Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Blackmagic has released a new firmware for the Pocket Camera. It adds lossless CinemaDNG Raw. I'm downloading as I type this.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

I'm surprised there is not more response...

Personally, I am pretty happy with the upgrade. My 64 GB 80 mb/sec cards seem to be holding up to the codec so far, but I have not shot more than about a minute of footage at a time. I really like the editing options though - the raw footage is so much easier to work with than the ProRes 422. Hoping to do some more testing over the next couple of days, and if all works well, I will shoot a band with raw on Friday :)

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Yeah, was very happy when Adobe added support for raw footage inside premiere. Now I don't have to create proxies to edit.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Found this.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

And this:

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

It's still an 8 bit world :)

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

With strange color moire :(

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Everybody is busy shooting in their living room trying to get a video up with the title "first" or "prores vs raw" or "test" :) In my Vimeo account I am following some channels from the pocket cam and the panasonic gh3, I"m still waiting for a video that will blow my socks of with the pocket cam while I have seen plenty from an 8 bit gh3 camera that made me say "wow". Lets see if the raw implementation will make a change.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Don't hold your breath. It's a bald man trying to find a comb! Still a pig of a device to work with, for me that is. Nice image both ProRes and RAW (I downloaded the new firmware and shot a few clips outdoors) but nothing to write home about. It’s back in its box, for now.

To be fair I have no doubt there are folks who will thoroughly enjoy working with RAW in DaVinci Resolve with that in itself being the reward. Good for them I say and far be it from me to poo poo their desire. For me being out and about shooting is where the action is and the rewards of working in post are much lessor. I'm happy to let the on-board processor do the bulk of the grunt and just fine-tune at the keyboard.

To each their own.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Well, actually I have seen some pocketcam videos that looked really good, not jaw dropping good like I have seen from it's larger brother but good, only percentagewise what's being posted it's just a realy small part that looks good and a very large part that sometimes looks worse then what my 550d would produce. I think with "raw" we"ll see even more footage that's as flat as a pancake due to lack of any colour, it's all hidden in there but seems so hard to get out. I still would like to use one for a day, and if possible shoot in raw to see what I could do with it.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

I think this video begins to show the capabilities of the BMPC in RAW (not mine):


These shots show the dynamic range, resolution, and have (gasp!) color.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

I'm not sure what qualifies for jaw dropping footage. I've seen a pretty good short that was shot on the BMPCC, but certainly nothing posted so far in this thread qualifies as jaw dropping.

In my experience, nice images are the result of lighting - that was why Francis Ford Coppola stated that the footage from the GH2 was so film-like in the second Zacuto shootout. Yeah, it's a camera capable of producing nice images, but the team that shot with that camera knew what they were up against, and consequently put a lot of effort into lighting to get the best results. Each team chose the lighting for their shoot - so in some regards, it was not a fair comparison of the cameras - rather, it was a fair test of how well each team knew their camera, and could light the set accordingly.

Anyway - the impressive footage will come. It's a tricky little beast - there is no in-camera processing to control blown highlights or boost midtones. Blacks are not crushed, you get no options for contrast or saturation, and the camera makes no adjustments for you. That is not necessarily a good thing - I am very capable of screwing up shots, even with a camera that is more forgiving :) My first attempt is mediocre at best - this is not the camera for shooting bands in a poorly lit barroom. I still see potential though - it's just going to take more effort on my part to get the most of the camera.

Heh - I started posting this just before Mark's post - that is actually quite a bit better than the other footage in this thread :)

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Yes, I too have seen nice footage, some of my recent shoots included (he modestly said), but it takes a lot to drop my jaw these days. I don’t find it ‘hard’ to get the colour out, just a bit tedious. The ‘flat as a pancake’ thing is not so much the camera, and not even the camera operator, but rather the person at the keyboard doing the post work. Not everyone is a capable colorist, me included, and to do justice to the footage delivered by the Pocket, and its bigger brother, one needs some skills in that department, and time, lots of time to really get it better than perfect. In my opinion it obeys the law of diminishing returns; the last infinitesimal improvement take a disproportional amount of effort to secure.

However, to repeat myself I find the image nice to very nice, ProRes and RAW, and perhaps RAW is slightly nicer. And when an inexpensive EVF arrives on the scene, as it likely shall, converting a pig into almost a little gem then I might pull it out of the closet, yet again.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

I agree that most of the posted BMPC videos from Pro Res have been downright embarrassing. But I don't agree that now with RAW getting the color out is harder. In fact, I think the problem is in the Pro Res log stuff. Getting color out of RAW dngs is completely different, and should be the same as getting color out of any RAW file still file, which many people have been doing for years; this is exactly the same.

I have experience with Canon EOS M RAW still and video files (Magic Lantern) using Lightroom to pull out the color, and the results are fine (accurate to real life), just like processing the still RAWs. I could not for the life of me, however, get the original BMPC Pro Res files I downloaded to give me colors that resembled anything on this earth (using Vegas Pro).

