Basic RAW editor? (RAW trimmer) to cut down file size and save HD space

[mageye]

I am expecting that there may be quite a few people that have hard drives that are beginning to fill up pretty quickly with the lovely RAW footage they are creating?

This is great until I think to myself that I have lots of frames that I don't actually need. For example when I shoot I will always shoot more seconds than required so that it can be edited down.

While you can edit the from the created *.DNG files you can't edit the *.RAW files. So what happens is that I have lots of *.RAW files and/or lots of *.DNG files sitting on my hard drive and they are occupying probably a third more space than they need to be.

I know, from making basic edits to the *.RAW files in a HEX editor, that it is fairly easy to define how many frames there is within the *.RAW file. So I imagine that it wouldn't really be too much of a problem for someone with fairly elementary coding skills, to create a very basic executable program that could allow you to perhaps place an insert point (as in frame you want to start from) and an out point (as in frame you want to finish at). Then the file could be reformatted and resized appropriately for the amount of frames etc.

Even a preview is not essential at this stage (although would be nice) as you can use other tools (like Ginger HDR) for that bit.

If someone could possibly make such a thing it would really help with the whole RAW workflow. Basically what I want is a *.RAW file trimmer. This would of course mean that the resulting *.DNG sequences would be smaller also. It could also be used to fix files that are lacking the footer too.

I hope I have explained things clearly enough here. I am on the MAC so if this is possible I would personally like to see a tool for the MAC

I know this is not really a Magic Lantern feature I am requesting but it is something that I feel would certainly support the whole RAW workflow.

SO IF YOU ARE A PROGRAMMER/CODER PLEASE FEEL FREE TO HAVE A GO

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated

[sm105]

This doesn't answer your question, but I'm curious: Is there any reason to keep the both the RAW file and DNG frames? The RAW file is just a container for the DNG's, correct?

[mageye]

Well if you use Ginger HDR you can use the *.RAW directly but this bypasses the ACR (so you loose a lot of control over the image settings). I find that Ginger HDR is great for previewing what you have. It would be nice if some day there could be a way of using the *.RAW files directly and be able to use ACR or something that enables you to change settings at the 'RAW' level.

So in some senses it is more useful to keep the original *.RAW file because that's what it comes from and in some ways is more 'dynamic' (for previewing at least). I would obviously prefer to keep one or the other (because of space issues). Maybe a Cinema DNG previewing program would win me over if I was to just keep the Cinema DNG files?. At the moment, the only way to see the Cinema DNG sequence is to render it out somehow (After Effects).

I have tended towards keeping the converted Cinema DNG files because they allow much more control.