Raw development strategies

- If you shot RAW material, there are some extra steps that you might need to work through before you actually start to edit, and that comes really into this idea of development, development means getting it out of a RAW format, and basically making a video file. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean transcoding, it just means choosing how the RAW file information is going to be displayed on your computer. Rob, you've loaded up some RAW footage, and ultimately, by the time it looks like a video file in a player window that you can scrub and play back, some decisions were either made automatically or by you, right? - Yeah, I don't think this is necessarily about converting, I wouldn't use that word, per se, but I would say that-- - Interpreting. - Interpreting or developing, right? As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to RAW files, I mentioned kind of coming from a photography background and that darkroom environment, that's how I think about the RAW controls and the RAW settings that we have to do that transformation, the debayering from the original RAW data into something that we're looking on on screen, right? I think there's a few things that I want to point out that are important about this, first, is that every RAW format, from Arri RAW to Red's R3D, to Cinema DNG, every RAW format is going to have slightly different controls. That's because the camera manufacturers and the software manufacturers, they kind of do this little bit of cha cha cha, back and forth, about what controls are available for your app verus this app, versus our app, and that kind of thing, right? - Some of the manufacturers have their own apps, and they prefer that you use those, and then the files read the data, but they might not expose those controls when you open it up in Premiere or Resolve. - Right, so you might actually, even more than that, you might get a certain set of controls for the same file on a tool like Premiere, and then you have even more controls in a dedicated color application like DaVinci Resolve, so it's all kind of about that negotiation that the camera manufacturers do with their SDK, and what the software manufacturers want to implement in their software tool. - And who took who out to a nicer sushi dinner. - Yeah, that could also partly be it. The next thing I think that's important is that I keep saying sort of development, that implies that this is a set it once and forget it, that is not necessarily true. - It's non-destructive. - It is non-destructive, I tend to just think about this process at the start of a project, 'cause I'm developing something into a flavor or sort of a view that I want to start with for the rest of my grading work, but at any point in time, I can come back and adjust those RAW settings if I didn't have something right, or I wanted to do something like recover some highlights out of a blown out window or something like that. - And that's just like working in something like Lightroom, which is really what we would refer to as a parametric image editor, where you're adjusting the properties, but those properties are stored in a sidecar file or a settings file, they're not actually permanently changing the pixels. - So we're going to talk about the specifics of different RAW formats and different applications, but I kind of want to give you a high level overview of a couple important things about this, so here in my project, here you can see I have an R3D clip, right here, this guy with the bands, you can see over here it's an R3D, this is from a RED camera, it's UHD, R3D file extension. If I take a look at this clip, this came from a Black Magic cinema camera, you'll notice that it's a Cinema DNG file, so I have different file extensions, right, and then if I take a look at this shot, for example, that's a different file format still, .arri, right? Remember, every RAW format is going to have it's own extension. Why, because every sensor is different, and every camera manufacturer has tailored that bayer pattern to that sensor, that's why we have R3D and .arri, et cetera. Okay, now, the other conceptual thing I want to point out, Rich, is that, generally speaking, depending on the applications, there's two places to control RAW settings. - Yeah. - Project-wide, or clip level. So here, for example, in DaVinci Resolve, if I opened up my project settings and came over to Camera RAW, you can see I have controls for Arri Alexa, Red, Sony, Cinema DNG, and so on, right? - [Rich] So this is sort of setting the default interpretation values? - [Rob] Right, so this is saying anything that is an Arri RAW file in your project will have these settings, right? - [Rich] But then you can override it at the clip level. - [Rob] I can override it at the clip level. But the important thing to understand is that, generally speaking, no matter the format, we can have default values that the camera manufacturer supplies, camera metadata, that will be how you actually shot the files, and the settings that you made on the camera, and then, if we go to project here, this is where I can dial in specific settings. So, let's just say, for example, I come in here and I adjust my lift settings down for this Arri RAW file way down, somethin' like this, right, and click