I will be trying out the BMPC exclusively using RAW.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Ha - I just watched the one that Bill posted - that was very good too! I'm partial though - I've only been to Detroit once, and spent a week in that part of town on business. Had a blast despite all the warnings I received about going to Detroit :)

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

OT, Bill I am very close tp you in DC area. Can you PM me on here. I tried to PM you but I do not see how to do it here. I have some questions about your Detroit video and also about possibly seeing a quick demo of the Pocket to see its low light shooting.

Thank you,
Alex

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Hi Mark - I haven't been able to save the files due to a computer glitch, but I finally figured out how to correct BMPC ProRes log color with Vegas Platinum 12.

This video, although it was intended for gamers, was key for me:


Hopefully, the interface for Vegas Pro is close enough that this is helpful to you too.

Best,

Bill

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

I'd say anything he has made so far: https://vimeo.com/andrewjulian Haven't seen anything close from the pocketcam so far.

Based on what I have seen it "seems" hard to get the colour out, not saying you can't get nice colour out, you can but it's not with a press of a button, there seems to be a very steep learning curve many users simply don't master, I also think many expect that the camera will give them instant cinema quality images but it doesn't, not if you don't know how to handle it, that's why I"m curious how much the raw implementation will change that. If now suddenly many will be able to produce gorgeous looking footage it means it's a lot easier to get good results and then I might be of to the store to get one myself :)

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

While I do indeed like some of Andrew Julian’s colouring I also find some, quite a lot actually, overdone and aesthetically displeasing, remembering of course that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; gorgeous looking footage to you might be hideous rubbish to me, and vice versa.

What on earth is ‘instant cinema quality’ or just ‘cinema quality’ for that matter? The thing about RAW is you can get whatever your imagination can come up with, more or less, if you really know what you are doing as a colorist, and that is perhaps not so readily accomplished with say footage off your GH3 that is not RAW. But as others have mentioned the so-called filmic, cinematic look, whatever that might be, is not just the camera no matter what Blackmagic might imply.

Go get yourself a Pocket and play around. If you don’t like it sell it. So what if you lose a couple of dollars, you can afford it. Go on; just do it – and besides, Blackmagic needs the sales :-).

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Yes, his footage looked over the top and it didn't look natural but it looked like how I would dream it :) Just the fact he was able to pull out such saturated beautiful colors says a lot about the power of "raw", if you are able to dig that deep. Many others have tried and just scratched the surface.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

I think that's the biggest advantage to raw. Since pretty much everything needs to be color corrected you can re-create what your memories of a place look like.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Nightmare is how I would describe such a dream :-) There is no place on this planet that looks like some of the color 'corrected' footage I have viewed. And that's fine, whatever turns your crank.

To get garish super-saturated colours you don't need RAW. With down and dirty AVCHD files off my little pocket Sony HX20v (it really does fit in my pocket) on the Vegas Pro timeline I hit the saturation button and if you viewed the result your socks would be a gonna in a flash. You don't need RAW and certainly not the BMPCC to achieve that outcome. I just did a test; it worked horribly well.

And I should add that Andrew Julian's 'Drive Through Snow Canyon with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera' did impress me a lot however I imagine the landscapes there are quite colourful and spectacular to begin with. But realistic...maybe, maybe a bit overdone.

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Just cranking up the saturation doesn't do it for me unfortunately on my 8 bit camera and if you can show me some HX20v footage that would look like his "meet me in big sur" video I"d believe you but I know that is wishful thinking :)

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

I am not about to head off to that part of the world just to show you it can be done but I do have both the BMPCC and the HX20v (plus a number of other cameras). I have run a few simple tests shooting various subject matter, outdoors only though, with the BMPCC (ProRes and now RAW), the HX20v and the EX1 side by side on tripods. I can get garish with all of the above. I'm not saying the footage is 'equal' across the three cameras, it is not, but super-saturated is easy.

My approach these days is not so much camera centric as me-and-what-I'm-doing centric. So as I head off to shoot a memorable occasion, like yesterday when the Young Endeavour, that wonderful Oz project, paid a visit to Picton for a couple of hours I was up at the lookout as she sailed into the Sound then down wharfside visiting with the 'crew' and to shoot her departure along with all the nervous excitement of her young crew as they blissfully ignorant faced a week of slogging it across the often ferocious Tasman sea. The BMPCC (RAW and ProRes) remained at home. It didn't fit with what I was doing.

And the nice footage I did capture will not be hit mercilessly with the saturate button :-)

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

Hi Alex - sadly (or not so sadly), I moved to California a couple of years ago and haven't updated my location on dvinfo yet :(

Sorry - I'll fix it.

As for the Detroit video, I wish I could claim it, but Ron Stratton shot it. If you click on his name, you should be able to message him on Vimeo.

Good luck!

Bill
Hybrid Camera Revolution

Re: Raw has arrived for Pocket Cam
 

I forgot you told me that before about moving to CA. :-) Thanks for the Ron Stratton info. I was born in Detroit and lived there in the burbs for fifty years.