Commercial TV workflows and RAW / HQ codecs

[kye]

With the introduction of Prores RAW and the soon-to-be-released BMPCC 4K, professional quality codecs are now really entering the prosumer market.

We've had some contact with RAW and High Quality codecs through BlackMagics BMPCC and Magic Lantern, but this is probably only a small percentage of us, even on these forums.

There are quite a few challenges I see associated with this, including:

• Absolutely huge data rates
  Most 1080 prosumer cameras are around 25-100Mbps,
  BMPCC went up to around 600Mbps (6-24X prosumer),
  Prores RAW is 640-1120Mbps (6-45X prosumer),
  but the BMPCC 4K will go up to around 4352 (44-175X prosumer data rates!!)
• RAW requires extra processing in post-production
  DaVinci Resolve includes this functionality but it might require a separate piece of software for other packages, and will take significant time to transcode to large proxy files
• Image quality beyond 'good enough'
  The image quality from these RAW / HQ cameras is potentially more than is needed - in many cases shooting RAW 1080 or compressed 4K for a compressed 1080 output is going to be almost indistinguishable from shooting RAW 4K

Commercial TV workflows are perhaps the best place to learn how other people manage these issues and why.  
I think they are better suited to our concerns than feature films because Prosumers and TV shows shoot over and over again using the same setups, so issues like scalability, efficiency, and so on are relevant here, whereas feature films only have to be done once.

Who has worked on serial productions with RAW / HQ cameras, and what can you tell us before we fill our HDDs with RAW 4K files?

[John Brawley]

14 hours ago, kye said:

 

Who has worked on serial productions with RAW / HQ cameras, and what can you tell us before we fill our HDDs with RAW 4K files?

As mentioned in the other 4K Pocket 2 thread...

In episodic TV, where I spend a lot of my time, we shoot three cameras almost all the time.  The show I'm on now shoots 8+1, meaning 8 days of main unit and a day of second unit (while making unit starts the next episode).

We tend to shoot about 2 hours per camera per day.  

So that's 6 hours by 8 days of footage. On second unit they shoot with at least two more cameras, if not three.  So that means on some days the data wrangler has 12 hours of dailies to process from set from two units.

The footage is backed up on set, then shuttled to the post house offsite.

They backup twice again and then transcode the footage for editorial.  We shoot in Atlanta but editorial are in LA cutting on AVID.  So they grade (time) the dailies, for editorial and render DNX files and send them over a very secure connection to LA.  All done Overnight ?

Editorial then sound sync the dailies, first thing, compare the shots logged vs what they've received and sign off that they have everything that we say we shot (down to the shot).  After the emails I see from editorial are notes querying the wrong slate number just so that they can verify this.

As well as doing all that they produce the pulled or select dailies and generate 264's of just those circled / printed takes and they get assembled into a H264 file that gets uploaded to DAX for about 200 studio execs and production people to watch / refer to.  There are also some secured rotating ipads that get the same 264 files updated to them for those of us that hate trying to scrub 264 files over the internet.   I get those myself, and the director of the episode gets one as does the writer. 

Right now the show I'm shooting is on air 9 weeks after we started shooting.  That's a clock winding down, because it airs every 7 and we take at least 9 days to shoot each episode ?

You can see how it escalates.  There's no safety net for time at all. An episodic TV series will generate a LOT of footage that can quickly overwhelm a production and there's very little room for a slow down at any point.

The studio I'm shooting for now is Fox.  They still only air in 720 so they only master in 1920.  

Despite the rhetoric about 4K, the reality is that MOST TV DRAMA production isn't shot 4K.

We shoot 1920 ProRes and I always make ProRes 444 the minimum because it's 12 bit.  That's all I really need from a grading point of view and RAW workflows offer very few genuine advantages.  Try designing a test to show that it does and I'll show you a TV network that shoots 4K.  (None of them do)

They're not even interested in mastering 4K for a future proofing scenario.

