Jahleh

After editing 5 days footage with NEV to R3D hack straight from the CFExpress, and with just NEV I still don’t know if Red’s IPP2 pipeline is better than how NRaw is handled in Resolve. Figured out why Red tone mapping and highlight roll of did not look better than NRaw. I have a power grade where one parallel node has +20 on shadows and -20 on light on HDR wheels, and it seems to do the same thing. Applied that power grade to Red timeline too and still it is not better, colors are duller, and if you have camera shake with IBIS accidentally off, you get severe rolling shutter, which is not seen in NRaw files. I do like the Red ISO control, and chroma NR though. Now if actual Zr colors are as good as in some of the latest videos, you can have two good, different looks from the Zr with R3D and NRaw. Not counting ProresRaw as it’s file sizes are even bigger and Raw controls worse than Red’s and Nikon’s.

Yes, you are right and I am well aware of Z8 data rates too. Still, with 6k25p it is not that much of data, but you loose the ability for slow mo if you happen to need that later on. Got the Z6iii primarily for it’s 6k50p and 4k100p and have used only those for almost everything, even in low light with ISOs up to 12800. With Zr I could maybe momentarily live with only 6k25p for occasional shots. For Z8 owners Zr data rates are no problem if they’ve got used to shoot and store 8.3k NRaw high. Wouldn’t get Zr just for h.265, a Z6iii or Z8 can do that too if needed.

In this case 1:2 starts to get quite heavy for the storage, might as well shoot 8k50p NRaw normal with Z8, but shooting 6k25p with R3D or APSC-C 4k50p are always options to have similar bitrates than with Z6iii. With S5ii h.265 I could store 2 or 3 year’s footage to 2TB SSD. Now with Z6iii NRaw I need 4TB per year, but maybe I’ve shot also more with Z6iii. The Red Raw needs to be something very special, and above Z6iii NRaw for me to double the storage space required😅

A quick example from yesterday. Shot about 43 minutes of 6k50p NRaw normal footage from tripod and it took about 500GB of storage. After trimming down NEV clips in Resolve and exporting only important parts they took only 50GB. With R3D NE it would have taken 1TB of storage and if trim and export do not work in Resolve it would be 1TB vs 100GB of storage needed to store those R3D NE files. Simply too much, if you multiply that for like 100 days or more in a year

Look at S1ii and it probably has baked in NR in h.265 even more than Nikons have. Was it in CVP’s review that Zr had a setting for NR in the menus. Hopefully it is there in the final software. Nothing to complain about Z6iii’s h.265 IQ so far though. The NEV to R3D hack can be used for quick edits straight from the CFExpress card, but as long as there is no working solutions to trim the files and save them as R3D I prefer the original NEV work flow and maybe Nikon colors too.

Pretty good summary. After shooting NRaw almost a year now with Z6iii I can relate to almost all of that. According to Gerald and Cinematools Z6iii FX 4k NRaw is line skipped but DX is pixel to pixel, which is the reason why in Cinematools’ Z8 vs Z6iii comparison the 4k120p with Z6iii looks better. The only extra step with NRaw IMHO is to use Resolve to trim the NRaw files and export important parts via Resolve’s Media management. If you do the Red Raw hack after export, Resolve won’t accept the renamed files. If you do the hack first, Resolve won’t export the trimmed R3D files. Have not tried Red CineX pro though. Hopefully it or some other method works with the Zr’s R3D NE Raw files.

Tried it myself after checking Sidney's video about NEV to R3D conversion, and out of curiosity copy pasted my NRaw project clips to project created with Red settings. The NEV to R3D clips look a bit like Nraw with RED LUTs and Nraw clips look the same than in usual project created for NRaw. Hopefully the ZR R3D colors look as nice as in many YT videos. With R3D you get chroma NR though and Red's ISO settings in Raw panel. Just wanted to get familiarised what editing R3D would mean to draw conclusion whether to try ZR as a 2nd cam or not. Here are the RED project settings. The magic being Output DRT set as RED IPP2 which unlocks Output tone map and Highlight roll off. Input colour space does not matter, and Timeline cooler space can be changed to DWG or something else.

It seems if you set Resolve color management like Sidney Baker-Green describes earlier on this page, duplicate your NRaw clips, rename the other as R3D, and take both to timeline, you get Red’s tone mapping and highlight rolloff controls to NRaw clips as well. They just work from Project settings to all clips at the timeline. As a bonus you have your regular NRaw raw controls as well.

