Should I shoot ProRes or ProRes Raw?

[aaa123jc]

I will be filming a very short (only a few minutes) documentary next week. And this is actually my first time shooting a documentary. 

Since I now own a Sony FS5, I am thinking should I shoot raw for this project? I had never considered using raw before for my event works, but it seems like this project requires something more serious than especially the internal codec. Yet, I also believe you can't change settings like white balance and iso when using ProRes Raw, so I don't really see the point of shooting raw except for the 12bit color. 

Normally, I edit and color grade with DaVinci Resolve and I think the software doesn't support ProRes Raw. I can use Premiere or Final Cut Pro though. 

I would like to shoot 4K (UHD) 50P so I will be renting an Atomos Shogun Inferno anyway. I want to crop in (perhaps quite heavily) during the interview and shoot some slow motion for b rolls.

Is ProRes 422 enough for these applications, or is ProRaw going to give me an edge in terms of image quality and grading headroom? 

Thank you. 

 

[Geoff CB]

9 minutes ago, aaa123jc said:

I will be filming a very short (only a few minutes) documentary next week. And this is actually my first time shooting a documentary. 

Since I now own a Sony FS5, I am thinking should I shoot raw for this project? I had never considered using raw before for my event works, but it seems like this project requires something more serious than especially the internal codec. Yet, I also believe you can't change settings like white balance and iso when using ProRes Raw, so I don't really see the point of shooting raw except for the 12bit color. 

Normally, I edit and color grade with DaVinci Resolve and I think the software doesn't support ProRes Raw. I can use Premiere or Final Cut Pro though. 

I would like to shoot 4K (UHD) 50P so I will be renting an Atomos Shogun Inferno anyway. I want to crop in (perhaps quite heavily) during the interview and shoot some slow motion for b rolls.

Is ProRes 422 enough for these applications, or is ProRaw going to give me an edge in terms of image quality and grading headroom? 

Thank you. 

 

Is your client asking for 4K high bit depth delivery?

If not I would NOT ad the variables of the external recorder and RAW that you've never shot with on top of you shooting for the day.  If you do go that route give yourself 2 days to get used to the setup and editing it before shooting. 

[aaa123jc]

3 minutes ago, Geoff CB said:

Is your client asking for 4K high bit depth delivery?

If not I would NOT ad the variables of the external recorder and RAW that you've never shot with on top of you shooting for the day.  If you do go that route give yourself 2 days to get used to the setup and editing it before shooting. 

Thanks for the advice.

No, no need for 4K delivery and the client will just put the video on YouTube. I just think shooting 4K can give me more flexibility in post, such as cropping and reframing. 

I have many experiences using external recorders but never shoot ProRes Raw before, so I am a little bit hesitant to change my workflow.

But yeah, I will definitely give myself a day or two to get used to the setup and especially the editing process. 

[herein2020]

39 minutes ago, aaa123jc said:

Thanks for the advice.

No, no need for 4K delivery and the client will just put the video on YouTube. I just think shooting 4K can give me more flexibility in post, such as cropping and reframing. 

I have many experiences using external recorders but never shoot ProRes Raw before, so I am a little bit hesitant to change my workflow.

But yeah, I will definitely give myself a day or two to get used to the setup and especially the editing process. 

I have the C200 and it will do Canon RAW but I have shot everything from music videos to commercial work and never used the RAW capabilities. I do shoot literally everything in 4K because it gives you crop and recomposition options in post but I wouldn't recommend shooting RAW if you have never used that codec and it does sound like overkill for YouTube.  Two things I would not recommend doing for the first time on a paid shoot is using a gamma curve and a codec you have never used before.  I don't know what other codecs the FS5 offers but I can tell you that the 4:2:0 8 bit out of my C200 has been more than enough for everything I throw at it. For my workflow though I am very careful to get the WB correct in camera and control the highlights because it will fall apart in post if I got either of those wrong.

If you have never shot 4K I would definitely test that as well ahead of time mainly due to the data rates. Many SD cards can handle 1080P with no problem, but some cards can't handle the 4K data rates. Also, just  a personal thing, but I have never used an external recorder, to me its just more gear that can break, batteries can die, and that can be misconfigured.

