FCPX & Blackmagic Raw workflows?

[Brad Hurley]

I haven’t done it myself but you can of course render individual BRAW clips in Resolve to ProRes HQ and import them into FCPX, which was a fairly common workflow among people with earlier Blackmagic Design cameras that recorded CDNG raw.

There is some speculation that the next release of FCPX could include BRAW support but who knows. Apple has a vested interest in promoting ProRes RAW so they might not go for it, but Premiere supports it now. Originally there was speculation it might be released at the FCPX summit earlier this month but that didn’t happen, so now the speculation is focused on the release of the new MacPro, which could coincide with the release of new versions of FCPX and Logic. We shall see.

[Craig Seeman]

From what I’ve heard the hold up is on Blackmagic’s side, not Apple’s.
Note that the BRAW plugin used in Premiere and Avid are developed by Blackmagic.

It’s entirely possible that Blackmagic would prefer FCPX users move to Resolve whose full license is included with the purchase of any BMPCC variant.

[Joe Marler]

[Jeff Kirkland] “what workflows people are using when dealing with Blackmagic Raw? I’ve got a short film shot in braw and I really want to edit it in FCPX. “

It’s not just FCPX. You can’t play BRAW in QuickLook, QuickTime or VLC. There is a special Blackmagic player. By contrast ProRes RAW can be played in all those — it acts just like regular ProRes.

But your material already exists, so it’s not like you have a choice. I’d just use Resolve. It’s actually pretty good. Or you really want to use FCPX, use Resolve to batch convert them to ProRes.

[Brad Hurley]

I think the key question is whether you want to round-trip back to Resolve for color correction after editing in FCPX, or if you just want to use Resolve as a BRAW “developer” so you can render Prores HQ files in Rec709 and then work with those files from start to finish in FCPX.

Resolve’s color correction/grading tools are of course much more advanced than those in FCPX, but if you don’t need all that power and flexibility (and built-in tracking ability) the color correction tools in FCPX are quite good and capable. I only work with footage from BMD cameras, shooting log or raw, and everything looks better in Resolve; I can’t achieve the same results in FCPX in part because Resolve offers a color-managed workflow with no need to use technical LUTs to go from log to Rec709. But if you do primary color correction on your BRAW clips in Resolve and then render the individual clips as Prores HQ files in a Rec709 colorspace, you can then import them into Final Cut and do all your editing and remaining color grading in there with no need to go back to Resolve.

[Jeff Kirkland]

For anything other than small projects, I’m always going to grade in Resolve but I much prefer editing, especially narrative work, in FCPX and I’m trying not to lose the advantages of the original raw files.

Normally, that’s all pretty straight forward but when I tested, the reconnected braw files had lost their synced audio tracks and reverted back to just their scratch audio – which would be a pain to have to re-sync because most of the clips had to be synced up by hand.

I’ve got some time to test again today so I’ll see if I can figure it out.

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Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

My understanding is that Apple removed the ability for FCPX to run third party codec plugins a few versions back so Blackmagic can’t develop anything themselves and have to wait for Apple to add support, if they ever do.

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Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

Braw is the choice. All my cameras are Blackmagic and I haven’t shot anything other than braw in more than a year. And because of that, I’ve only edited maybe four projects in FCPX. Resolve is ok but I want to get back to using FCPX regularly for all the reasons I love using it.

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Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Joe Marler]

While BRAW was originally a raw format for Blackmagic cameras, Atomos makes some recorders that record/encode BRAW from a few non-BM cameras, e.g, C300 II.

I wonder if Atomos will make recorders that record ProRes RAW from a Blackmagic camera? That would solve the problem for FCPX users wanting to edit raw from those cameras.

[Brad Hurley]

“While BRAW was originally a raw format for Blackmagic cameras, Atomos makes some recorders that record/encode BRAW from a few non-BM cameras, e.g, C300 II. ”

That can’t be true, can it? Blackmagic Design and Atomos have a bad history together; as far as I know Atomos is only making monitor/recorders that record Prores Raw, not BRAW.

[Jeff Kirkland]

I’d say definitely not true – he’s probably thinking of Blackmagic’s updated Video Assist which can record braw from the C300 and the EVA1.

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Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland