{"id":206815,"date":"2025-09-26T15:33:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T13:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalproduction.com\/?p=206815"},"modified":"2025-12-09T12:36:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:36:12","slug":"prores-raw-resolve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalproduction.com\/2025\/09\/26\/prores-raw-resolve\/","title":{"rendered":"ProRes RAW News \u2013 Fresh from the Freezer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Very soon after making that big arctic wave<\/a> with DaVinci Resolve <\/a>(DR for short) version 20.2 supporting ProRes RAW, Blackmagic <\/a>(BM for short) has fixed some of the most annoying bugs with 20.2.1. Now we can truly explore ProRes RAW from an iPhone 17 and other sources. Clips from an iPhone <\/a>17 were kindly supplied by Kurt Friis Hansen from Denmark, who shot some tests with all three lenses, carefully framed and exposed. These are night shots, so we have very high contrast and low-light. We are of course very curious when it comes to noise from that small sensor, and the influence of compression and pre-filtering (if any). So his footage should be perfect to check these \u2013 but there was one hurdle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

System requirements for MacOS<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\"A<\/a>
Under Sonoma you will not get access to all RAW features.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

While DR is still running fine under MacOS Sonoma 14.8, you\u2019ll not get access to all the advanced adjustments you may expect from a true RAW format. There\u2019s simply no choice under the entry “Plugin” other than “Standard”, so you can only adjust exposure and white balance. After all, in many cases that may already be enough, if you don\u2019t decide to stick to the camera metadata anyway. The decoding from RAW should be set to HLG, as this is the iPhone\u2019s color space, at least it’s not labeled \u201enone\u201c anymore. But you’ll have the option of decoding into Apple Log or Log 2 (yes, a new, flatter version).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But where is the rest? Well, it was obviously up to Apple to care for that, since it all showed up on a machine with MacOS Sequoia 15.7 installed. Even the current versions of Apple’s Compressor (4.11) and Final Cut Pro (11.2) need Sequoia to receive the updates. Final Cut Pro, or FCP in short, BTW has lost the “X”, just like the new MacOS naming. On a system with those already present and with DR updated to 20.2.1 we had access to all the parameters you’d expect from a serious RAW format. Now, this system had already receiced Apple’s recent Pro Video Formats update<\/a> and was showing all new features right away. After receiving information from others, who were not as lucky, we needed to dig deeper.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"The<\/a>
Apple’s recent installer adds the ProRes RAW plugin for third-party software too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Problems upgrading projects<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To check things, we made a virgin installation of Sequoia 15.7, adding only Apple’s video codecs and DR. When trying to copy and open one of our existing projects, we were back to square one: no RAW parameters. We carefully went through many iterations of installing fresh systems, and combinations of DR installed first or after Apple’s codec pack. What worked in the end was starting a fresh project in DR, importing PRR clips and voil\u00e1 \u2013 all parameters availble! We got confirmation that it should work from Sequoia 15.6.1 upwards. But an existing project doesn’t show these when simply adding PRR clips, you need<\/em> <\/strong>an empty project and import some PRR footage first<\/strong><\/em>. After that, you can also import timelines from other projects. Having test clips shot open gate, we configured our project for DCI 4K at 25 fps and scaled full with crop<\/p>\n\n\n\n

True RAW, finally<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/a>
The options you’d expect from true RAW recordings.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now it’s all there, even if there’s a minor cosmetic error: as long as Demosaic is set to Standard you can’t really use the three sliders on top of the right side. They should be greyed out, since they only become workable after switching Demosaic to Custom, and they only work on clips from an iPhone 17. What’s more annoying: you still can’t define RAW presets for PRR under Camera RAW in the project settings, so you’ll need to change them one by one. At least, they get copied by using gallery stills. We found all information about those three sliders in the help files for FCP, but not yet in DR. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Color Noise will not increase it, but reduce \u2013 of course. The other two are doing pretty much what the name implies: enhance only edges, and\/or apply sharpening. As usual, use with discretion, and they can also slow down playback in high resolutions. On our very noisy test shots at night they are pretty useless, color noise didn’t do much and the other two look ugly, as you’d expect. There is another option in Compressor, which Apple seems to keep for themselves: ML Denoise (yes, machine learning) at three levels. It’s not even in FCP 11.2, but Compressor is not expensive, and we’ll do further testing.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"A<\/a>
The Denoiser in Compressor can’t be found elsewhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The hardware<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\"An
By Google Gemini<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

There’s not really much in the metadata, just the camera, its manufacturer, plus location and date of the shot. You don’t even see which lens was used in the metadata in DR or the shutter angle, even if the latter exists in the file. A bit depth of 16 for video seems slightly exaggerated, even Nikon is just claiming 12 bit for all three of the codecs offered in their new ZR. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Audio in the iPhone is limited to 16 bit and ProRes RAW internally to the standard version, HQ needs external recording. Some claim that you can trick it into using that, by setting up with an external SSD and then removing it. But do you really want such massive data inside the phone? Even if our noisy night shots may be at the upper limit, while ProRes RAW is quite variable, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n