Another day, another reason to love ProRes RAW

I saw some interesting clouds forming around sunset the other day, and thought it might be interesting to shoot a quickie timelapse. But then I considered the post-production slog required to deal with the raw files from my Canon 5dmkiii. Um, no. My Sony FS5 can shoot timelapses, but what’s the point of shooting a timelapse without raw? Then I thought, wait a minute, you haven’t yet tried shooting a timelapse with ProRes RAW.

So I popped on my Atomos Shogun Inferno, opened the timelapse menu, selected 1 frame every second, hit record, and opened a beer.

After the sun went down, I opened the 4k file on my MacBook Pro. It played back without dropping a frame as I skimmed through the file and assembled an edit. To grade it, I simply applied the excellent Venice-look LUT made by Alister Chapman. Then I made a couple of saturation and hue tweaks in the killer new FCPX hue/saturation curves. Fifteen minutes of work later, I was posting the results to Instagram.

An aside: Alister’s Venice LUT is the perfect LUT for shoot ProRes RAW with Sony FS5 and Shogun. That’s because it’s got multiple versions perfectly matched across both SLOG2 and SLOG3. Having both is essential for shooting with Sony FS5 (which monitors as SLOG2) and editing in FCPX (which opens as SLOG3). Using the appropriate LUT means you’re seeing the same thing in both places. You can download his LUT pack free, but please do tip him – for the price of a beer you can acknowledge the years of experience that Alister has put into creating those precision LUTs.

ProRes Raw is the real deal. Not just because it looks great (it does), but because it’s so easy to work with in post. If you had told me 6 months ago that I’d be editing 4K RAW files in real time on a 5-year-old MacBook Pro, I wouldn’t have believed you.

ProRes RAW is the reason why acquiring in 4K suddenly makes a whole lot of sense to me.

A side benefit: I typically would need to deflicker when shooting a timelapse on a DSLR. But there’s absolutely no deflickering needed when shooting with the Shogun’s timelapse mode.

Technical details:

Are you shooting with ProRes Raw yet? Got any tips for me?

 

 

16 thoughts on “Another day, another reason to love ProRes RAW

  1. Steve Lumpkin

    Dan…you are one of the few people out here (save Alister The Man Chapman) writing about this new game changer for the FS5…I am testing it all in July…you mentioned the Inferno TL settings – – so you did not use the FS5 one frame per sec in Quick/Slow? or do you need to set Q&S and set an inferno setting…in my work in Botswana we use the FS5 TL for ease in post…thanks for all you do…cheers…Steve

    Reply
    1. Dan McComb Post author

      Hi Steve,
      When you use the Shogun to capture a timelapse, you are completely bypassing the cameras S&Q settings. What’s happening is that the Shogun just grabs a frame from the datastream that the camera is constantly sending to it. You would only need to mess with S&Q if you wanted to record the timelapse to your SD card. You still need to set your shutter speed to 180 degrees, though, if you want to maintain cinematic motion during your timelapse. So in the case of a 1-frame per second timelapse, you’d need to set your shutter speed to a half second, and probably dial up a lot of ND filtration to deal with that extra slow shutter speed.

      Reply
      1. Steve Lumpkin

        once again you are the man…testing it all this weekend…really appreciate you…and those A. Chapman Venice LUTs are killer – – bought him more than a beer! best…

        Reply
  2. chris

    Oh, I hadn’t thought of that! Just upgraded my shogun to an inferno and thought I would stop by here for some tips and this gem was here. thanks. Same question as Steve though – what are the settings on the FS5?

    Reply
  3. Osman

    Hi Dan,
    I have the same camera monitor setup. I also have the Venice Luts. I was using adobe premiere pro cc and DaVinci Resolve until my iMac was screwed up a few weeks ago in the middle of a wedding project. That’s whole another story as I’ve spent 3 weeks to fix the issue and finally today i was able to export the video from FCP X I purchased 3 days ago. Because of the Apple/NVidia problem I think I will stick with FCP X for a while. Actually I’m starting to like it to be honest. I haven’t used it since my film school days but it’s pretty easy to learn. I should get to my main question.
    I have shot a sample clip in my living room to see and test the workflow when editing FS5 Prores RAW footage. I used to shoot cinema DNG but Prores RAW looks much more efficient. I will see I guess. So far I am having problem I believe because of the settings. I had my daughter sit at the couch and read her mother goose book 🙂 and got a few shots. I’ve set the FS5 to RAW output slog2 and set the Atamos matching to FS5. I overexposed 2 stops. Whatever I did in FCP X I wasn’t able to get clean good image. It just doesn’t look right. Even after applying Venice Luts I wasn’t able to get a normal looking image. I wonder when and what part of FCP X you add the Venice Luts. I assume on the info section we put it right after raw to log selection which says camera lut. That’s where I add the Venice Luts. I tried both slog 2 and slog3 Luts and results are not good. I know it’s because of me but I don’t know where I make the mistake. In my case which lut I should’ve chosen? Slog2 or slog 3. It’s so confusing. I know it’s a long comment and I apologize for that. I hope you can help me to figure out what I’m doing wrong. Thank you

    Reply
    1. Dan McComb Post author

      Hi Osman,
      When you say it doesn’t look right, can you be more specific? Is it overexposed? Underexposed? Too contrasty, or not enough contrast?

      The Camera LUT is added in FCPX under the General settings, right below where you select the camera option. In FCPX, you have only two options, both SLOG 3. So you will need to use a SLOG 3 LUT.

      This can be confusing, because you set output to SLOG2 on your FS5 and Atomos (if you’re using a LUT to preview on the Atomos). But keep in mind, you are not actually recording SLOG 2 – you are recording ProRes RAW. You are only selecting that because that’s the only option you have with Atomos and FS5 – you can select something else, but it won’t give it to you – it just sends a raw signal and that is interpreted as SLOG 2 for viewing purposes. So in FCPX, then, you can select any of the options available to you in FCPX without any problem, as long as you use a matching Camera LUT.

      If you have selected an SLOG2 LUT, it won’t look quite right. Give that a shot and let me know how it works out.

      Reply
  4. David Stewart

    Dan I’m trying to shoot ProResRaw Time Lapses with my Atomos Shogun for the first time but when I stop the recording I do not see a file on my SSD. Am I missing a step?

    David in Inuvik

    Reply
  5. David Stewart

    Never mind Dan I just realized I had the ‘Schedule Start’ button activated (gotcha!)

    That was frustrating.

    Reply
  6. Andrew

    Is there a way to take a folder of RAW stills from a timelapse shoot and convert them into a ProRes RAW video in post? I ask because I’m trying to troublshoot an HDR (10-bit video in HDR10/HLG, not exposure merging stills into an 8-bit jpeg) workflow for timelapses and I keep hitting a dead end.

    Reply

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