[aaa123jc]

11 minutes ago, herein2020 said:

I have the C200 and it will do Canon RAW but I have shot everything from music videos to commercial work and never used the RAW capabilities. I do shoot literally everything in 4K because it gives you crop and recomposition options in post but I wouldn't recommend shooting RAW if you have never used that codec and it does sound like overkill for YouTube.  Two things I would not recommend doing for the first time on a paid shoot is using a gamma curve and a codec you have never used before.  I don't know what other codecs the FS5 offers but I can tell you that the 4:2:0 8 bit out of my C200 has been more than enough for everything I throw at it. For my workflow though I am very careful to get the WB correct in camera and control the highlights because it will fall apart in post if I got either of those wrong.

If you have never shot 4K I would definitely test that as well ahead of time mainly due to the data rates. Many SD cards can handle 1080P with no problem, but some cards can't handle the 4K data rates. Also, just  a personal thing, but I have never used an external recorder, to me its just more gear that can break, batteries can die, and that can be misconfigured.

Thank you.

After reading your comment, I feel like maybe I was thinking too much.

I still don't know why I worry about this shoot so much. It's not like it is my first paid job ever. I have been doing event videography for three years now. Maybe I just don't feel like I am a filmmaker because I have never done any narrative film or documentary. I just know how to expose and get shots that are useable, and make the "story" in editing. And having to be a proper filmmaker and plan for a short documentary for the first time makes me kind of nervous. 

I don't know. Maybe I should just shoot 4K internally. 8bit 420 has never been a problem for me anyway. I mainly shoot in S-Log2 so there is banding and compression artifacts here and there, but I guess YouTube compression is going to butcher the video regardless 😆. Or just ditch the thought of trying ProRes Raw and shoot ProRes 422 like I always do when I have to record externally. 

[mrtreve]

I would 100% just go with prores 422 for a doc destined for Youtube.

Most of the time when you record raw you get increased noise (as it bypasses some of the camera's processing like NR). In a doc situation with less than ideal lighting you could really be making more work for yourself in terms of having to de-noise everything.

Also slightly on a tangent - will a Ninja V work with your camera? Or do you need the Inferno to take the raw output? I think the Inferno is a bit large & heavy for a doc where it helps to be discreet. Also they chew through batteries which could be stressful in situations where you have to keep rolling.

I would definitely still try out Prores raw, but on something more controlled!

 

[aaa123jc]

12 minutes ago, mrtreve said:

I would 100% just go with prores 422 for a doc destined for Youtube.

Most of the time when you record raw you get increased noise (as it bypasses some of the camera's processing like NR). In a doc situation with less than ideal lighting you could really be making more work for yourself in terms of having to de-noise everything.

Also slightly on a tangent - will a Ninja V work with your camera? Or do you need the Inferno to take the raw output? I think the Inferno is a bit large & heavy for a doc where it helps to be discreet. Also they chew through batteries which could be stressful in situations where you have to keep rolling.

I would definitely still try out Prores raw, but on something more controlled!

 

I think I need the shogun inferno to get the full function. The FS5 only output raw through SDI and the SDI module of Ninja V doesn't support raw. From my understanding, I have to choose the raw output option on the FS5 and the inferno will decode the raw signal and give me ProRes. I could be wrong though. And yeah, the inferno is very big and bulky, so it's probably less fun. 

Thank you for the advice. 

[mrtreve]

8 minutes ago, aaa123jc said:

I think I need the shogun inferno to get the full function. The FS5 only output raw through SDI and the SDI module of Ninja V doesn't support raw. From my understanding, I have to choose the raw output option on the FS5 and the inferno will decode the raw signal and give me ProRes. I could be wrong though. And yeah, the inferno is very big and bulky, so it's probably less fun. 

Thank you for the advice. 

Ah yes, that makes sense. It's one of those things where being more mobile might make for a better looking end result over the bump in absolute image quality.

I've absolutely over-rigged cameras in the past and in a doc situation the first thing you end up doing is take all the extra stuff off again ha.

