Prores is irrelevant, and also spectacular!

[kye]

Cameras are starting to get Prores, and opinions range from "prores is irrelevant" and "prores is old" to "this is the best thing ever!".  

So which is right?  Actually, both.

Why Prores is irrelevant...

Prores isn't better quality than h264 or h265.

Here's a test I did.  I took an 8K RAW clip from RED Helium and put it on a 4K timeline and exported it as uncompressed from Resolve, then took that 4K uncompressed and using FFmpeg (which is much better than Resolves export quality) and created 4K versions of the clip in Prores HQ, 10-bit h264 IPB, 10-bit h264 ALL-I, 10-bit h265 IPB, 10-bit h265 ALL-I, all matching the same bitrates.

The results were that all the h264/5 files and the ProresHQ looked basically identical to the original - even at 300% magnification.  

Here's the original 8K RAW on 4K timeline (at 300%):

and here's one of the h26x files (remember they all look the same):

So, 10-bit h26x is as good as Prores HQ - case closed right?  No.  To be technically correct, the statement is "10-bit h26x is as good a codec as Prores HQ at the same bitrate".

Why Prores is spectacular...

The bitrate of Prores HQ in 4K is just over 700Mbps.  Not a lot of cameras with that bitrate option!!  Most are more like 100Mbps.  Well, here's what that looks like:

Ummm....  where did the detail go?

Prores benefit number one...  guaranteed high bitrates.  

But that's using FFmpeg to take as much processing time as it likes, what about when it's being done in-camera?

Well, using FFmpeg to convert a 1080p uncompressed reference file to Prores HQ happened at 53fps and 10-bit h264 IPB was at 7.2fps.  That's over 7x more computation to create a file of equivalent bitrate.  Do cameras differ in h264 quality?  Absolutely.  I suspect that computation load is a factor here.  

If a manufacturer is compromising on quality for lowering processing requirements in-camera then the results will be worse than the 100Mbps result above.

Prores benefit number two...  lower processing power required, potentially meaning less temptation to compromise quality.

But the codec / bitrate isn't the only thing that impacts the image - processing also matters.  Specifically, NR and sharpening.

This is where things get difficult to compare because not many cameras have both - typically cameras are either RAW/Prores or h264/5.  

However, when you choose a codec you are also choosing the processing, because cameras mostly don't give full control for sharpening and NR on all profiles.  It will be interesting to see the GH6 profiles and how they compare, but mostly Prores are aware that the huge file sizes aren't for consumers and so will configure Prores to have less processing.

Prores potential benefit number one...  lower sharpening and NR applied in-camera.

What about RAW?

RAW is great.  The semi-compressed RAW formats make shooting RAW wonderfully flexible, giving the benefits of RAW without being forced to spend more on media than on your camera, but once-again, RAW isn't directly comparable.

ProresRAW and B-RAW mostly require an external recorder, making your camera larger, requiring extra cables and rigging, requiring additional batteries and chargers, and introducing more points of failure in your setup.  Some cameras have internal RAW, some even offer compressed internal RAW, but what if those cameras don't suit your requirements or shooting style?

Prores potential benefit number two...  in-camera with no extra equipment or hassles.

RAW is typically a 1:1 pixel readout.  This means that you either shoot using the full sensor resolution or shoot with a crop.

Shooting with the full sensor resolution means that you'll need compressed RAW or you'll have large file sizes (like the Sigma FP), and also that your computer may have to bear the burden of decompressing / debayering / downscaling a file with higher resolution than your timeline, which is something worth considering as I know a number of people who put all their money into cameras and lenses and are struggling with older computers to edit their work on.
This will become more and more significant as sensor resolutions gradually creep up past 6K, 8K and beyond.

Why not crop?  Well, goodbye wide-angle lenses, and hello to an extra step on set where you have to apply the sensor crop factor and your resolution crop factor to the lens focal length every time you want to change lenses on set.  If you have time on set and good systems and lots of support then that's fine, but mistakes are inevitable and the less complicated things are the less likely they are to be made.