It depends whether you like having presets to quickly set tonemapping and highlight rolloff in R3D or manually changing exposure, shadows and highlights in NRaw. R3D’s presets seem a bit limited compared to what you can do with Nraw’s -100% - 100% sliders. For example R3D with tonemapping low is too flat in the shadows and with hard has too much contrast. With medium and highlight rolloff set to very soft it can look ok, but if you overexpose just before clipping point while shooting highlights are too bright still with R3D. It can provide pleasing looking results too. ZR’s R3D 6k50p High is 3160 Mbps 23,7GB/min and Z8’s NRaw 8k50p Norm is only 2890Mbps 21,67GB/min. Kind of tempted to try ZR, buth with these data rates, double the NRaw Norm it is a no go, and even Z8 8k data rates would be more tolerable. At least you have more options to choose from now.

Didn’t the ZR have a setting for H.265 NR in the menus? Could it be be that on pre production models it is set to stonger setting than on other Z bodies. To my eye H.265 on Z6iii is good, better than S5ii’s 4:2:0. Thought about Z8 too, but according to Cinematools Z8’s 4k120p has worse quality than Z6iii’s in DX mode, and I find the ability to crop 1.5x quite handy. Z8’s 4k 2.3x would need changing some of my lenses to wider ones. Played more with NEV to R3D trick, and still prefer Nikon colours and Raw controls to Red. In addition R3D Media management in Resolve does not work, it does not export trimmed clips. If you trim the NEV clips and export, NEV to R3D trick does not work any more. Usually fill a 2TB card in one day, so working trim is a must to save only the important parts. Tried ProresRaw too and file sizes are just huge and Raw controls not so good. With NRaw I can color correct basicly from the Raw panel quickly.

After playing more with NEV to R3D converted Z6iii clips I prefer the Resolve’s NRaw Camera Raw panel controls, especially for adjusting WB, exposure, highlights and shadows. In Red Raw panel your options are a bit more limited. Chroma NR tab is nice and could be the reason why ZR DR is said to be better, at least it cleans the raised shadows a bit without touching Resolve’s other NR controls. Tried also to shoot from the hip by using Z6iii’s LCD to mimick shooting with ZR. Hard to imagine how big a difference a 4 inch screen could make compared to 3.2. I guess I am just an EVF shooter, as on my first Canon 550D back in 2010 I had EVF loupe attached,which magnified the LCD 2x and gave additional contact point. But it’s nice Nikon users have now more options to choose from.

Really funny indeed, it seems with long takes the only way to trim and save only important parts of footage is through Resolve’s Media management. Tried to rename clips to R3D first in CFExpress, but exporting trimmed parts from Resolve did not work. Compared one old clip and other than R3D’s chroma NR there was not much difference to NEV. Have to test this more with clips that are saved straight from card as NEV.

Except it does not work if you import the NRaw clips from CFExpress to Resolve timeline, cut and export the parts you want to save via Media Management and then rename .NEV to R3D in Finder. it only works if you copy the clips straight from CFExpress to some Finder folder, then rename them, and after that import them to Resolve. It seems Resolve media management is doing something while exporting the .NEV files.

This seems to work both in NRaw High and normal, when renaming .NEV to .R3D in finder and then importing files to Resolve.

Yes, the IQ you get from Lumix 200Mpbs and 300Mbps H.265 files is quite good. Z6iii H.265 is 400Mbps, and IQ a bit better than what S5ii had. Tried also ProresRawHQ on GH7 and Z6iii and the data rates are even bigger than NRaw High. With 2TB CFExpress card Z6iii gives this estimate for 6k25p record times: NRaw High 171min 1559Mbps NRaw Norm 336min 794 Mbps ProressRawHQ. 65min 4102 Mbps 4k25p ProressHQ 316min 844 Mbps 6k50p NRaw Norm 168min 1587 Mbps 4TB USB C SSD is quite cheap nowadays, but scrubbing in Resolve is not as smooth than with TB4 Nvmes.

For this same reason I am hesitating to get the ZR, and because the 4 inch screen does not magnify what you are shooting like Z6iii’s EVF. I’ve had Z6iii now almost a year, shot mostly 6k50p and 4k100p NRaw normal with it, and I’ve got about 4TB of footage. With NRaw high and ZR REDraw that would be 8TB🤪 With Panny’s h.265 it would be only around 600GB. Shooting Raw is not cheap.

Sure, over exposing works much better on Z6iii than it did on S5ii. If S1ii’s praise is partly due to baked in NR and over sharpening, then it has the same IQ problems than S5ii has. Thanks! With FW 2.0 view assist exposure looks now the same with NLog than in photo mode, and not over exposed any more😀

To me CineD’s latitude tests seem a bit over the top, as the last 4 and 5 stops under with heavy NR look many times quite bad already. With Z6iii ETTR is the key, it’s IQ and highlight roll off looks way better than with S5ii when you pull down exposure in post. Sure S1ii DR looks a bit better than Z6iii in paper, but for that you need to use always Prores Raw, which is more Gbps than N-Raw High and over double than N-Raw Normal. Just funny, to get S5 and S1H IQ without baked in NR and sharpening out of newest Pannys the data rate is 13-20x more than what it used to be with old H.265. At least you have options. Hope this ZR fixes Z6iii’s view assist, or adds option to load own view LUTs into camera.