[kye]

I've been doing various tests of image quality (Prores vs h264/h265) and also YouTube quality, and i'm thinking my next test will be if YT at 4K is good enough quality to tell the difference between a 4K acquisition / 4K upload and a 2K acquisition / 4K upscaled upload.

The reason I mention this is that you're wondering if 4K 420 8-bit would be "good enough" for YT, whereas I think there's a chance that even 2K 422 might be "better" than 4K YT.

My experience is that the difference between a great 4K master and a barely passable 4K master is basically invisible once YT compression has done its thing and brutally crunched the image.

[aaa123jc]

On 8/22/2020 at 4:40 AM, mrtreve said:

Ah yes, that makes sense. It's one of those things where being more mobile might make for a better looking end result over the bump in absolute image quality.

I've absolutely over-rigged cameras in the past and in a doc situation the first thing you end up doing is take all the extra stuff off again ha.

Yeah, I usually prefer a smaller rig because I like to handheld a lot. A heavy camera is great for handheld, but too heavy, not so much. 😆

21 hours ago, kye said:

I've been doing various tests of image quality (Prores vs h264/h265) and also YouTube quality, and i'm thinking my next test will be if YT at 4K is good enough quality to tell the difference between a 4K acquisition / 4K upload and a 2K acquisition / 4K upscaled upload.

The reason I mention this is that you're wondering if 4K 420 8-bit would be "good enough" for YT, whereas I think there's a chance that even 2K 422 might be "better" than 4K YT.

My experience is that the difference between a great 4K master and a barely passable 4K master is basically invisible once YT compression has done its thing and brutally crunched the image.

Thanks. 

I think I will just export H264 to YouTube because the compression is quite bad. I never thought of uploading 4K upscaled though. I believe the YouTube compression for 1080P and 2K or 4K is different. This is something I can't understand. Like why not just have one standard.

My question though, is more like should I shoot 4K 422 10bit (ProRes 422) or 12bit ProRes Raw. English is not my native language so I may not be elaborated as I hoped. 

[MicahMahaffey]

I've done everything from music videos, documentaries to short films. 

I've worked on features as well. 

Only used raw once, that was purely because I thought it was necessary but it turned out it wasnt. The workflow was not worth the hassle at the time. 

8 bit 4k/1080 is still probably good for 90% of content creation needs, buuut if you can swing a 10bit 422 4k codec then that should be 100% usable for any job. 

Raw is cool, but overkill for most things. 

[kye]

2 hours ago, aaa123jc said:

Yeah, I usually prefer a smaller rig because I like to handheld a lot. A heavy camera is great for handheld, but too heavy, not so much. 😆

Thanks. 

I think I will just export H264 to YouTube because the compression is quite bad. I never thought of uploading 4K upscaled though. I believe the YouTube compression for 1080P and 2K or 4K is different. This is something I can't understand. Like why not just have one standard.

My question though, is more like should I shoot 4K 422 10bit (ProRes 422) or 12bit ProRes Raw. English is not my native language so I may not be elaborated as I hoped. 

It sounds like this is your workflow:

1. Shoot and record in either 4K Prores RAW or 4K Prores 422 or 4K 420
2. Edit / grade and export to 4K h264
3. Upload to YT

If so, I suggest you consider the bitrates involved.  4K YT is something like 30Mbps.  People suggest that you want to upload around 100-200Mbps h264 to YT to get the best results, but that any more than that is just wasting bandwidth.

So shooting 4K Prores 422 would mean shooting 471Mbps to export in 100-200Mbps for YT to stream in 30Mbps.  In this sense there's a pretty limited return on investment for shooting a higher quality acquisition format.

The other consideration is that 8-bit and LOG formats aren't a good combination, so I'd suggest you either shoot 10-bit 422 and LOG, or shoot 8-bit and a more rec709 profile.

Here's a reference for codecs and bitrates / bit depths / etc: https://blog.frame.io/2017/02/13/50-intermediate-codecs-compared/
and here's the thread where the YT quality and bitrates was tested: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=85016