save, you'll notice that now, if I click back off of it, there it is, it's totally different, right? Okay, now, with that said, if I edited this into a timeline, let's put that into a new timeline and just click create here, I could then come to the clip level, clicking on my RAW settings here, change this from being processed by the project to the clip level decoding, and that is where I could then adjust all of these settings here to get back to however I need them to be. - [Rich] So, really, what's happening is, is we assign some default values on how we want things interpreted at a project level, but then, clip by clip, we can adjust to compensate for individual changes in the shooting scenario. - Absolutely, so the thinking here is that on the project wide level, if you have that ability, it's not every app has project and then clip level, but most do, on the project level, it would be kind of your comfort level, your overall kind of default way of you want to handle things, and then the clip level of handling specific clip instance things. - So, for example, if we were doing a set of interviews in the studio and we noticed that maybe there was a consistent issue across the board, like, hey, this whole thing was running a little blue, and it was a little underexposed, we can compensate for those things, sort of globally, and then, clip by clip, tweak things and adjust for things like skin tones or different lighting conditions, as things maybe slightly changed throughout the day. - Absolutely, and the other thing I want to just point out about these controls, whether they're on clip level, or they are on the project level is that they do differ, so right now I'm looking at my Arri RAW settings, right, so you can see, you know, lift, gain, contrast, et cetera, if I flip over to, say, Red, look, I have a whole bunch more different settings than I had with the Alexa, that's just because this is what Red has chosen to give in their software development kit to the Resolve team to be able to use, right, so tint, DRX, Flood, OLPF compensation, all sorts of stuff-- - That's a whole lot of words. - Right, but what my point is is that different RAW formats are going to have different controls, and everything that I want to do with these RAW controls, there's not a right and a wrong, it's about getting to the, you know, sort of the comfort point with where how you want to work with something, so for example, with this Red clip here, you know, I mentioned earlier that we can kind of parse RAW data into any container. I might just take this clip and go, "Yeah, you know what? "I actually want to take this, this was REDColor Four, "I actually don't want to have it be this kind of flattened out, "Rec. 709 looking file," I'm just going to switch that right off the bat into something like REDLog Film, so let me find that real quick. There it is, REDLog Film. I'll press save here, watch what happens now, as I move that clip around-- - Yeah. - [Rob] Now it looks like I have sort of a flat log starting point, so you can adjust these RAW settings, again, to kind of get to the good starting point of where you want to continue on with the rest of your work. - So really, we're making a decision here, is you are setting this up so that you can get the file to the right beginning point, and then you can use the tool that you're most familiar with as a post-production professional to stylize and bring things out, but here's where you're going to really say, "Oh, I've got, nothing's overexposed, "nothing's underexposed, I like this neutral starting point, "I can build on this," it's kind of like leveling the ground. - Absolutely, and again, I want to be very clear, that it doesn't mean that you cannot come back to those RAW settings and adjust them later down the line. - So, if we did a really overblown, stylized look and we decide, "Wow, we really need to recover the "highlights a little more," you could jump back into the RAW file and pull those down, and things would concatenate and move forward. - Absolutely, so the takeaways, I think, here are that, one, every RAW format is going to be slightly different based on the sensor that the camera was actually shooting on, two, that the camera manufacturers and the software manufacturers implement different tools for different RAW formats, and depending on the application that you're in, you may or may not have the same or different controls for that particular RAW file. And then, third, I think the important thing is to understand, a lot of applications let you work on a project wide level and then dive deeper into, on a clip level if you need to make adjustments, and finally, my opinion about working with RAW is that it's not your primary color correction toolset. It's a line of first defense to develop that RAW file into something that you think is a good starting point for the rest of your work. - Well, now that you understand some of these core terms, as well as some of the logic behind the workflow, let's move on to taking a look at three specific applications, we're going to explore Final Cut Pro 10, Adobe Premiere Pro, which we'll also briefly touch upon After Effects, and then DaVinci Resolve, and this will help us better understand how to implement this footage in a practical working environment.