Being happy in whatever camp is important. With Nikon and it’s lens options it can get expensive and out of hands quickly😆 Got 135 f1.8 Plena in the Spring, to prevent any ideas of changing back to Panny or Canon. The Z6iii firmware was also updated at the same time, and need of NR in low light was gone, as was the flickering. Not sure Panny has something like the Plena. Shooting with that is a pleasure always, and it takes good photos too. Found also a used 400mm f4.5 before the price hike, and now I am quite firmly in the Nikon camp. Been shooting all year mostly N-Raw, to see how much space it takes. Editing N-Raw is quite easy now with M3 max 128GB and 3x4TB Nvme’s. No complaints about the DR and just happy about the results IQ wise. Hope the ZR is not too big step up from Z6iii, as this shift to Nikon has cost some already😂

According to CineD S1ii seems to have quite heavy NR baked in, unless you shoot Prores Raw and edit in Final Cut. As seen from those same charts, from ISO 800 to 6400, where NLog is shot, S1ii has DR of 12.6 to 10 with NR, and Z6iii DR of 12.3 to 9.6, without NR and with faster read out speeds, and with 6k60p Raw. I would like to be back in Panny camp too, but with current offerings and lens line up no thanks.

If Prores Raw HQ at it’s highest bitrate on S1II is 4200Mbps and Panny H.265 is 200-300Mbps Prores Raw takes about 21-14x more space to get rid of the NR. 6k50p N-Raw normal takes only 7,8-5,2x more space and still your SDDs can feel it. 1,5TB of N-Raw footage would be only 192-288GB in H.265.

Thank you for the info! It seems Prores Raw is whopping 4200Mbps so it’s about 2.69x more than 6k50p N-Raw Normal on Z6iii. No thanks, my SSD’s can’t take it and Final Cut is not good as Resolve for me. It seems Cined tested those for S1II: ”with DR Boost OFF in 4K ProRes RAW 25p, we get 11.5 stops at a signal-to-noise ratio of 2 (SNR), and 12.8 stops at SNR = 1. With DR Boost ON, we now get a superb 13.1 stops at SNR = 2 and 14.3 stops at SNR = 1” For the Z6iii 6k24p NRaw on 6k timeline Gerald got 9.89 stops and on 4k timeline 10.6 stops and with some NR 12.5 stops at SNR = 2.

I will wait too. The S1ii extra DR sounds nice, but not at the expence of overly sharp details with too much baked in NR. If the PRRaw is the only option to get rid of this with S1ii, Z6iii and N-Raw is the better option, as it works with Resolve and file sizes are less than half of PRRaw. After Z6iii got the latest 1.10 firmware update, there’s not much to complain about the Z6iii IQ in shadows, no need to use NR any more, unless you need to lift shadows over 1 or 2 stops. Could be the 135mm 1.8 Plena is doing it’s magic too in low light. After 2.5 months shooting only N-Raw with normal quality I’ve got 1.5TB of footage. With PRRaw that would be over 3TB, and with H.265 only around 300GB🤪

Been using this a bit already and you can drop decode quality in Raw tab from Full to half or quarter. The viewer quality is then quite bad, but works enough for being able to sync audio. Caching or exporting to Prores422HQ also helps with Magic masks. I had just almost forgotten how easy H.265 4:2:0 is for M chips. But S1Rii 8.1k and 6.4k being only max 30p using speed warp in Resolve is at least as heavy as NR.

S5ii had improvements over orig S5, but lower level of details with oversharpening was annoying, even with 6k VLog and also with a LUT burnt in. It was especially noticeable on extracted stills when viewed from a big screen. If you check Connor McCaskill’s latest S1Rii Youtube clip, he has a download link to his footage. Had a play on resolve, and damn, S1Rii IQ looks definitely better and different than what came from S5ii sensor. Grades pretty effortlessly too. The only downside with Z6iii NRaw along the big file sizes is the NR. Don’t know if the full M4 Max chip is enough to play the timeline in real time with NR, and it is expensive. Have a PC with 5800x CPU and RTX 3080 GPU too and editing is more stuttery with it than with M3 Pro Macbook. The latest Nvidia 5xxx GPUs have 4:2:2 support now, but they are not cheap either, and I prefer the ease of using macOS. A new camera usually means you need to get a new computer for editing too, but with S1Rii that does not seem to be the case. Even M1 Pro would be fine