4K also quickly kills workflow because everything is that much harder with all the above numbers.

I think ProRes RAW is an interesting option, but honestly, over 12 bit ProRes, I don't see much need to shoot ProRes RAW.

I have some friends on Stranger Things at the moment.  They do 12 to 14 days per episode.  We have 8.  That's nearly double the amount of time to shoot the same screen time.  They tend to shoot single camera too, because that's the style of the show.  But that's a large part of why they need so much more time.  I guess you can argue it's success makes the investment worthwhile, but days shooting is the most expensive part of TV production.  Because of the cast generally and their availability.  A show that shoots for longer tends to find it much harder to hang on to good actors.

JB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[kye]

Thanks @John Brawley - fascinating stuff!

I was trying to work out the disk space required but there appears to be some confusion online around Prores 444 vs Prores 4444 which seem to be referring to the same thing?
Assuming 330Mbps for Prores 444 the 12 hours of dailies would be around 1.8Tb/day
I count there being 6 other master-quality copies of the footage made, which equates to over 12Tb per day, or 100Tb per episode of total storage for all involved.....  ouch!
(please someone double-check my logic / maths here...!)

When you shoot with the BMMCC + BM Video Assist 5" what codec do you shoot then?  BM doesn't list Prores 444 / 4444 on the tech specs.  Perhaps 422?  Otherwise I suspect transcoding would be required.

Is there any discussion around what would be required if the network switched to airing 1080?  Obviously the goal is to master in a higher quality than what is aired, but would the increased dynamic range and bit depth of your current capture be sufficient, or would you have to switch to a higher resolution as well?
If so, I'm imagining that means 4K capture, but you could likely get away with a much more compressed codec in order to avoid the data rates jumping by 4X.  Many years ago we tried encoding SD and 720 footage to h264 with the same bitrate and the 720 was the clear winner, so I suspect that the codec (but not bit depth) could be compromised substantially and still downscale nicely to a 1080 output.

I think it makes sense commercially that studios aren't interested in 4K to future proof their productions, and I think this is where the prosumer might differ from commercial TV shows.  I know one of the reasons that I shoot is that (I'm hoping) the family videos I make will be kept and referred to by future generations.  If my grandparents and great grandparents had made home videos I would certainly be interested in them.  Certainly its an excellent argument to justify camera upgrades to my wife!!

[John Brawley]

11 hours ago, kye said:

Thanks @John Brawley - fascinating stuff!

I was trying to work out the disk space required but there appears to be some confusion online around Prores 444 vs Prores 4444 which seem to be referring to the same thing?
Assuming 330Mbps for Prores 444 the 12 hours of dailies would be around 1.8Tb/day
I count there being 6 other master-quality copies of the footage made, which equates to over 12Tb per day, or 100Tb per episode of total storage for all involved.....  ouch!
(please someone double-check my logic / maths here...!)

When you shoot with the BMMCC + BM Video Assist 5" what codec do you shoot then?  BM doesn't list Prores 444 / 4444 on the tech specs.  Perhaps 422?  Otherwise I suspect transcoding would be required.

 

ProRes 4444 is the post version of the format (has the alpha channel) and in camera it's called 444.

On the Micro cameras when I use them I only use the VA as a small lightweight monitor.  I record internally to 1920 ProRes HQ.

Resolution and dynamic range / bit depth aren't related at all really.  You could maybe make an argument that extra resolution helps with surprising noise, but it's only those that want to make a petty technical point that would say so because it's a small advantage.  I doubt the difference between 720 and 1080 would make any difference at all.

If the costs come down, I can see Networks going to 4K because they DO want to future-proof themselves, they just don't want to PAY what it costs to process and store all those 4k files.

To me as a cinematographer I care a LOT LESS about resolution and a LOT MORE about bit depth.  I'd rather have 1920 12 bit files than 8k 8 bit files.

JB