Prores potential benefit number three...  in-camera downsampling.

So there we are.  Prores is an old irrelevant codec superceded by h264 and then by h265, but when its implemented in a camera the implications are potentially quite significant for many people, depending on what and how you shoot.

[Eric Calabros]

I can make a jpeg look identical to 14 bit raw, but "visual" quality is not the point of raw. Lift shadows 3 or 4 stops and then compare again. 

[projectwoofer]

Yeah, and if you lift them 5 stops you get green lines for free! Sorry, couldn’t resist! 😆

[Mmmbeats]

The main advantages of ProRes over H.264 and H.265 are smoother playback and better facility for bouncing down to further generations.  Its designed to work really well in a post production environment, which it does superbly in my experience.

Its no surprise at all that the codecs look similar at the same data rates, in fact it is H.265 that you would expect to look the best as it is the most efficient encoder.

Of course H.264 looks good at reasonable data rates.  If it didn't it wouldn't have been utilised as an acquisition codec by just about every manufacturer under the sun at some point.

The point is that IPB codecs are horrendous in a post environment.  People are excited by ProRes 422HQ in the GH6 because, unlike the other two codecs, it is *guaranteed* to have high data rates (1.9 Gbps is what they are saying), and it will fit straight into our post workflows.

[webrunner5]

I was always amazed that Blackmagic was able to make money on their early cameras having to pay Apple for ProRes and Adobe for CinemaDNG. Now That is a Codec I Really like.

[Mark Romero 2]

I saw a video a while back comparing the all-i codecs on the GH5 with prores recorded on a Ninja and it seemed like the prores was better at avoiding macroblocking in motion. So I guess in theory it allows better keying in post. I thought the video was by Andy Dax, but apparently it was by another group of filmmakers (in Norway)? I can't seem to find it on the Andy Dax channel.

[kye]

5 hours ago, Mmmbeats said:

The main advantages of ProRes over H.264 and H.265 are smoother playback and better facility for bouncing down to further generations.  Its designed to work really well in a post production environment, which it does superbly in my experience.

Its no surprise at all that the codecs look similar at the same data rates, in fact it is H.265 that you would expect to look the best as it is the most efficient encoder.

Of course H.264 looks good at reasonable data rates.  If it didn't it wouldn't have been utilised as an acquisition codec by just about every manufacturer under the sun at some point.

The point is that IPB codecs are horrendous in a post environment.  People are excited by ProRes 422HQ in the GH6 because, unlike the other two codecs, it is *guaranteed* to have high data rates (1.9 Gbps is what they are saying), and it will fit straight into our post workflows.

The GH5 is relatively unique in that it offers a good selection of ALL-I codecs, which I use and are just wonderful in post. I guess other cameras would benefit from this though, as not many other models/manufacturers seem to have this included.

Interestingly, I thought for the test I would encode and re-encode each codec over and over again until one of them started breaking down, but I setup ffmpeg to do that on a 1080p version (to save processing time) and after 8 generations on h264 IPB at the same bitrate as Prores HQ I had to pause because the file looked the same.  At first I thought that ffmpeg was being too clever for me and just copying the stream instead of re-encoding it, but when I zoomed in crazily (something like 800%) there were subtle differences.  So really, all else being equal and when given enough bitrate, they all do a great job, so it's really the other factors that I highlighted in my post that are the deciding factors.

1 hour ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

I saw a video a while back comparing the all-i codecs on the GH5 with prores recorded on a Ninja and it seemed like the prores was better at avoiding macroblocking in motion. So I guess in theory it allows better keying in post. I thought the video was by Andy Dax, but apparently it was by another group of filmmakers (in Norway)? I can't seem to find it on the Andy Dax channel.

I suspect you are talking about this video?

This is probably the part you're referring to?

