ProRes support in a Red camera ?

[Damien Molineaux]

I stumbled upon an article in a French magazine covering the film industry. It was about NAB and mentioned Panasonic, Red and Sony had announced the support of Apple's new ProRes codec in some of their cameras. They may have misunderstood, however it got me thinking about the recently annonced Red mini. Imagine a Red designed HD camera, recording directly to ProRes...

I like the idea !

Cheers,
Damien

[Blair S. Paulsen]

ProRes 422 vs RedCode RAW. Which has better image quality per MB? I have assumed that RedCode was superior for acquisition but maybe I am just a Graeme fanboy. AFAIK no flavor of ProRes contains RAW image data so unless the files are much smaller why would I want to be stuck in 10bit 4:4:4?

Until someone can make a case citing facts beyond my knowledge I am going to assume that the strength of ProRes 422 is its potential as a distro standard due to the huge installed base of FCP(S) and as a good enough for TV post workflow alternative to uncompressed.

FWIW news items in the general press usually contain more mis-information about tech than viable facts, examples abound, YMMV.

[Brook Willard]

Blair, you'd be stuck in 10-bit 4:2:2! Not 4:4:4.

AFAIK.

[Graeme Nattress]

We Support a Pro-Res workflow, via transcode from REDCODE (RAW) to Pro Res via a special FCP import window. We don't do Pro Res in camera.

Graeme

[Damien Molineaux]

I'm in no doubt, Redcode Raw is superior to ProRes, but for an accelerated workflow, where your footage will go no further than a TV screen (or an HD projector), I would like for the Red mini to offer as an option a record directly to ProRes, verses RED RGB. I'm not saying I'd would like ProRes instead of Redcode, just as an additionnal option, it would make for a very versatile camera.

Cheers,
Damien

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I'm in no doubt, Redcode Raw is superior to ProRes, but for an accelerated workflow, where your footage will go no further than a TV screen (or an HD projector), I would like for the Red mini to offer as an option a record directly to ProRes, verses RED RGB. I'm not saying I'd would like ProRes instead of Redcode, just as an additionnal option, it would make for a very versatile camera.

Cheers,
Damien

Copy that. Easy integration with popular workflows may trump absolute image quality criteria in many projects. I wonder what the encoder overhead is for ProRes 422? Perhaps by the time the RedMini is out the processing power to do multiple pro level codecs in camera will be trivial.

[Chris Kenny]

Copy that. Easy integration with popular workflows may trump absolute image quality criteria in many projects. I wonder what the encoder overhead is for ProRes 422? Perhaps by the time the RedMini is out the processing power to do multiple pro level codecs in camera will be trivial.

ProRes almost certainly requires less processing power than REDCODE. Low overhead was a major design goal for ProRes (as it should have been for an editing codec), whereas I suspect Red focused more on maximum quality for a given data rate (as they should have for an acquisition codec).