Highest Quality Workflow for Canon Raw video

[Casey Pegram]

I’m sure there are differing opinions on this, but for me, here’s the workflow I’ve implemented:

1) Convert .RAW to Cinema DNG with RAW Magic
2) Import footage into Resolve, do basic one-light correction, export prores and FCP XML
3) Import XML/prores into Premiere
4) Edit

Now at this point, you could either:

5A) Go back to Resolve and finish there (relinking to the original Cinema DNG and doing more precise corrections as needed)

5B) Go to After Effects (you will need to switch out your prores shots for the original Cinema DNG sequences manually, I believe, but it did work when I tried) and grade in Adobe Camera RAW, etc

Resolve will be much faster and much less fussy, but some do prefer to ACR debayering of RAW images for the absolute best quality. Resolve 10 has come a long way from the RAW quality of Resolve 9, so I don’t know if this is still a popular opinion or not.

I think for most jobs it makes the most sense to go Resolve -> Premiere -> Resolve. But, on passion projects, I would be tempted to consider finishing in AE/ACR to eke out maximum quality. Plus, working in ACR allows you to apply things like the VSCO film emulation presets used in ACR and Lightroom. So it gives you more options, but the render times are massive, especially compared to Resolve.

Hope that helps!

[Owain Hopkins]

Fantastic. Thank you casey.

One last thing. Once it’s complete in AE at highest quality, what format do you export for web and DVD?

[Casey Pegram]

Hey Owain,

For web, I use a modded version of the Vimeo 1080p 23.976 preset in Adobe Media Encoder, where I increase the bitrate to 10/13Mbps for daily work or 35/35Mbps for high end work (where I really want to maximize quality and preserve as much as possible qualities like grain etc). It’s overkill, and probably wasteful, but I figure my best shot is giving Vimeo and YouTube a really high quality image to step on.

As for DVD, not much special advice outside of doing a 2-pass encode at the highest bitrate you can get away with given the limitations of the media and the length of your program. I’m not up on what the best way to downscale HD to SD is these days, having happily not had to author a DVD in many years!

[Owain Hopkins]

Hi casey,

Thanks for the info. I came up with this workflow last night which seemed to work:

1. Put ‘Black Video’ into a Premiere sequence and then ‘Replace with after effects sequence

2. When in AE, import the DNG files and place into the premiere linked sequence (I convert them to proxies because my computer isn’t very fast)

3. Go back and edit the linked sequence in Premiere. And best of all, if you need to edit the raw files, open them in Camera raw, synchronize every DNG image, save them and they should then link through to AE (after you reload the file) which in turn links through to Premiere.

Bit of a fiddle but at least it’s non destructive.
Owain

[Steven Williams]

I’m unable to relink my Resolve DNG proxies (Prores LT), when I round trip back from Premiere to resolve.

[see image] I can see the reel name in resolve and uncheck the ‘add footage’ when I impirt the edited XML from Premiere.

Could you tell me your settings? I don’t know where I’m going wrong 🙁

Partially Baked Animator

[Owain Hopkins]

Here’s what I went with in the end. Brace yourself

Workflow:

1. Convert RAW to DNG with Raw Magic
2. Make Proxies out of Resolve – https://youtu.be/U6FReSc6ZKE
3. Edit in Premiere
4. Export as an EDL – (May not work if you have transitions and adjustment layers)
5. Link EDL to DNG files in Resolve
6. Grade / apply LUT or both
7. Export at highest quality
8. Put HQ files into Premiere
9. Link to after effects for FX and apply animorphic look – https://vimeo.com/77950951
9. Export at Best quality from Premiere

Phew!

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[Nathaniel J opgenorth]

Hey guys thanks for some simple advice! I personally prefer to import into After Effects CS5.5 since I know it better, for some reason Resolve refuses to run on my system a good 50% of the time, it runs great when it does but half the time it gives me errors about not having a CUDA card or not having enough vRAM despite having the latest CUDA for my Nvidia card. Anyways one thing that bothers me with Adobe Camera Raw when I import to AE is I can’t seam to figure out how to view past the first frame! I don’t want to import each FRAME ONE BY ONE….that would be insane so I don’t select multiple files and instead select file and it recognizes it as an image sequence…perhaps I’m missing something here but I’d really like to use ACR in AE while I’m doing the edits in my compositions instead of just only on import…Any advice? Maybe I’m blind and just need to freshen up on AE but maybe someone can chime in?

Anyways its amazing the quality you can get, I usually export to ProRes 4444 since its a rock solid 12-bit 4:4:4 Codec, so much adjustments you can make, kind of a pain that FCP X doesn’t really offer a good way to import the image sequences right from the get with good control over the RAW image since I edit in FCP X but I might give Premiere Pro a go for certain projects.

[Owain Hopkins]

Hi nathaniel,

I don’t know of any way to re-open the Raw files in AE once you’ve imported them.

A workaround is to maybe open the files in camera raw, adjust what you want and then ‘synchronise all’

These changes should carry through into AE then

[Steven Williams]

Edit Original – Command E

Partially Baked Animator