I found it hard to tell TBH, even with it moving, but that is a comparison between Prores on the Shogun, which is either HQ at 700Mbps or Prores 422 at 471Mbps vs the GH5 codec which is 400Mbps, so there's not much difference in the bitrate there.

The 400Mbps is on the high side compared to most cameras bitrates, and with the GH6 in 5.7K they'd be looking at 1500Mbps or 1000Mbps, which are significantly more again, so the bitrates really are pretty serious.

TBH, there's a point in diminishing returns with bitrate, not just because of accuracy vs bitrate, but also that if you multiply the resolution and bitrate by 9x (1920 x 3 is 5.7K) you're not increasing the size of the screen that the viewer will view the image on, so actually, once there is sufficient bitrate to render the screen to a certain optical quality it doesn't really require much more if you increase the resolution on the same display, or at least, it doesn't need to increase by a factor of 9.
Of course, if you're doing green-screen or other hard-edged keying, cropping in post, stabilising significantly, compositing and other VFX operations then that's a different story, but those are specialist applications and not general ones.

 

[Mark Romero 2]

11 minutes ago, kye said:

I suspect you are talking about this video?

Yes, that was the one.

I don't think I would notice ANY difference between the all-i internal codecs and prores external unless I was keying, which i freaking HATE to do (I mean, I hate even trying to light a green screen so you can imagine what I am like at 4:00am trying to key around hair, but then again, I am using the 150Mbps 10-bit 4:2:2 Long GOP from the S1 or S5).

[kye]

4 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Yes, that was the one.

I don't think I would notice ANY difference between the all-i internal codecs and prores external unless I was keying, which i freaking HATE to do (I mean, I hate even trying to light a green screen so you can imagine what I am like at 4:00am trying to key around hair, but then again, I am using the 150Mbps 10-bit 4:2:2 Long GOP from the S1 or S5).

Absolutely.

In the real world we're probably talking about the difference between 100Mbps h265 or 240Mbps h264 ALL-I (both from A73) vs 700Mbps All-I Prores HQ, or similar.

Or, comparing Prores HQ with RAW but where RAW requires an external recorder and costs many hundreds of dollars and requires cables, extra batteries, more things to charge, etc etc.

[Mmmbeats]

5 hours ago, kye said:

Of course, if you're doing green-screen or other hard-edged keying, cropping in post, stabilising significantly, compositing and other VFX operations then that's a different story, but those are specialist applications and not general ones.

 

I think what people miss out here is secondary grading isolation, which also benefits from a rich data environment. 

I don't consider this specialised at all.  Its a part of a well-rounded grading workflow.  I don't end up using it for every single project, but if anybody is not using secondaries at all, well... they probably should be in my opinion.

[Mmmbeats]

5 hours ago, kye said:

Interestingly, I thought for the test I would encode and re-encode each codec over and over again until one of them started breaking down, but I setup ffmpeg to do that on a 1080p version (to save processing time) and after 8 generations on h264 IPB at the same bitrate as Prores HQ I had to pause because the file looked the same.  

 

That's not good enough for me.  An 8-bit file from the same camera will generally 'look the same' (absent any banding) as a 10-bit file from the same source.  That doesn't mean its going to perform as well in post.

[kye]

1 hour ago, Mmmbeats said:

I think what people miss out here is secondary grading isolation, which also benefits from a rich data environment. 

I don't consider this specialised at all.  Its a part of a well-rounded grading workflow.  I don't end up using it for every single project, but if anybody is not using secondaries at all, well... they probably should be in my opinion.

I did consider that but didn't think that you'd be doing anything as radical as a green screen or background replacement etc.

What kinds of secondary adjustments would you really notice a poor quality codec?  Genuinely curious.

47 minutes ago, Mmmbeats said:

That's not good enough for me.  An 8-bit file from the same camera will generally 'look the same' (absent any banding) as a 10-bit file from the same source.  That doesn't mean its going to perform as well in post.

