60D 4K RAW Test (Sort of)

[OObner]

A series of 4K (well, UHD) RAW test shots I shot on my backyard on my 60D.

Well, of course I'm cheating...

This is basically an upscale test, to prove that a good RAW HD footage, can be upscaled to 4K and still look good.

These were shot at Regular RAW with my 60D - some shots at 1728 pixels wide, and some at full 1920 using ML x3 zoom function.
Conformed and graded on davinci resolve, and then upscaled to UHD (3840x2160) with some tweaking on resolve "Image Scaling" section. otherwise, no effects or sharpening were applied.

Some shots were upscaled really really nice - some were not, but still look, in my opinion, better than any H264 video at 4K.

Exported in ProRes HQ in UHD (Huge Files almost 10GB total for this 1 minute clip). and edited on FCP X.

For your pleasure, you can download the original clip at full UHD glory, and judge for yourself.

[Thejungle]

But you have uploaded it in 720p... Does it make any sense?

[OObner]

Thejungle:
But it is in 4K (well, UHD)...
You should download the original fie, which is in 4K, err, UHD.
How will you play it? I have no idea...

BTW: you can watch it now in 1080 - but it'll look just like a regular 1080. to really get the idea. download the original 4K file.

[sarotaz]

Conformed and graded on davinci resolve, and then upscaled to UHD (3840x2160) with some tweaking on resolve "Image Scaling" section. otherwise, no effects or sharpening were applied.

Can you post your workflow? i've tried to work on resolve but i've strange pink artifacts.

[OObner]

Workflow was actually quite simple:
1. shot raw on the 60D (duh). I'm using a special build from september, which solve the dead pixels problem, search the 60D thread.
2. Using RAWMagic, I converted the raw "PS" file to DNG. I'm doing it directly from the card, without copying the raw files to the hard drive.
3. In resolve, I opened the DNG files, conformed and graded them. In this case, I created a project in UHD resolution, and tweaked the "Image Size" tab options until it looked the best.
4. Export from resolve using ProRes HQ.
5. import and edit them in FCP X.

Remark: you may get one or two strange pink frames at the beginning of a shot, just cut them out in resolve or your NLE.
Remark 2: I do not recommend upscaling HD to UHD! This was done as an exercise, to show how good and flexible RAW can be. In fact I don't recommend upscaling at all. It is a very bad way to shot UHD...

[ItsMeLenny]

This does and doesn't make sense.
The reason why it does make sense is: sub-sampling is 4:2:0, so upscaling to 4K would mean you have a 2K chroma, which is roughly the original size (well actually quite a bit bigger) than the original chroma.
The reason why it doesn't make sense is: there is no perceivable visual difference of chroma 4:4:4 compared to 4:2:0. Also, there are codecs which do 4:4:4.

[sarotaz]

Remark: you may get one or two strange pink frames at the beginning of a shot, just cut them out in resolve or your NLE.

I haven't pink frames. But strange chroma artifacts.
See this http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10669.0
The problem of bad pixel in my case is fixed by a special version of raw2dng developed by escho.
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=9700.msg98302#msg98302

[OObner]

sarotaz:
Gladly, I haven't seen this problem...
That special version of raw2dng is, unfortunately, windows only, and, fortunately, I work on a mac.

Technically, your'e right.
However, you miss the point: This example is not about how I managed to squeeze 4K out of a 60D, but to show how flexible RAW format can be.
I do not recommend upscaling to 4K. In fact, I can only recommend using 4K with a high quality codec, like ProRes or RAW, preferably in 444.
Shooting 4K in h264, or 420, you'll get an image that is not much better than  upscaled 1080 RAW image, like my example. Shooting in 422 might get you better results - somewhere in between, but still, it'll be harder in post.

[sarotaz]

OObner absolutely agree with you.

I've compare a raw shot at 960x540 hd with a full hd H.264 shot.
Rescaling the raw to 1080, two shots have the same quality but raw contrast (in small detail) was much better then h.264.

[OObner]

Well, Sarotaz, I haven't gone so far...
But yeah, basically, under the right circumstances, RAW is comparable to h264 at almost twice the size.