

• codec_bayer_v1_x64.dll
  I assume this is for debayering. There are several mentions of CMP and DCMP in this file. I wonder if that's the LeadTools CMP image compression SDK. Or maybe it just stands for compress/decompress. The local path the dev used was "F:\project2\codec_all\codec_ICE_V3R1\cmp_dcmp_dll_prj\codec_bayer_v1_dll_create_prj"
  
  
• cudart64_101.dll
  CUDA for Nvidia GPUs
  
  
• libeay32.dll
  Encryption library from OpenSSL
  
  
• opencv_core345.dll
  Open Source Computer Vision library
  
  
• videocodec.dll
  Despite the generic name, this is actually a custom-compiled FFmpeg dll. The local path the dev used was "d:\ffmpeg\zcam_ffmpeg\ffmpeg_3.4" and like codec_bayer_v1_x64.dll this contains mentions of DCMP ("\dcmp_raw\libdcmp_raw\src\libdcmp_raw.c") right where there are Z CAM-specific strings.

So, that encryption/decryption library is a bit worrying, if the files have to be decrypted. But what about simply calling their FFmpeg (videocodec.dll) for converting files? Might work if it also does the decryption.

Reading up on the licensing for FFmpeg. It's pretty damning. Z CAM have used the source code for FFmpeg and implemented their own custom changes without providing the source code for their changes. That's not allowed under GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1.

It's no wonder they refuse to talk about it.

aye, I was trying not to go there as I had the same "no wonder they won't talk about it" thought. My first thought when I noticed the ffmpeg use was to think that they have to provide their changes if we ask, so we shouldn't even need to do this reverse engineering. But then I put my head back in the sand.

I really like Z Cam - they're massive underdogs, and their cameras have features unheard of in the competition anywhere near their price point (multi-device sync, LAN, etc). But... they appear to be a very tiny company, and likely are completely unaware of the ramifications of modifying ffmpeg, and what it obligates them to do. At least I'd like to think so.

So, someone managed to jailbreak the Z CAM E2 last year and today he released an open source proof of concept for decoding ZRAW. Both the earlier proper raw, and the debayered "raw" that was introduced in firmware 0.94. The newer ZRAW is apparently just a very high quality HEVC stream after it's decoded. I assume it has some metadata that helps with making "raw" adjustments.

https://github.com/storyboardcreativity/ZRAW-Parser

ZRAW support Please!!! Would LOVE to avoid the CDNG workaround for my Z Cam E2 F4

have they not added support for zcam raw?