It all depends on what you're doing and the application of the format.  

Really this thread is relevant for people who aren't really sure of why Prores is a good feature, and often they're satisfied with h264 or h265 because they're "better", but if you're going to be doing work where you're really seeing the differences between these codecs then you're not the one who needs convincing!  Sadly, lots of people start with the position that 'newer is better' and 'more is better' without actually applying those statements to the entire pipeline, to the implications on set or in post.

I'd say that the quality of the encoder is probably more relevant in this case.  As an example, the C100 provided an image that compared favourably to other cameras with double the bitrate, so obviously Canon had really made the encoder work hard and really get a good result.  Cheap cameras can produce horrific results with heaps of bitrate.

The difference that 8-generations of compression made was far far smaller than the difference between a C100 image and most other cameras, even those downsampling 1080p from a 4K sensor, so that's why I didn't consider it to be particularly relevant.

I'm super happy the GH6 has prores and think it's one of the (many) great upgrades over the GH5, so I'm definitely with you on this one!

[Mmmbeats]

1 hour ago, kye said:

I did consider that but didn't think that you'd be doing anything as radical as a green screen or background replacement etc.

What kinds of secondary adjustments would you really notice a poor quality codec?  Genuinely curious.

It's all about the quality of the isolation.  it can be tough to get, say, a clean skintone isolation even with a really strong codec at times.  If the colour data is thin you either end up with areas of skin that just won't key, or parts of the background that just wont separate.  I've had to just abandon secondaries at times.

Totally agree about Canon.  They seem to have some compression fairy dust.  The C200 8-bit was remarkable.

[Django]

Canon have great image processing imo. Among the best h26x compression. The image always remains organic, not over sharpened or denoised.  The 10-bit h26x files from R3/R5/R6 are really nice and the chunky 410mbps XF-AVC on R5C/C70 even better. Of course they also do internal RAW which is fantastic.

ProRes is really that intermediate codec between RAW & h26x.

Other than being a pro standard with consistent flavours, its true that historical benefit was always the low-compression intraframe encoding allowing excellent scrubbing for editing. 10-bit h265 for example is a complete no-go on intel Macs. Not really an issue with +M1 silicon anymore. But still, it's nice to know that ProRes will run perfectly smooth on any editing machine, even quite dated ones.

But on pure IQ level, nothing beats RAW and now with internal 12-bit compressed RAW like BRAW or Canon Raw Light, which have very efficient bitrates it's the way to go in-cam if you want max flexibility and IQ. 

Getting back to GH6, Cined best describes the difference:

So, you actually have a nice choice here: ProRes HQ preserves the “raw” sensor image in a better way leaving all options for postprocessing but is a tad noisier, whereas H265 is very efficient in storage space and gives good DR values out of the box without the need for much postprocessing. But looking at the noise floor in the waveform plot it seems that it also has a lot more noise processing going on internally which cannot be turned “OFF”.

[Oliver Daniel]

I wonder how many of these ProRes commentators work in a professional environment? 

Although it is better for grading than more compressed H2 or Long GOP codecs, ProRes isn’t really about image quality. It’s down to workflow. It’s substantially much, much smoother to work with compared to other codecs. Especially in FCP. This is invaluable when there’s a business to run as efficiently as possible. 

If you can shoot ProRes and you’re running a business - you should. Because it’s “old”, doesn’t make it worse. Look at the Arri Alexa. 

I’ve found XAVC-I and other infra-frame codecs to be close in performance and also great for professional workflows. Just not quite as smooth as ProRes, but very close. 

H2’s and Long GOP’s are quite smooth on M1 Macs, but not perfect. Fine for a lot of smaller projects and saving space. 

[KnightsFan]

1 hour ago, Oliver Daniel said:

ProRes isn’t really about image quality. It’s down to workflow

This. The main concrete benefit of ProRes is that it's standard. There are a couple defined flavors, and everyone from the camera manufacturers, to the producers, to the software engineers, know exactly what they are working with. Standards are almost always not the best way to do something, but they are the best way to make sure it works. "My custom Linux machine boots in 0.64 seconds, so much faster than Windows! Unfortunately it doesn't have USB drivers so it can only be used with a custom keyboard and mouse I built in my garage" is fairly analogous to the ProRes vs. H.265 debate.

As has been pointed out, on a technical level 10 bit 422 H.264 All-I is essentially interchangeable with ProRes. Both are DCT compression methods, and H.264 can be tuned with as many custom options as you like, including setting a custom transform matrix. H.265 expands it by allowing different size blocks, but that's something you can turn off in encoder settings. However, given a camera or piece of software, you have no idea what settings they are actually choosing. Compounding that, many manufacturers use higher NR and more sharpening for H.264 than ProRes, not for a technical reason, but based on consumer convention.

Obviously once you add IPB, it's a completely different comparison, no longer about comparing codecs so much as comparing philosophies. Speed vs. size.

As far as decode speed, it's largely down to hardware choices and, VERY importantly, software implementation. Good luck editing H.264 in Premiere no matter your hardware. Resolve is much better, if you have the right GPU. But if you are transcoding with ffmpeg, H.265 is considering faster to decode than ProRes with nVidia hardware acceleration. But this goes back to the first paragraph--when we talk about differences in software implementation, it is better to just know the exact details from one word: "ProRes"

[mercer]

Obviously this conversation was born from the GH6 release and its inclusion of ProRes. Well, I think it's quite simple. If you have no plans to use ProRes, there is no real need to upgrade from a GH5.

[projectwoofer]

25 minutes ago, mercer said:

Obviously this conversation was born from the GH6 release and its inclusion of ProRes. Well, I think it's quite simple. If you have no plans to use ProRes, there is no real need to upgrade from a GH5.

What about the 4K120fps that everyone needs so badly lately for “cinematic“ b-roll? And the 5.7K so you can too be a real YouTuber and influencer as well as be able to be lazy with your composition?
 

I kid, I kid! 😁

[Mmmbeats]

35 minutes ago, mercer said:

Obviously this conversation was born from the GH6 release and its inclusion of ProRes. Well, I think it's quite simple. If you have no plans to use ProRes, there is no real need to upgrade from a GH5.

Not sure if you're being serious?

4K 60p 10-bit (the thing I most lament on an almost daily basis) 
Increased dynamic range (the GH5's biggest weakness)
High resolution mode stills (for landscapes, architectural, etc.)
4 channel audio recording....

[kye]

5 hours ago, Oliver Daniel said:

I wonder how many of these ProRes commentators work in a professional environment? 

Although it is better for grading than more compressed H2 or Long GOP codecs, ProRes isn’t really about image quality. It’s down to workflow. It’s substantially much, much smoother to work with compared to other codecs. Especially in FCP. This is invaluable when there’s a business to run as efficiently as possible. 

If you can shoot ProRes and you’re running a business - you should. Because it’s “old”, doesn’t make it worse. Look at the Arri Alexa. 

I’ve found XAVC-I and other infra-frame codecs to be close in performance and also great for professional workflows. Just not quite as smooth as ProRes, but very close. 

H2’s and Long GOP’s are quite smooth on M1 Macs, but not perfect. Fine for a lot of smaller projects and saving space. 

Absolutely!  

I find that most camera discussions happen in a vacuum, where there is little consideration of anything else involved in the process, which is especially perplexing considering that the camera is one of the least important parts of making a good film.

In terms of workflow, I shoot the GH5 using its 1080p ALL-I codec, in preference to the 4K IPB one, because of workflow considerations.  I'll definitely be exploring the Prores options of the GH6, but will also be quite tempted by the Prores on the new iPhones, which are probably one of the cameras that would benefit most from having a larger bitrate and some gentle encouragement not to process the living hell out of the image before it's compressed and saved internally.